Marathon pace intervals: 3 x 3 kilometers
Three 3-kilometer blocks at marathon pace with 3-minute jogs between them. Teaches your legs the exact rhythm you need to hold for 26.2 miles on race day.
Type this
15 min easy, 3 x 3 km at marathon pace with 3 min jog, 10 min cool down
easy recovery steady
Three blocks of marathon pace with short jogs between them, so you rehearse the exact rhythm you need to hold for 26.2 miles without the fatigue of running it all at once.
How to run it
Warm up 15 minutes easy, run 3 x 3 kilometers at marathon pace with 3 minutes of jogging between blocks, then cool down for 10 minutes.
In the steps above, each 3-kilometer block is converted to about 18 minutes, based on a mid-pack marathon pace of roughly 6:00 per kilometer (about 9:40 per mile, a 4:13 finish). Adjust the block length for your own goal pace: at 5:00 per kilometer a 3K block takes about 15 minutes, at 7:00 per kilometer closer to 21. The race predictor will estimate a realistic marathon pace from a recent 10K or half marathon if you are unsure of yours.
Marathon pace should feel like RPE 5 to 6: controlled, rhythmic, a pace you could hold a real conversation at for the first block and still answer in full sentences by the third. It is meaningfully easier than threshold or tempo effort. If block three is a struggle to hold, you started too fast; this pace should feel almost boring in a session this short.
The jog between blocks is short by design, just enough to reset your stride without letting your heart rate fully recover, closer to what late-race fatigue feels like. Run this on a flat, uninterrupted road if you can; hills make the pace unreliable.
How to scale it
Easier: 15 min easy, 2 x 3 km at marathon pace with 3 min jog, 10 min cool down, or shorter blocks with 15 min easy, 4 x 2 km at marathon pace with 2 min jog, 10 min cool down.
Harder: 15 min easy, 3 x 5 km at marathon pace with 3 min jog, 10 min cool down, or closer to race simulation with 15 min easy, 2 x 8 km at marathon pace with 3 min jog, 5 min cool down.
Build toward 15 to 20 kilometers of total marathon-pace running in your biggest sessions, a few weeks out from race day.
Common mistakes
- Running the blocks at half-marathon effort because it feels too easy early on. Marathon pace is supposed to feel sustainable, not exciting.
- Skipping the fueling practice. Use these blocks to test the gels or drink mix you plan to use on race day.
- Doing this session on a hilly or crowded route where you cannot hold an even pace for a full block.
Type it, run it
Paste 15 min easy, 3 x 3 km at marathon pace with 3 min jog, 10 min cool down into TextFit and it becomes a structured workout with each block and each jog as its own step. It lands on your Garmin, Wahoo or Apple Watch through intervals.icu, and the watch beeps at every change so you can focus on rhythm instead of the clock. Free to start, with 10 workouts a month and no account needed. Get TextFit on the App Store.
Find your paces with the race time predictor
Paste it. It's on your watch.
TextFit turns this line into a structured workout, every rep and recovery as a step, and sends it to your Garmin, Wahoo or Apple Watch via intervals.icu.
Free to start. No account, no sign-up. Works in any language.
