Should recreational runners observe the traditional wisdom that a negative split (a faster second half) is the perfect strategy to run the marathon?
- Marathon runners are often advisable to pace their race in order that the second half is (barely) faster than the primary — a negative split — because “that is how elites win” and the way records are likely to be broken. Nevertheless, this evaluation of greater than 4 million marathons shows that just about 90% of races are accomplished with a slower second half (a positive split).
- After we control for runner ability, then more evenly-paced races are related to faster finish times, and more personal bests, than less evenly-paced races. Nevertheless, the perfect recreational performances are related to barely positive splits, suggesting the controlled fade is an efficient pacing strategy for recreational runners.
- The evidence also points to a performance bias against negative splits for recreational runners — e.g. a ten% positive split is related to a greater consequence (more PBs, improved relative finish times) than a ten% negative split — because recreational runners often pace negative splits too conservatively.
- This evaluation suggests that recreational runners should goal a 1.5% positive split as their A-goal (that’s, aim for a a second half that’s 1.5% longer than the primary half) with a B-goal of a positive split that’s lower than roughly 3%.
Conventional wisdom advises that the marathon needs to be run with a good or barely negative split and that “putting time within the bank” by running a faster first half (i.e. a positive split) is just not a very good idea. The evidence in favour of this includes the often-quoted statistic that most world records above 800m have been achieved with negative splits, but should we expect elite success to transfer well to recreational runners? In any case, elite marathoners have quite a bit more experience in relation to managing their pace, effort, and energy at some stage in the marathon distance. In contrast, most recreational runners…