What's more important...heart rate or pace? (Read 1541 times)

To me: Neither. I own a 305. I don't look at anything but elapsed time and distance.

Neither...but I mostly run by feel and by what my lungs allow. Asthma is a fantastic limiter. It's very hard for me to overdo it on pace when I can't breathe.

More important for what?

The biggest problem most beginners face is either over- or under-training.

Maybe in terms of a training perspective, that might be true. However, for a beginning runner it's more important that they create a consistent regime of getting out the door and simply running. I'm not sure how much a beginner has to gain by getting caught up in effort levels and HR values and the multitude of numbers that come out of it all. A beginning runner needs to decide if running is for them and if they enjoy it, do the things necessary to make them runners first. The problem with throwing monitors and gadgets on a beginning runner, we all know we'll have good days and bad days and beginners can be very susceptible to negative feedback or not reaching the expectations of a run in terms of HR and distance and all that stuff. You can end up with too much stuff to think about. They just need to be out there running, getting in time 2, 3, 4 or whatever days a week. Being consistent and enjoying their development, going further this day than you have before and finally getting that hour long run in and stuff like that. After a year or so, if they like it and really feel like they want to do better and run faster or further, then they can start looking at techniques and training schedules, get whatever equipment they might want to try out, understand it all work with it. HR can help there. If they aren't interested in forking out money for equipment then effort level and breathing provides plenty of feedback. HR training is perfectly fine, I have no issues with it at all. The one problem I do have is when someone takes a HR monitor to a race. Leave it at home on race day (or at least turn off the alarm and ignore the numbers), that's the day you need to push it and you'll never know what you're made of if you follow the numbers on a HR instead of just going for it.

The problem is, when you get down to it, both pace and HR are surrogates for effort. Both have their positives and negatives. If the weather is inclement (hot, humid etc) neither may be good. HR is instantaneous, allowing more real-time feedback, but I would argue that that could be information overload to a newer runner. It is the overall effort of the workout that is more important than any instantaneous reading anyways. For intervals, HR is next to useless but pace is good. In the end, you'll be better off learning the skill and knowing what you're doing by listening to your body. After YEARS I can now go through my log and correlate both HR and pace accurately, but that is highly individual so you need that database to do it right.

I keep coming back to this and I figured out why. In this and the other thread you state something about beginners and intermediate runners NEEDING this feedback more than advanced runners. In my opinion it is, if anything, the opposite. Beginning runners have so many areas at which they are capable of improvement (endurance, pacing, speed, etc.) that just plain running without too much stress will give them large gains. HRM, Pace, beyond learning to run easy most of the time (which you can learn without any tools) are fancier than needed to make good gains. I would guess simply running consistantly (run lots, mostly easy sometimes hard) will get you 80+% of your potential to improve. More if you are really out of shape to start. Now you COULD make the argument that an intermediate runner who discovers they are a very imbalanced runner may need to focus on a type of running to help balance themselves out (i.e. a runner who has good leg strength but poor wind, or good endurance but trouble finding another gear). But again, simply running and being aware of what you need to change is often enough to move in the right direction. In this stage I think occasional monitoring of pace/HR might be of use, if only to verify "oh so THATS what it feels like". But you can make good gains simply by stating your weakness (i.e. "I run too fast on long runs and feel burned out for the next three days") and focusing on it the next run. ("slow, slow slow slow") I would think that the best runners who are striving for marginal improvements would have the most need to be specific in training zones. And yet you will find that with the exception of maybe a couple workouts a week, most do not watch pace or HR like a hawk. So by the time you get good enough to make use of precision, you probably dont need the tool anymore.

If you want to know the benefits of HRM come to "http://www.runningahead.com/groups/LOWHRTR/". Lots of good stuff about HR and how to use it simply and effectively. I love my HRM and would recommend it even for a beginner runner. You do not need to calculate your zones, I have never done that, but you can use few methods that can show you the proper HR to train.