Pace doesn't tell you if you ran a smart race

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Note – The below assumes you can use power as a metric for running. Most smart watches from the last few years should have power as a metric. I use the Stryd power meter footpod for accuracy, but you don’t need it to get power.

I was 33% into a super hilly one-way race called City 2 Surf, going up one of the biggest hills (our version of Heartbreak Hill, if you know, you know!)

The pace on my watch told me that I was crushing said hill: 3:55 per km (about 7:22/mile). This was right on goal pace to run close to my best time while bobbing my head to one of my favorite drum n bass mixes that keeps my cadence high.

My intelligence knew that I was running a bit faster than I had planned, but I felt good, so I did the whole “heart over mind” thing and went “YOLO”.

The power meter metric on my watch told a whole other story… I was about to blow up!

It said 370 watts average over the last kilometer. My plan was 330 watts. That’s not a rounding error but instead that’s the gap between finishing strong and walking the last 3k (2 miles).

My brain took over from my heart, and halfway up Heartbreak Hill (5 minutes into a 9-minute climb), I backed down the speed. My heart rate finally caught up and was in zone 4 but my pace dropped 40 seconds per km (25 seconds per mile) for the rest of the hill. The people who did pass me blew up shortly after.

I finished the race, getting my top 5 best time, and I felt damn good about racing it in a smart way.

The 1% better problem

You want to get 1% better, right? Dope! But how do you actually measure 1% better when half your runs happen in conditions that make pace meaningless?

Some race days are hot, hilly, you sleep like trash the night before, or you end up running into a headwind through swampy, humid conditions. When that happens, pace and even heart rate will lie.

You either tell yourself a happy story like “must’ve been the wind” or a sad one like “I should quit and take up pickleball”. Neither is true because you just had a broken ruler. (And pickleball is a trap, but that’s a different post.)

You need three rulers, and I call it the Run Prism. It’s made up of three corners, each one a different way to measure if you’re actually getting better.

Prism Corner 1: Effort + Power (Input)

Effort lies in both directions because effort is mood, caffeine, and whether your kid slept through the night. Power is an input, and power doesn’t care.

As I said in the intro, most newer running smart watches and Stryd power meter foot pods give you watts. Watts don’t care about the hill or the wind, they just report what your body is producing right now. When effort and power disagree, power wins.

Prism Corner 2: Pace/Speed (Output)

Pace/speed is the ruler everyone uses and the ruler that lies the most. Not because it’s wrong, but because it’s an output, not an input. You can’t really “run pace”, like we think we can. It’s too malleable and varied. You can, however, run effort and power (the thing you have control over), and watch what pace falls out the other end.

Think about it like this, we’ve got the same person, same shoes, same 10k (6.2 mile) loop but they are doing two different runs:

Run A is 5:00/km (8:03/mile) on a cool morning, fresh legs, no wind.
Run B is 5:18/km (8:32/mile) at 30 °C (86 Farenheit), 80% humidity, hilly version of the loop, 5 hours of sleep, their personal life is crumbling, etc.

Run B is the better run by a lot, and looking at the pace only will tell you it was a regression. (This is how some runners quit, btw, not from injury but from misreading the data, think they have peaked at age 37 in their distance running careers and then go “what’s the point!”)

Pace matters; you just can’t train it directly. You train the inputs, and pace is the byproduct.

Prism Corner 3: Intelligence

Effort, power, and pace can all be telling you different things at the same exact time. The third corner is the part of you that decides what to do about it in that moment.

In a race, it’s the six-second decision when three numbers disagree. (BTW – Always trust power if you have it and have trained with me). After a run, it’s the part where you check the conditions before you say a slow tempo run was you losing fitness.

Power and effort matched last week, but it was 6 °C (10 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer with a strong headwind, so you say it’s a maintenance run on a harder day, which is a win.

Intelligence is what turns three numbers into a story that’s actually true.

Do These Two Things on Your Next Tempo Run

Number 1: The Three Ruler Tempo Run.

This is where we test out the prism’s logic.

Do a 15 min warmup, 3 x 8 min at threshold (6/10 effort, or your half-marathon power target), 2 min jog between, 10-minute cooldown.

Number 2: Two rules.

A. Cover your pace screen with tape, remove the data screen from your watch, or just be an adult and don’t look at it. You’re allowed to see power and elapsed time, but nothing else.

B. At the 4-minute mark of each interval, think about your effort, then cross-check it with your power. If effort is a 6 and power says 30 watts under your target, push. If 30 watts over, chill out a bit.

