HR Training 101
The first in a series
What do you see when you look at your watch during a run? Most runners are likely to find a combination of pace, distance, and/or overall time on their display. Those metrics represent the factual pillars of running because they don’t lie.
What if they did? Not in terms of accuracy, but in regard to what they‘re telling you. When you judge your run solely on performance data, you’re missing out on a more nuanced conversation.
Let’s say you run 4 miles at a 9-minute per mile pace in cool morning temperatures. It’s a quality outing, nothing fancy, but the kind of run that makes you feel good while you’re doing it.
Now do the same 4-mile run in late afternoon heat. You find yourself working harder to maintain that 9-minute pace. Things aren’t feeling so good anymore. Welcome to Struggle City, Population: You.
Here’s an alternative. Flip the panels on your watch until it displays your heart rate. Now you’re running by effort instead of pace. When you remove performance as the primary indicator of success or failure, your attention pivots to what’s really important: stimulating long-term growth by developing your aerobic base.
The promise of HR training is that it’s potentially transformative. Not only will understanding your HR help you run faster, it will also make you more efficient, which in turn, will help you run longer distances with less physiological stress. Who wouldn’t want all of that?
With that long preamble behind us, we’re going to begin a multi-part series on HR training. Our goal is to untangle the hype, define jargon, and bring clarity to what HR training can – and can’t – do for your running.