Heart rate or Pace

[legitlee]

Can anyone help? I'm 47 just took up as I call it adventure running (and I love it ). My goal for this year is to do the Y3Peaks as quick as I can. I'm no racing snake I did 20 mile on sunday mix country/road, in 3hours 17mins. I was happy with that to be honest. My heart rate and pace dont match, if I stick to a pace which would be to do a marathon in 4 hours, my heart rate works in the 80% to 90% if I work my heart rate between 70% to 80% to maintain the distance, my pace drops off. I feel ok ish at higher heart rate but after a while i imagine lactate acid may not get removed.

Should I maintain pace for time? or stay in the heart rate zone for distance, and hope time improves?

or should I just put my trainers on and get on with it?

I'm so confused

[Bant]

Just run using pace, no need to fanny about with HR's. Just go out there and SMASH IT

[Trog]

It is perhaps more efficient to build up a decent fitness base using HR, however as soon as you tackle a hilly course the theory is blown out of the water as your HR will be too high going up, and too low going down hill.

[Roy Scott]

Trog is right, if you are training on a hilly terrain then HR will not serve you well. Best off using the rating of percieved exertion scale. Where 1 is the lightest jog possible and 10 is hammering it up a hill as fast as possible. The name of the game is to improve your efficiency below race pace with a positive transfer into race performance. Therefore if most of your training is at an RPE of between 6-8, and you put in the volume, you will find that the pace you run at will rise at the same effort level over time.

By the way Banf is a bit of a forum joke and tells everone to 'smash it' whilst not really offering advice with it.