After the run, upload it, then look at pace and watch how the splits drift even though your power held.

That’s what 1% better looks like when pace can’t be trusted. The improvement isn’t on the watch face but instead in the gap between what your three rulers say, and how fast that gap closes.

Now try this for three other types of runs: one easy, one interval VO2 Max-style workout, and then one long.

Tell me (respond to this email!) if your workouts got better, but only after all four of those runs. I want to know if this is a game changer for other runners as much as it was for me.

Timestamps of what you’ll learn in the full episode

Introduction and Overview of Metrics – [00:00]
Exploring the Benefits of Training by Pace – [02:24]
Heart Rate Training: Pros and Cons – [03:26]
Understanding Effort-Based Training – [04:41]
Introduction to Power Training for Runners – [05:51]
Combining Metrics for Optimal Training – [06:43]
Real-World Examples and Personal Experiences – [09:07]
Community Polls and Insights on Preferred Metrics – [10:07]
Advanced Strategies: The Triangle of Intelligence – [13:30]

Links & Learnings

[00:00:00] At some point or another, you’ve been told by your training plan, smartwatch or coach to train by effort, pace and or heart rate,

[00:00:07] have you stopped to consider if one is better than the other? If so, does the situation matter for when you use the one or the other?

[00:00:14] Is there another thing that you might not know about that could be even better?

[00:00:18] Well, you are in luck because in this episode, you’ll find out the answer to all of those questions, learning to. Use effort, heart rate and time for specific runs.

[00:00:28] When pace is the right choice.

[00:00:29] When pace is the right choice, the downsides of all of those things and a bonus framework that you can use yourself.

[00:00:36] And a bonus framework that you can use. All your own. I’ll give it to you for free. How I used my power meter, my running power meter to help create the trifecta of balance with effort, pace and intelligence.

[00:00:49] I’m D lake runs. I’ve been running since 1994. I’ve done a sub three hour marathon and I’m a 10 hour Ironman triathlon finisher. And since 2012, I’ve been researching, experimenting on myself and talking to experts on how to get 1% better in my training, racing, and life, all so that you don’t have to do the crazy stuff that I just did.

[00:01:12] And make it just a bit easier for you.

[00:01:15] I’ll be joined by my content brother from another mother, Remy be real and a few special guests like Instagram, how to run coach and running guru, Mike trees, AKA rundown energy to help tell his side of things.

[00:01:28] You know, you need this in your own life or not. Why not find out, let’s get into it.

[00:01:34] I don’t know if it’s because I live a high stress life. I’m high strung.

[00:01:42] Didn’t do it for me. Here we go with this or that and those that’s right. We back and we’ve got, uh, kind of a messy one this time. Cause we got three topics, but we’ll get into that. This is the show where we discuss polarizing topics in the endurance sports world. Cause it’s not always clean. It’s not always black and white.

[00:02:04] And I got my cohost, Darren Lake, this Mr. D Lake on the other side. How you feeling, my dude? I’m chilling. I’m chilling like a villain. Uh, I think I said that on the season one, but we’ll say it again. We’ll say it again. And this one is on training by pace, heart rate, or effort. Had to make sure I read that.

[00:02:24] Um, and we might even touch on power because effort, I tie to power personally, and this is a subjective matter. Um, and again, the whole point of all this is so that if you’ve been doing thing, a thing a certain way, There’s another side that you may not have known about or you do know about it But there’s actually a a reason why maybe you should try it So I’m all about value and you know reasons why you should you know Watch it watch it to the end because this is a fun thing at the end We’ll end up actually flipping the cards and I’ll argue the other side And there’s a couple other little treats in there.

[00:02:59] Alright, so Remy Which one would you rather? I’m glad you asked. My default is to go to heart rate with the caveat that you need accurate heart rate and consistent heart rate. Now, not everybody’s zones are going to be the same, and if you’re relying on or wrist based, then forget about it. You might as well be guessing you are better off going by effort at that point.

[00:03:26] But getting good heart rate kind of ensures that like most amateur runners, you’re not doing too much too soon. Most amateurs have a tendency to overdo it and go way harder, more frequently than they should be, and not getting enough recovery between their sessions. Make sure you’re keeping it easy so it is sustainable and repeatable so you can go out the next day, because I don’t care how fast you are, if you can’t keep coming back to do it.

