Forums >Suggestions and Feature Requests>Add optional Heart Rate Column to weekly/monthly run stats.
Future running partner.
For those of us who like to use average heart rate and pace to gauge changes in fitness. It would be a nice feature to add an optional column in the weekly and monthly run stats table displayed in the summary. Just like you do with displaying avg pace per week or month.
Good Bad & The Monkey
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How does average heart rate tell you about changes in fitness?
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I'm running somewhere tomorrow. It's going to be beautiful. I can't wait.
Poor baby
<tangent> How does average heart rate tell you about changes in fitness? </tangent>
If you can run a fixed distance at a given pace now at a lower heart rate than you could previously (all else being equal) then it's a pretty good indication that you're fitter. Similarly if your pace is higher for a given heart rate...
(Of course we can debate for ever what "fitter" really means.)
I would like this feature as well. In my case, my average training pace is not that different from where it was 9 months ago, but my heart rate is way lower.
Really?
Here are your last 12 months average for all runs you call easy
Seems like your pace increased quite a bit while your HR stayed pretty constant
It just seems like more clutter when you have the ability to get all the data you want from your reports and also have them displayed on yout training log summary page
The pain that hurts the worse is the imagined pain. One of the most difficult arts of racing is learning to ignore the imagined pain and just live with the present pain (which is always bearable.) - Jeff
2014 Goals:
Stay healthy
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If you can run a fixed distance at a given pace now at a lower heart rate than you could previously (all else being equal) then it's a pretty good indication that you're fitter.
Ahh, but that is the thing. All things are never equal. The temperature is different. You slept differently the night before. You ate too much. Or too little. Or the course rolls more. Or less. So many variables, many of them continuously changing. Average heart rate is a very very coarse estimator.
I understand what can cause those variations. What you've eaten, the time of day you're running, the music your listening too and even your mood or your what your thinking can affect your heart rate. However, I have been monitoring my Heart Rate for the last couple of years now by keeping excel spread sheets of most of my runs, and I have learned quite a bit from doing so. The way I use Heart Rate now is I look at it with a grain of salt. I try to run at about the same time every morning and have the same routine before I go in order to minimize variations with it. I also, at least once a week run on the same treadmill in order to get an idea of what certain paces feel like for a given avg heart rate. I have it down to where my average hr doesn't very much on a daily basis, with the occasional exception. I can tell this by converting my pace into m/s then dividing this by my heart rate and seeing how the numbers compare. I don't run as much or take it as seriously as I used too, life doesn't allow me to train as much. But I still track this. I do notice that if I take an average over a week or a month. I can see steady improvement if I have been consistent or regression if I've been sick or injured. It's interesting when I get a good string of training for a few months or when I lost some weight how the numbers differ significantly, in improvement. When my HR its exceptionally high one day, I consider it an outlier and throw it out. After writing this and thinking about how I used to depend on HR, (now I use it in combination with how I feel) I could see how many would miss interpret their own HR data which could cause problems for them. I still think this would be a cool feature, and I did say it should be optional for those who want to keep running simple and fun and not want to analyze every detail,
Why is it sideways?
All the same things could be said about average pace.
Yes. Yes they could.
Really? Here are your last 12 months average for all runs you call easy
Before October of last year I didn't do any 'easy' runs (as you can see from the chart) -- I ran 3 times a week and hammered every run (I was a complete novice and yes, this was a stupid idea). My heart rate was sky high, but my average pace (over all runs) was right in the vicinity of where it is now, only at a good 15 or so BPM higher. As you note, the trend isn't evident after that, because I intentionally did a 180 and dropped my training pace by about 2 minutes to build up mileage and recover from all the niggling injuries I'd acquired during my period of idiot training. My best metric of progress since around August isn't increased training pace, it's mileage and heart rate at a certain pace.
I record my HR also and do prescribe to LHR training and frequent the LHR Training forum here on RA. Its helped me increase my mileage and recovery. I categorize my "recovery" and"easy" workouts by my HR so I have a means to compare and analyze if I'm progressing or regressing. By doing so, I believe that I can take into account any stresses, be it physiological or psychological, that are affecting my HR and paces. I also throw in some spedd work (intervals, strides, tempo, steady state and VO2Max) type workouts so an average HR over the month or even a week is totally useless to me. Honestly so is a monthly or weekly average pace. The only way that HR average and pace average could mean anything is if you are comparing "like" workouts over the week or month and the best workout that I've found is the MAF test.