redrabbit wrote:
Thanks for all of your replies. I think I will continue to monitor HR but not get too obsessed with it. As many of you stated I am new to running and still consider a 15-mile week very good! I will build this up to 20/25/30 etc and I'm sure things will continue to improve hopefully.
I did a 10k race yesterday, and finished in 62 minutes which I'm really happy with. I went all out: Heart Rate was pretty much 170 for nearly an hour.
First: Tom Hampton's advice here in general about consistency and running by feel is great.
Second: I'm a little confused about your levels of exertion and I suspect that your "relaxed" running is way too fast. You ran 10:00/mile pace for a 10k race, at average HR 170 bpm. The earlier 5-mile "relaxed" training run you did was at 10:50/mile at average heart rate 169 bpm. "Relaxed"/everyday running and 10k pace should not be less than 10% apart in speed and negligibly different in heart rate! So either you left a lot on the table in the race (fine if you did, you're new to this) or your normal everyday runs are way too fast.
A few self-monitoring questions: Was that "relaxed" run conversational pace -- could you have carried on a chat while you were running? If that's hard to assess, you can also monitor pace by breathing: if you are truly running VERY easy, then you should be able to breathe just through your nose with your mouth mostly closed. How hard did your 10k pace feel -- was that at the limit of what you could do for an hour or were you holding something back? Were you breathing about once every four footfalls during the 10k or less frequently than that?
I'm an experienced runner and my everyday runs are between 30-40% slower than my 10k race pace; this is typical. I think you should try slowing down to 12-13 minute miles on your easy days and see if that helps you run more and improve your speed at a given heart rate. You'll get faster if you do this and increase your mileage and number of weekly runs. Consistency is king as Tom says, and you're not going to get to a habit of near-daily running if your normal pace is so close to 10k exertion -- not just because this is metabolically taxing but also because running daily mileage so close to race pace has a good chance of getting you injured from impact forces.