[00:04:02] Then you’re never going to progress in your training. What do you got for us, Darren? Alright, so yes, I’m breaking my rules, and you’re supposed to just take a side on this, but I, I can’t. It’s too situational, and it’s too gray area. So, I’ll touch on effort, I’ll touch on heart rate. And I’ll touch on pace, not in that order.

[00:04:21] And then the last fourth one is kind of a bonus little secret one. All right, so I’m going to mix in effort and heart rate and time all together. And I’ll give you the frame on it. So I use effort, heart rate, time for most of my runs and easy runs. And even steady runs is where I like to kind of mold those three little metrics together.

[00:04:41] The third one is pace. And I usually have Pace for obviously racing is where I want pace, but I’ll get to this bonus one in a second, which I’ve used now for racing. But, um, pace is usually around racing and definitely intervals. So if I’m doing intervals, whether they’re short intervals, 30 seconds on 30 second off, uh, 400 meter intervals, which is actually time based.

[00:05:02] And, and distance based cause I’m on a track, but then there’ll also be my, my favorite sessions, which are VO two max sessions. They’re second favorite to the four hundreds. And that’s obviously time based. So, um, and pace based. Cause I want to hit a certain pace. I want to make sure my pace is here and the time.

[00:05:18] And then the third one is power and obviously need a power meter. Power is really useful for me as of late. And I am absolutely loving it because it is confirming my subjective effort and going objectively, this is the wattage that you’re putting out. So example, I know that was a lot of words, but if I feel like I’m doing an eight out of 10 and I need to be doing 300 Watts, I feel like I’m running an eight out of 10 on a flat up a hill, down a hill.

[00:05:51] I look on my watch and it says 320 Watts. I’m going too fast. I need to back that down while it’s only. 20 watts, which is barely even five or ten percent. That ten percent will come back and bite me. 10 20 minutes into a race depending on how long the race is. If it’s a 5k that will definitely bite me. Um long in the distance the moral will bite me later on so Uh, I really know that I need to use kind of a swath and it’s the tool for the right job And then I can’t just go.

[00:06:17] Oh, it’s just only one thing. So situational. I use one thing and you know If I zoom out I use all three things Alright, lots of ways to go about this, but before we start unpacking how we feel and maybe even arguing the other sides, take a moment, let us know down in the comments. Are you a pace, power, effort, heart rate?

[00:06:43] Which method are you training by? And with that, we’ll get into some of the polls and community responses. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So we’ve Already pull some people on Instagram. That’s where you know, a lot of people have most of my conversations. I’m slowly slowly building up my YouTube, but we’ve got 20 percent said pace, 35 percent said heart rate, and 44 percent said perceived effort.

[00:07:07] So, um, let’s just define them really quick. Again, if, you know, hopefully I, I think I defined it in the last one, but just in case. Pace is obviously how fast you’re going, minutes per mile or minutes per kilometer. That would also be speed, if you’re riding. Some cyclists, I know you’re, you’re, you’re, you are a hardcore triathlete.

[00:07:24] I, I still, you know, ride. Uh, heart rate. That’s an easy one. So that’s how many beats per minute your heart is beating with a heart rate monitor strap. Um, straps are way better than the wrist optical. The wrist optical is, uh, not accurate. Once you start basically running at a decent pace, I like to say that, uh, it’s only good for the bedroom, um, uh, or walking or sitting.

[00:07:43] That’s the only time that optical is accurate, uh, or sleeping. Sorry. That’s why I say the bedroom and then perceived effort. And that is, uh, literally, You know, the scale, there’s the how you feel, you know, R. P. E. One through ten scale. Ten is you’re almost dying. And, you know, one is you’re sitting on the couch watching TV.

[00:08:02] So, uh, that would be that. And, uh, we’ll go to this special fourth one that makes it even more messier. But, um, let’s see some, some responses from people in the polls. Someone said, uh, Dan 234456 pace is not very useful when it comes to hills. Very hilly where I live. So I use both H. R. And R. P. Uh, Yes, that’s great.

[00:08:24] Um, it’s a mix, uh, DZQ, a whole bunch of underscores. It’s a mix, but mainly pace working on my speed and volume by interval training. Mr. JMO4, heartbeats are a determinant of what pace I choose to run. Christian, with pace, you can get more specific benefits. And Jolis, I choose perceived effort because I’m not very good at crunching data.

[00:08:43] That’s an interesting point. Some people don’t like the data crunching. So, yeah, that’s huge. So with all these numbers, what are you even going to do with it? Right. Exactly. And we got all the metrics and all the tools and you don’t even depending on what you’re training for, or like one of our other community members said, uh, the terrain that you’re training on, one of these tools may make more sense than the other, given.

