On 31 August 2008, Nike+ is organizing a virtual 10k worldwide race they’re calling The Nike+ Human Race. Basically, if you have the Nike+ sports kit, you run 10k on race day and then upload your time to the Nike+ web site. The web site will then compile the results and publish them.

A pretty cool idea, and I’m really looking forward to it (obviously, I’ve signed up for the race). I don’t expect to achieve a competitive time, but I’m aiming for a personal record of under an hour.

According to the Running Times Magazine Race Time Calculator, if I can run a 10k in 55 minutes, I will be able to run a full marathon in 4 hours 18 minutes. Obviously that’s way slower than my target of 3 hours. So there’s still a lot of work to be done.

In fact, according to the calculator, I need to cover 10k in just 38 minutes to have any hopes of finishing a marathon in 3 hours.