Aera

Free tool

How far will I run?

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Minutes and pace in, distance out.

Your pace (min/km)
min sec

You will run about

5.00 km

Don't know your easy pace? Estimate it from a race
Finish time
h min sec

How the estimate works: from your race time, the running equations of Daniels and Gilbert (1979) give a fitness number (VDOT). Easy pace is the speed that asks for 59 to 74 percent of it, the easy range in Daniels' Running Formula. It is an estimate from one race. Hills, heat and a tired day move it, so if easy feels hard, slow down.

Why runs are often sized by time

Many training plans write a run in minutes, not kilometres: “easy, 40 minutes”. The World Health Organization's activity guidelines count in minutes too, 150 to 300 minutes of moderate or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous activity a week for adults (Bull and colleagues, 2020).

Time holds the effort steady. Hills, heat, wind or a tired day turn the same minutes into a shorter distance. Run by time and the distance gives way, not the effort. Foster and colleagues (2001) describe the load of a session the same way: the minutes, multiplied by how hard it felt.

Endurance athletes do roughly four in five of their sessions at low intensity, according to Seiler's 2010 review of how they train. On those easy runs the exact distance matters less than keeping them easy.

A route still needs a distance. That is what this tool is for: it turns your minutes into kilometres or miles and tells you where to turn around.

Aera, for iPhone and Apple Watch

This page does the sum. Aera starts one step earlier. Each morning it gives you a free, plain word for the day: Rest day, Go easy, Good to go or Go for it. It comes from your sleep, recovery, recent training and stress, once Aera has a few weeks of your nights and workouts.

With Premium, Aera turns that into today's session, say easy for 35 minutes (a rest day gets none).

Free as well: draw a route on the map that keeps to real paths, and follow it with every turn spoken, even with no signal. No account.

Get Aera on the App Store

Sources

  1. Bull FC, Al-Ansari SS, Biddle S, et al. World Health Organization 2020 guidelines on physical activity and sedentary behaviour. British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2020;54(24):1451-1462.
  2. Foster C, Florhaug JA, Franklin J, et al. A new approach to monitoring exercise training. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2001;15(1):109-115.
  3. Seiler S. What is best practice for training intensity and duration distribution in endurance athletes? International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance. 2010;5(3):276-291.
  4. Daniels J, Gilbert J. Oxygen Power: Performance Tables for Distance Runners. 1979.
  5. Daniels J. Daniels' Running Formula. Human Kinetics.