Are these attacks really warranted?
Lydiard advocated reading your body.
I feel I'm very good at reading my body. On rolling and flat terrain and I can tell a fellow runner what my heart rate is and my exertion rate without looking at a device and I'm within 1% of being correct every time, EXCEPT when it comes to down hill and up hill runs.
When out west, I used a hr monitor sparingly, only to verify my internal gauges. I stopped using it for the past 4 years.
Then, I moved out east where the hills don't end. I did an experiment, taking a group of runners and strapped hr monitors that recorded their run. The watches had tape over the face and they were told to warm up and working into a tempo run. I even used the wording from Kellogs articles, as I feel this is the best for explaining how to read your body. These guys were not newby runners, but experienced runners who understood Lydiard and read letsrun and believed in reading their bodies.
The graph of their hr was very inconsistent, warming up to fast, floating the downhills, sprinting the uphills (watches had altimeter) and sprinting in with no cool down. Their run fluctuated between under aerobic threshold and way overanaerobic threshold.
With nearly all coaches not accompanying runners to teach them how to read their bodies, pecking order running takes over and runners do not read their bodies, but rather race all of their runs and run very inconsistently.
To maximized a run, consistency is essential. HR monitors are very valuable to teach runners how to gauge their bodies. In rolling to flat areas, hr monitors can be disguarded later on, but in extremely hilly areas, there may never be a time to completely rely on feeling.
From Jack Daniels and Vigil, there is a lot of emphasis on AT pace, avoiding junk mileage and training at specific zones, Vigil being my personal preference. HR monitors make this very doable.
Culpepper made a comment about just going out and running and many people on these boards make the same comment. Well, sending a 15 year old kid out telling him to read his body with 5 18 year olds pushing him while establishing the pecking order.
HR monitors should be used to assist the runner in reading their body, not to substitute for this vital aspect of training and racing.
But, when you read Wejo's article on why he sucked in college, you can see why piece of equipment that regulates gung ho/stupid athlete's efforts, which can later be reviewed by the coach on a computer, can be very valuable. Even for the experienced athlete, if doing more than 150mpw and taking Vigil's, Kellog's, Canova's approach to combining high quality with high volume to deliver a potent punch, if one run is done too fast, recovery for the next week can be at risk. If a run is done too slow, efficiency towards gaining optimal results is at risk.