VDOT training paces explained: how to find your easy, threshold, interval, and rep paces
A VDOT calculator turns one recent race into your easy, threshold, interval, and rep paces. Here is what each zone means and exactly how to run them.
15 June 2026
Most runners train at two speeds: comfortable, and slightly uncomfortable. They run every easy day a little too hard and every hard day a little too easy, and they wonder why they plateau. VDOT fixes that. It is a single number, drawn from one recent race, that tells you exactly how fast to run your easy days, your tempo work, your intervals, and your speed reps, in real minutes per kilometre and minutes per mile. This guide explains what VDOT is, what each of the pace zones is for, and how to read your own numbers off the table, with worked examples you can copy today.
What VDOT actually is
VDOT comes from Jack Daniels, the exercise physiologist whose book Daniels' Running Formula is the most widely used pace system in distance running. The name is shorthand for "V-dot-O2max," a measure of how much oxygen your body uses when it runs. Measuring true VO2max needs a lab, a mask, and a treadmill. Daniels' insight was that you do not need the lab: your race results already reveal it. If you can run a 5K in a given time, the physiology that produced that time also predicts, with surprising accuracy, the right speed for every other kind of training.
So VDOT is a fitness score derived from a recent race, and once you know it, it unlocks a full set of training paces. The key word is recent. Use a race from the last four to six weeks, run hard, on a fair course. A 5K or 10K time trial works best. A parkrun PB from last weekend is ideal. An old marathon from two years ago is useless, because it describes a fitness you no longer have. Garbage in, garbage out: the paces are only as honest as the race you feed the calculator.
The five pace zones
Daniels splits training into five intensities, each tied to a physiological purpose. Run them at the wrong speed and you get the wrong adaptation. Here is what each one does.
- Easy (E). Roughly 65 to 78 percent of max effort. This is the bulk of your week, the conversational pace that builds your aerobic base, grows capillaries and mitochondria, and strengthens the heart, all without much fatigue cost. It should feel almost annoyingly slow. That is the point.
- Marathon (M). A touch faster than easy, the pace you could hold for a marathon. Useful for marathon-specific blocks and long steady efforts. Many runners skip it unless a marathon is on the calendar.
- Threshold (T). "Comfortably hard," the pace you could sustain for about an hour in a race. This is your tempo pace, run right at the lactate threshold, the point where your body can still clear lactate as fast as it produces it. Threshold work raises that ceiling so race pace feels easier.
- Interval (I). Hard, around your VO2max, the pace you could race for about 10 to 12 minutes flat out, close to your 3K race pace. Run in repeats of three to five minutes with short jog recoveries. This is the zone that actually lifts your VO2max, and therefore your VDOT.
- Repetition (R). Faster still, run at roughly your current mile race pace, in short reps of 200m to 400m with full recovery. R work is not about fitness, it is about running economy and leg speed: teaching your body to move fast and smoothly so every other pace costs less energy.
For day-to-day training, four of these carry the load: easy, threshold, interval, and rep. Marathon pace is the specialist, brought in only when you are training for the distance it is named after.
Worked example: a 25:00 5K runner
Say you just ran a 5K in 25:00. On Daniels' tables that maps to a VDOT of about 38 (the table lists 25:12 at VDOT 38, and your 25:00 is a hair faster). Here is the full set of paces that VDOT unlocks, in both units, so you can run on a track, a treadmill, or the road.
| Zone | min/km | min/mile |
|---|---|---|
| Easy (E) | 6:10 to 6:53 | 9:56 to 11:06 |
| Marathon (M) | 5:40 | 9:08 |
| Threshold (T) | 5:19 | 8:33 |
| Interval (I) | 4:54 | 7:53 |
| Repetition (R) | 4:35 | 7:23 |
On a 400m track those last two translate cleanly: interval reps at about 1:58 per lap, rep work at about 1:50 per 400m or 55 seconds per 200m. Notice how wide the spread is. This runner's easy pace (6:10 to 6:53 per km) is more than a minute and a half per kilometre slower than their interval pace (4:54 per km). That gap is the whole system. The slow days are genuinely slow so the fast days can be genuinely fast.
Why running easy days too hard is the number one mistake
If you take one thing from this guide, take this: your easy pace is meant to feel easy. The single most common error in amateur running is turning easy days into moderate days, drifting from that 6:10 to 6:53 per km band up into the low sixes or high fives because it feels more like "real" training. It is the opposite of real training.
Easy running has a job: build aerobic infrastructure while staying fresh enough to hammer your hard sessions. When you run easy days too hard, you accumulate fatigue without the high-intensity stimulus, so you arrive at interval day tired and run your intervals slow. Now both ends are compromised. Your easy days were too hard to recover from and your hard days were too soft to drive adaptation. You spend every run in the dreaded "grey zone," moderately hard all the time, which is too easy to build top-end fitness and too tiring to allow it. This is exactly the polarized-training problem covered in heart rate zones: elite runners spend around 80 percent of their volume genuinely easy precisely so the other 20 percent can be genuinely hard.
The discipline to hold back on easy days is what separates runners who improve from runners who stay the same. If your easy pace feels too slow, that usually means you are doing it right.
