Steve Jones claimed to not wear a watch although his hard sessions were typically done by time.
However even when he did say 4x5 minutes he had no idea really how far or fast he was actually going.
The only time that really matters is your race time.
There is ambiguity in the term "to time a run". It can be running with your eyeballs on the watch all the time for pacing. Or pacing by feel without looking, but the time, distance, pace and everything else are recorded anyway and uploaded automatically when getting within the wifi/bluetooth range at home. It actually requires more effort not to do the latter if the watch you wear 24x7 already do this by default.
Being able to look at your pace and HR without emotional reaction or changing your pacing is something one can learn. The good HR (low = relaxed) and good pace (low = fast) numbers are always moving in opposite direction anyway, like a cost-benefit balance. Can't lower them both by concious effort in a single session (although both should improve over weeks with better fitness).
Hjjsjsjsjs wrote:
I look at them to make sure I am not running too fast.
This. Some days you feel great and you start picking up the pace naturally. Having a watch reminds you to ease up on the gas pedal so that you're keeping it truly easy.
I never use a watch on easy or recovery days to tell me to speed up.
Easy Peasy wrote:
This. Some days you feel great and you start picking up the pace naturally. Having a watch reminds you to ease up on the gas pedal so that you're keeping it truly easy.
.
Those are the days you're supposed to go hard, moran.
Good way to measure how your fitness is progressing. At the beginning of my base phase my easy mileage is real slow at first, but as I progress in training my easy pace becomes more and more steady. My first winter when I took my base phase real serious, bumped up my mileage to 100 from only doing around 60. At first my easy mileage slowed down to 8:00-8:30 minute pace. Than over the course of weeks my easy pace got down to 7:30, 7:00, 6:30 etc. and often running around marathon pace at the end my easy runs. Last thing, the progression in pace should come naturally and you should be at the same effort as you are at the beginning as you are at the end. Don't force the pace, let it come to you.
I've never heard of anyone tracking splits for their easy runs, but I time my easy runs because I want to generally know how much volume I'm doing, and time is an easier metric to track than mileage.