Self-paced strategy on 10-kilometers running and critical speed on target running among long-distance runners

This study aimed to determine the critical speed by analyzing the running time and speed at 3,600 meters and 1,200 meters to predict the self-paced performance over 10 kilometers and critical speed on target running among professional runners. The participants were recruited from 14 healthy male and female professional runners with an average age of 25.64 years. All participants underwent random maximal effort running tests on two distances of 3,600 and 1,200 meters to calculate the real critical speed. One week after the initial test, all participants performed a 10-kilometer run using a self-paced strategy. Then the results of running time and speed from self-paced and critical speed on target running were compared by the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test under SPSS software. The results showed that both running times and speeds between the critical speed on target running and the self-paced strategy did not significantly differ (P=0.73 & 0.81). These findings suggested that the critical speed obtained from the two-distance model can be applied to predict a 10-kilometer running performance and critical speed on target running among professional runners.