[00:09:08] What you’re working on in that season. Yes. Don’t don’t spoil it because we were going to save that for the end. Don’t spoil. We got we got these extra things because we’ve already given our takes and let’s go to the community responses. When I first started running, I trained by pace. It. got me to where I needed to be.

[00:09:25] Um, I hit a sub two half and that was putting me where I wanted to be for the sub 430 on a full. Um, didn’t happen. So this time around I’m training by effort. I had originally trained by heart rate and it wasn’t working. Uh, I don’t know if it’s cause I live a high stress life. I’m high strung. Um, the methadone method, it just, it, it just didn’t do it for me.

[00:09:52] Then I went back to pace and pace didn’t work because I was coming back from an injury. I couldn’t hit the paces. My heart rate was, you know, ridiculously high. I’m talking zone four, zone five for marathon pace. I went by effort and I have made much, much better progress training by effort, um, in the last four months.

[00:10:11] I would definitely have to say a third option, my perceived effort as I’m out there on the road. I find that so much more motivating to use my own innate guiding system than relying on, Oh, I’m going to keep up this pace with my watch or follow these particular heart rate parameters. So definitely perceived effort.

[00:10:30] All right. So this is that like third point that I was talking about, which is like the fourth variable here. And that is power. And, um, A lot of you runners probably don’t even care about a power meter. It’s not really has been a thing yet. It’s slowly getting a bit of traction. It’s getting there. It’s getting there.

[00:10:46] Um, I know a lot of cyclists have power swimming does not have a power component. I don’t think yet. I’m sure someone’s trying to come up with one. Uh, even like lifting weights is really, I mean, it’s just the weight you’re lifting. There’s no power component about the resistance, but back to running for power.

[00:11:00] Um, I talked about my, my fun five case story, but actually I just did a race. which is you running from the middle of the city, uh, Sydney here, Sydney, Australia, all the way to the beach, Bondi beach, a beautiful run, but there’s so many damn hills and because of the hills. I really have to focus on my effort, perceived effort, but hills are wild because what feels like a 5 out of 10, you know, let’s say you’re cruising a 7 out of 10 effort on the flats and then you’re like, I’m gonna do a 10 in the hills.

[00:11:27] I look down at my power. My power spikes up and I’m like, what the hell? Like for me to keep an even amount of power, I feel like I have to like almost like Walk and do this really slow run, but the ironic thing is when I stretch out these hill runs So this hill there’s a lot of really, uh, steep hills and long hills and there’s about it takes me eight minutes to run up It it’s about a mile hill like it’s a mile uphill and there’s some nasty That’s a big hill dude, and it’s effed up because it’s it turns and you can’t see it.

[00:11:56] So you’re like, you’re like, Oh, this is what this more hill. Oh, there’s the end of what this more hill. So it keeps doing that for like, you know, almost eight minutes for me. It’s bananas. Yeah. But what I found out when I start at what feels like the effort, subjective effort of a five out of 10 up the hill, I’m four minutes in and my, my power would spike up to, you know, three 70 Watts.

[00:12:17] So I was trying to hold three 30 Watts up the hill. Right. And I was like, my power spike up at three 70 Watts in the first minute. And I’m like, Wow, that’s really hot. It’s 40 watts long more than I want to be doing. Let me back it down So then I look down halfway through and i’m at 320 watts and i’m like what?

[00:12:31] And then I even it out. It’s 330 and i’m like that felt like a 5 out of 10 But it actually was a proper like 330 watt but the hills it’s just so crazy and then downhill Downhill is even more crazy. Like trying to hold power downhill running. Like you got to go real fast to hold that power. Yeah. And it’s like really uncomfortable.

[00:12:49] Whereas if I didn’t have that power, I’m like, I think I’m going at a seven out of 10 downhill. It’s like, nah, the power saying I’m going at three out of 10, like my power drops down to like 280 Watts. So I found out that like, there’s this triangle, I call it the trifecta, I guess, of, of how you should interpret your data.

[00:13:05] And the triangle is, um, and I just came up with this at actually during the race last yesterday. I was thinking, which is not good. It’s not good that I was like thinking about, Oh, I got this cool idea for, you know, a framework. Where was your mind at? I know the minute I did that, I said, I am not being present.

