Training paces & VDOT
One honest race gives you a VDOT, and a VDOT gives you every pace you should be training at — easy, marathon, threshold, interval and repetition, in both kilometres and miles.
Your benchmark race
Your paces
This is your effective VO₂max — it bundles your running economy in with your aerobic capacity, which is why it predicts race pace better than a lab value would. It is not a lab VO₂max and should not be quoted as one.
| Zone | / km | / mile |
|---|---|---|
| E Easy Most of your weekly volume. Builds the aerobic base and lets you recover. | 4:54–5:53 | 7:54–9:28 |
| M Marathon Race-effort work for long events; steady, controlled, not hard. | 4:26–4:51 | 7:08–7:49 |
| T Threshold Comfortably hard. Tempo runs and cruise intervals — the classic fitness driver. | 4:16–4:28 | 6:52–7:12 |
| I Interval Hard repeats of 3–5 minutes that stress VO2max directly. | 3:51–4:01 | 6:11–6:27 |
| R Repetition Short, fast reps for speed and economy, with full recovery between. | 3:34–3:42 | 5:44–5:57 |
Repetition pace is shown to 110% of VO₂max. Daniels defines the band up to 120%, but that ceiling applies to the shortest reps only — printing it as a general band gets people running every rep session far too fast.
Easy pace should feel almost embarrassingly slow — that is the point of it. Check your cadence while you are down there →
How the math works
Two equations from Jack Daniels and Jimmy Gilbert, published in Oxygen Power in 1979. The first gives the oxygen cost of running at a given velocity. The second gives the fraction of your maximum you can sustain for a race of a given duration — because you can hold a far higher percentage for ten minutes than for three hours.
Divide the first by the second and you get VDOT: the capacity you would need to have produced that performance. Training paces come from running the first equation backwards, solving for the velocity that costs a given percentage of your VDOT.
A worked check: a 5 K in 20:00 is 250 metres per minute, which costs 47.46 ml/kg/min. A 20-minute race runs at about 95.3% of maximum, so VDOT is 47.46 ÷ 0.953 = 49.8, which sits just under Daniels' VDOT 50 row — the one he pairs with a 19:57 5 K.
The five intensities
| Zone | % of VO₂max | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| E — Easy | 59–74% | Most of your weekly volume; recovery and aerobic base |
| M — Marathon | 75–84% | Steady race-effort work for long events |
| T — Threshold | 83–88% | Comfortably hard tempo and cruise intervals |
| I — Interval | 95–100% | Hard 3–5 minute repeats that stress VO₂max |
| R — Repetition | 105–110% | Short fast reps for speed and economy |
Honest caveats
Everything downstream depends on the race you typed in. A soft effort produces a soft VDOT and a set of paces that are all slightly too easy; an unrepresentative personal best from three years ago produces paces you cannot currently hold, which is the more dangerous error.
The model was fitted to trained distance runners. It transfers reasonably to most recreational runners and poorly to people very new to the sport, whose economy is still changing rapidly. Repetition pace is shown to 110% here even though Daniels defines the band up to 120% — that ceiling belongs to the shortest reps, and printing it as a general band reliably gets people running rep sessions far too fast.
To turn a VDOT into a target time at another distance, use the race predictor. To check the mechanics underneath the pace, try the stride and cadence calculator.
Common questions
Is VDOT the same as my VO₂max?+−
No, and the difference matters. A lab VO₂max measures how much oxygen you can use. VDOT is a performance value derived from a race result, so it bundles your running economy in with your aerobic capacity — two runners with identical lab values will have different VDOTs if one is a more efficient runner. That is why VDOT predicts race pace better than a lab number does, and why it should never be quoted as though it were one.
Which race should I put in?+−
A recent one, run all out, ideally lasting between ten and forty minutes. That window is where the underlying model is most reliable. A 5 K or 10 K is usually the sweet spot. A tempo run, a parkrun you jogged, or a race from last season will all give you a number, and it will be the wrong number.
Why is Easy pace so much slower than I expected?+−
Because that is the point of it. Easy running exists to build aerobic capacity and let you absorb the hard sessions, and running it faster does not make it work better — it makes the hard days worse. Most runners’ single biggest mistake is running easy days too hard and hard days too easy. If the E band feels slow, that is the calculator working.
How often should I recalculate?+−
After a race, or roughly every six to eight weeks of consistent training. VDOT moves slowly, and chasing it after every good session leads to paces that outrun your actual fitness. If your paces suddenly feel easy across the board, that is a reason to race again rather than to guess a new number.
Paces tell you how fast. Strength decides how long you hold them.
Twelve weeks on the posterior chain that keeps form intact when the pace starts to hurt — periodized, with deload weeks built in.