ive been doing a lot of my long runs on trails instead of long straight roads. if there kind of a general rule of thumb in while how much a persons pace gets zapped on the trails compared to a consisted road run? seems that my pace has been lacking on the trails compared to the roads. mainly curious cause i got Vineman comin up and tryin to see whats feasible
my pace is around 20 seconds slower per mile on trails. just a guess cause i don’t know how well the Garmin works when running in the woods. but assuming its working about the same as on the roads then I am 20 seconds slower per mile
I would assume it’s pretty close… http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2010/11/sport-device-gps-accuracy-in-depth-part_11.html
My personal experience says about 15 sec/mi… I guess it’s somewhere around there, just depends person-to-person.
Depends on the trail. I’ve done trail races with the pace pretty close to what I’d expect on the road, and I’ve done really hilly or technical courses where my pace per mile was way off but still wanted to throw up at the end. If the trail is pretty flat and without a lot of turns, I’d guess 20-30 seconds per mile slower is probably reasonable.
pace of road vs trail depends on the trail and on the person. I trail run almost weekly, so i’m comfortable doing it and the paces are similar. I’ve dropped people that have similar or faster road paces when they come out because they’re tense or just don’t have those stabilizer muscles built up and tire out quickly.
I think it really depends on the terrain and surface.
In road races, I can run a 40min 10k with a hard, but not all-out effort. The last 10k trail race I ran was wet and technical and I did it in just over 48 minutes - that’s about a 20% difference.
I have also run on some pretty easy trails that were only windy gravel paths, so I think my pace wouldn’t suffer too much.
In my opinion, it’s pretty hard to judge road times based on trail times. I have read that one can expect about 10 - 25% slower run on trails and from my experience, that seems about right. But that’s a pretty big range.
The thing I love about trails is that you’re constantly adjusting your pace and stride, going up, down, left, right. I found that when I go back to the road after running trails, it seems a lot easier.
If you are doing workouts on the road that aren’t your long runs, they might be better estimators of performance. Like you, I like too do my long runs on the trails, but I don’t really look at my pace too much. I use Greg MacMillan’s pace calculator to pace other workouts. As long as I am able to hit the paces in my quality runs, I feel pretty confident that I am on track for races.
Hope that helps - I know I didn’t give you anything definite.
Depends on the trail. You will just have to test it out. The hilly, challenging trails (roots, rocks, ditches, creeks) I usually run really are 15 - 25% slower.
Like others said, it depends on the trail.
I live right by some woods that have one road that some call a “trail,” as it has no car traffic and isn’t paved. To me, it’s a gravel road. I’d say the difference is at most 10 secs/mile btwn that and asphalt. And maybe less. But also in those woods are a bunch of trails that range from mostly flat and somewaht technical, to very steep and very technical. There, I’d ballpark it at 90 secs slower/mile.
i’m also a big fan of the ‘don’t worry about your pace on your long runs,’ theory. if you’re doing some shorter runs on the track or roads, you should have a sense of if you’re getting faster or not.
My best 10K is on a trail, and my slowest 10K is on a trail. One trail was pancake flat and the other had 1200ft of climbing. Define “trail”.