[00:13:21] You’re right here in the pain. Stop thinking about the future, man. Uh, so excuse my language So the trifecta is it’s it’s effort slash power And I give myself a ranking 1 out of 10. So yesterday I did a a 10 effort power I actually hit my power number and then it’s intelligence down here and it’s how smart I ran the race based on My strategy and based on my effort and I said it was I said it was actually it was a uh, a 10 10 intelligence because I did something interesting and then I went over here and was like output and output.

[00:13:52] So that’s a triangle there and the third third variable and output is technically not valuable. But output is what happened? What was my time? What was my pace? So many times we as as runners and triathletes and people when we race, we go gotta hold that pace. Oh, I didn’t get my time that I wanted. So many things affect Your time, the heat, the hills, how tired you are, caffeine levels, if you’re doing heart rate and your caffeine is shot up.

[00:14:18] Oh, you’re just excited. You can’t go on caffeine. My heart rate is always 10 beats higher on a vase, even though I’m going the same effort that I was doing in training. So all these things I realized when you put those three together, that then becomes a much better way to take your data and analyze it post race.

[00:14:32] And it’s actually, it like just takes the pressure off of you. So it’s like, you know, you just, Oh, why? I know I went as hard as I could. The data validated based on my power and the intelligence. I raised smart because I was, uh, I was about 33 percent in. And I said, no, no, no, no, no, no. No. Hell no! No! I don’t feel good.

[00:14:57] And I said, you could keep going at this stupid pace because I was trying to hit a pace in my head so I can hit a certain time and run my best time. And I said, and you could ruin this whole race and it’s going to hurt, or you could be smart and back it down and look at your power, bro, and chill out. And I said, back it down.

[00:15:11] And I backed it down. And that’s when I was like, that only comes with experience. It only comes with intelligence. That only comes with me understanding my data. So I guess, again, this whole thing was about data, and I’m going to end it there. How you got any more thoughts on this? Cause that was a lot.

[00:15:23] Well, yeah. Cause you know, you talked about the, the thing that really stood out and I talked about training by heart rate and looking at, Oh, your power spiked and you had to back down, which is the exact same thing that happens with heart rate. you’re going too hot, that will spike and you may need to back it down because you’ve only got so many matches to burn and so many efforts and you can only sustain for so long.

[00:15:49] Obviously there’s a difference between how immediately one will spike and drop versus the other and I feel like the takeaway is in that triangle that’s really good takeaways for being in the moment but it’s unpacking all of that data and making it more useful so I can’t Go into an interval session knowing that the power has to spike the heart rate has to spike for the pace to go up.

[00:16:17] Well, that’s just what’s going to happen. So I can’t look at my heart rate then I’m going to analyze it afterwards versus a different session. I’ll prioritize this metric. And then look at this one afterwards to see how and get that that relationship. But the experience is when you can start to feel that.

[00:16:40] Oh, if my pace is this. What’s my power doing? If I’m going up this hill, then what’s my heart rate doing relative to my power? And it’s it’s never a one versus the other they all kind of work in conjunction But just pick which one you’re gonna focus on for this session and break it down from there But you’ve already hit all of that congratulations on the effort man and You know, we’ve gone this many episodes and I haven’t even touched on it.

[00:17:10] Uh, y’all got to check out Darren’s YouTube channel. Y’all we’ll, we’ll link it right down here. We’ll blast it on all of these. He’s doing some recaps and newsletters and everything, uh, that you can normally find on his newsletter is coming to video. You’re getting some of the, uh, extended stories from his Instagram race recaps.

[00:17:31] All in there. Check it out. My dude. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this with me, and please do not forget to let us know down in the comments any other future topics you want to see covered, uh, by myself, by Darren, in the next seasons, and which metric do you prioritize? One last thing, and I meant to say this, and I forgot the person’s name who actually wrote this.

[00:17:55] He said, training by pace is letting the ego take over. Training by heart rate holds is great, but not always accurate. Unless a reliable chest heart rate monitor without interference you get interference in heart rate monitors. Tech is useful but can be a crutch. Like a lot of our creature comforts that I’ve taken away our natural immunity and instincts that our ancestors needed for survival.

[00:18:16] The ultimate goal should be to return to effort. It’s akin to kung fu masters. Honing their martial arts by form and structure only to realize at the end the ultimate goal is formlessness or nothingness. That’s my take on it anyway. Laughing emoji. So I thought that was a great way of, uh, summing up this kind of messy area and, uh, very woo woo, very zen.
[00:18:34] Um, I’ll get his name so you could put it, put it in there, but I’m going to end it there. Thanks everyone. And to the next one.

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Pace doesn’t tell you if you ran a smart race