How your paces shift as you get fitter
VDOT is a snapshot, not a life sentence. As training works, your race times drop, your VDOT climbs, and every pace gets faster. A beginner consistent for a few months can add several VDOT points; even trained runners gain one or two a season. The practical rule: retest with a fresh race or time trial every four to six weeks and recalculate.
The trap is the reverse. Runners cling to paces from a PB they set months ago and grind every session a notch too hard, blunting recovery and stalling progress. Equally, do not chase paces you have not earned yet. Train at the VDOT your most recent race supports, race again, then let the number pull your paces down. Watch how the example runner's threshold pace sharpens as fitness builds:
- VDOT 38 (5K 25:00): threshold 5:19 per km.
- VDOT 42 (5K 23:09): threshold 4:54 per km.
- VDOT 46 (5K 21:25): threshold 4:33 per km.
Same runner, same workout structure, three different paces across a training year. The workouts do not change. The numbers underneath them do.
Paces by VDOT: a quick reference
Here is a compact table for three representative fitness levels, beginner, intermediate, and advanced, all in minutes per kilometre, with rep pace shown per 400m for track work. Find the row closest to your recent 5K and read across.
| VDOT | 5K time | Easy /km | Threshold /km | Interval /km | Rep /400m |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 35 | 27:00 | 6:36 to 7:20 | 5:40 | 5:11 | 1:59 |
| 45 | 21:50 | 5:23 to 6:02 | 4:38 | 4:15 | 1:30 |
| 55 | 18:28 | 4:34 to 5:09 | 3:56 | 3:37 | 1:17 |
VDOT 35 is a typical newer runner, VDOT 45 a solid recreational racer, VDOT 55 a strong sub-elite chasing a sub-18 5K. To convert any per-km pace to per mile, multiply by roughly 1.61, so the VDOT 45 threshold of 4:38 per km is about 7:27 per mile. These figures follow Daniels' published tables; a full VDOT calculator interpolates every value between the rows for your exact race time.
Putting paces to work in a race plan
Knowing your paces is step one. Building a week that uses them in the right proportion, mostly easy, with measured doses of threshold, interval, and rep work, is where the gains live. That is harder than it sounds, because the prescription has to flex as your fitness moves and as your goal race approaches.
If your running is in service of a Hyrox race, the stakes on pacing are even higher: you are running eight one-kilometre laps with a strength station between each, so the wrong run pace early wrecks the back half of the event. The Hyrox Training Planner projects your finish from your current run and station PBs, then sets the exact pace each of the eight laps demands, and the AI Race Coach reviews your logged sessions to tell you when to hold easy, when to push threshold, and where your time is leaking. It turns the VDOT idea, the right pace for the right job, into a plan built from your own numbers rather than a generic table.
Frequently asked questions
What is a VDOT calculator and how do I use one?
A VDOT calculator takes a recent race time, distance plus finish time, and returns your VDOT score along with your easy, marathon, threshold, interval, and rep paces. To use it, enter a hard race from the last four to six weeks, a 5K or 10K is ideal, and read off the training paces it gives you. Those paces are the speeds to run each type of workout. Recalculate after every new race so the paces track your current fitness, not last season's.
How do I find my running paces without a recent race?
Run a time trial. A flat, hard 5K or even a 3K, run alone or at a parkrun, gives a reliable input. If you cannot race all out, use a recent hard effort you tracked on a watch, but know the result will be a slight underestimate because you held back. Avoid using treadmill runs at a fixed speed or interval-session averages, since neither reflects an honest maximal effort over a set distance. One genuine time trial is worth more than months of casual mileage data.
What is the difference between threshold, interval, and rep pace?
They sit at three rising intensities with three different jobs. Threshold (T) is comfortably hard, about your one-hour race pace, run as tempo efforts to raise your lactate ceiling. Interval (I) is hard, near your 3K race pace, run in three-to-five-minute repeats to lift your VO2max. Repetition (R) is faster again, around your mile pace, run in short 200m to 400m bursts with full rest to sharpen speed and economy. As a rule of thumb, T you could hold for an hour, I for about ten minutes, R for only a minute or two.
Why does Jack Daniels say to run easy days so slowly?
Because the purpose of easy running is aerobic development with minimal fatigue, and that only happens when the pace is genuinely easy. Running easy days too hard adds fatigue without the high-intensity stimulus that drives the biggest gains, leaving you too tired to hit your hard sessions properly. The result is a week stuck in a moderate grey zone that is too easy to build fitness and too hard to recover from. Slow easy days are what make fast hard days possible.
How often should I update my VDOT?
Every four to six weeks, or whenever you run a race that beats your previous best. Fitness changes faster than most runners update their paces, so a number from three months ago likely has you training too slow, while a number from a one-off great day might have you training too fast. Retest regularly with a fresh time trial or race, recalculate, and adjust every pace at once. The VDOT system is only accurate when its input is current.
VDOT gives you the right speed for every run. The other half of training smart is the rest: how hard your easy days should actually feel, covered in heart rate zones for fat loss, and when steady aerobic work beats hard intervals, broken down in HIIT vs steady-state cardio. Put the paces, the zones, and the right mix together, and to build them into a race plan calibrated to your own PBs rather than a generic chart, start with the Hyrox Training Planner.