What is threshold pace?
Training Paces
Threshold is the most useful pace in distance running, and also the one with the most names attached to it. Here is what it actually is and how to run it.
The short answer
Threshold pace is the fastest pace you could hold in a steady, controlled effort for roughly an hour. For most trained runners that is close to current 10km to 15km race pace; for newer runners it is nearer their 5km pace, simply because they cannot hold 5km pace for an hour anyway. It should feel like comfortably hard — about 7 out of 10 — and you should finish a threshold session feeling you could have done a little more.
What is actually happening
At easy paces your body clears lactate as fast as it produces it. Push harder and there is a point where production starts to outrun clearance, and things begin to accumulate. Threshold pace sits right on the edge of that line — hard enough to be right at the top of what you can sustain, controlled enough that you are not tipping over it.
You will hear this called lactate threshold, anaerobic threshold, tempo, LT2, critical speed, or "comfortably hard". They are not identical if you want to be precise about physiology, but for the purposes of running well they are close enough that arguing about the labels is a waste of a good Tuesday.
What matters is what training there does. Threshold work raises the pace you can hold before things fall apart. It improves your ability to clear and use lactate, it builds the aerobic engine hard, and — this is the part people undervalue — you can do a lot of it without wrecking yourself. That is why it is the backbone of nearly every programme I write.
How to find your threshold pace
From a recent race. A recent 10km race pace is a good working estimate for most club runners. If your best recent race is a 5km, add about 15 to 20 seconds per kilometre.
From effort. Threshold is 7 out of 10. You can speak, but only in short phrases, and you would rather not. If you can talk in full sentences you are running steady, not threshold. If you cannot get three words out, you are running your 5km race and calling it a tempo.
From a time trial. A 30-minute solo time trial, run as hard as you can hold evenly, gives you a very good number. Your average pace for the last 20 minutes is a close approximation of threshold.
Long reps, not short ones
This is where my sessions probably look different from what you have done before. I lean heavily on longer threshold reps with float recoveries rather than short intervals with standing rest.
A float recovery means you keep running through the recovery at a controlled aerobic pace — usually somewhere around marathon effort or a touch slower — instead of jogging feebly or standing with your hands on your knees. The heart rate never really drops, the session stays continuous, and you end up accumulating far more quality time than you would with the stop-start version.
Compare these two sessions. Twelve times 400m at threshold with 60 seconds standing gives you around 21 minutes of work — and twelve minutes of standing about in the wind getting cold. Four times eight minutes at threshold with two-minute floats gives you 32 minutes of work inside nearly 40 minutes of continuous aerobic running. More quality, no dead time, and you stay warm. That is the whole argument.
Three threshold sessions I use constantly
- Classic float: 5 x 6 minutes at threshold, 90 seconds float. Build to 6 x 6 min over a block.
- Long tempo: 20 to 40 minutes continuous at threshold, depending on the athlete and the phase. Honest and unforgiving.
- Cutdown: 10, 8, 6, 4 minutes with 90 second floats, each rep a touch quicker than the last. Finishes at about 10km effort.
Coach's note
Wellington's terrain and wind mean your threshold pace and your threshold effort will disagree with each other constantly. On the waterfront in a northerly, the outbound leg will read 20 seconds a kilometre slow and the return will read fast, and neither is the truth. Run threshold on effort and use pace as a sanity check afterwards. If you want a session where the pace is genuinely comparable week to week, take it to Newtown Park, the Petone Esplanade, or the Hutt River Trail.
How much threshold, how often
Once a week for most runners. Twice a week during a specific build for experienced athletes, and even then one of them is usually softer than the other.
Total volume within a session tends to sit between 20 and 40 minutes of work for well-trained runners, and 12 to 25 minutes for those newer to it. Start at the bottom of that and build. Threshold work is deceptive — it does not hurt much on the day, so it is easy to keep adding, and then three weeks later you are inexplicably flat.
The most common mistake
Running it too fast. It happens in almost every group session I have ever watched. The first rep goes out at 10km pace, the second is a bit quicker because someone got competitive, and by the fourth it is a race and the session's purpose has evaporated.
Threshold done properly is unglamorous. You are meant to finish it thinking "I could have done another two". If you finish it wrecked, you did a different session — probably a good one, but not the one that was written.
Max, who I coach through his marathon builds, runs his marathon pace at 3:45 to 3:50 per kilometre and his threshold work at around 3:30 to 3:35 — quick, but nowhere near what he could produce over a single rep. When he started with me his instinct was to run threshold reps closer to 5km effort, because on the day it felt achievable. It was — once. The whole point of the session is that it is repeatable.
Threshold versus tempo versus steady
Quick reference, slowest to fastest:
- Steady: 5 to 6 out of 10, roughly marathon effort or slightly easier. Conversational in short sentences.
- Threshold: 7 out of 10, roughly one-hour race effort, 10km to 15km pace.
- Interval / VO2max: 8 to 9 out of 10, roughly 3km to 5km pace. A different system entirely.
If you only ever add one type of quality session to your week, make it threshold. It gives more back per unit of damage than anything else in the sport.
