Heart rate and zone 2 training

Forget everything you know about heart rate training for now. It often leads beginners down a weird and wrong path.

If you want to know if someone is running easy, see if they can hold a conversation without struggling. If they can carry on a casual conversation, they're running easy.

unless she is sick or something or the easy run is very hilly, that sounds abnormal.

go on a treadmill or any kind of exercise machine at a gym and wear the watch and test the heartrate on the machine at the same time to check it matches. make sure watch is being worn tight enough, not loose.

Heart rate runs higher than you would expect when running . Stay out of zone 3 , run slower to run faster . You do not need to push yourself to produce adaptation stimulus . If you go into z4 you are probably doing more damage than good in my experience

Slow run was 4 days after the faster run. Totally flat. Harder run was a very muddy, national xc race.

Able to chat whole way during slow run. Will get her to check watch strap. As you have said maybe on too lightly. Have never looked at her HRs before. Was surprised how similar they were for two very different runs.

If that doesn't solve the mystery then maybe will need a chest monitor instead.

This is a well-worn topic here, and it gets tedious, but…

in most cases, a wrist heart rate monitor will not be accurate enough for running; a chest or arm strap will be essential.

How do I read my heart rate if I don’t want to look down at my chest ?

I disagree. I find most newer watches are pretty good as long as they're on snug. If my watch is loose, it tends to pick up my cadence, or gets stuck between my cadence and HR.

Don't trust any HR data without some sort of chest strap (or that new COROS arm strap).

I keep my easy runs under control with HR monitoring for the first 20 minutes to allow for drift to set in, then just feel out the rest. It's a feel, not a pace.

I would caution you from using the VDOT or Tinman calculators to dictate easy pace, as it's a much more complex issue than that and they assume proper aerobic conditioning - as we can see your daughter leans far towards fast twitch mid distance running. With her level of aerobic capacity, running "easy" at what the calculators say she should be at would be overkill.

Yeah don't use VDOT as based on her 800m easy would be at be between 4.53. - 5.23 km and on her 45 sec 300m it would be 4.11 - 4.37km ! Her conversational pace is around 5.45km and can do that for 10km. Slowed down to 6.30km in the hope of reaching the mythical zone 2 and didn't happen. She does find that very slow. I have been trying to encourage zone 2 not sure I could persuade her to run any slower.

Think will try checking watch strap at the weekend and to see if that makes a difference.

Seriously, you haven’t yet had her stop and quickly check pulse manually (the six-second-count X 10) to compare with the electronic measurement to see if it’s wonky?!? Dude, this is basic.