The title is only TRUE if you’re just concern with your target time.

If your current watch (i tested this with my watch with the M-dot logo) has an INTERVAL TIMER, you can use this to check your target race pace.

But the trick is not only with the watch itself. You have to calculate first the time you need to accomplish a particular distance.

Let’s say you’ll be running a 5K race and you want to finish it under 30mins. Divide 30mins by 5K, and you’ll get 6mins per 1K. But that’s not under 30mins, right? Then adjust your target time for the last 2K to 5mins 30secs.

Now, you have your time for the following:

1Km – 6Mins
2Km – 6Mins
3Km – 6Mins
4Km – 5Mins30Secs
5Km – 5Mins30Secs

In our example, the 1st interval is the 1Km. The 2nd interval is the 2Km and so on…

Set the watch’s first interval to 6Mins, then set the watch’s second interval to 6Mins and so on…
At the last interval setup, set your INTERVAL TIMER to STOP. This will alert you if you have finished the race under your set time or not.

On race day, be sure to set your watch to INTERVAL TIMER. Press START when your hear the gun start. Your watch should give you a beep/chirp/alarm alert when your timer reaches the time you have set-up per interval.

Of course, once you build up your mileage. You can adjust your watch’s INTERVAL TIME per 5Km, 10Km, 20Km and so on.

By the way… Once you cross a Km marker and you didn’t hear an alert… It’s either you are well above your target pace. Which is good. Or you did not switch your watch’s INTERVAL TIMER ON. =p