Training, training, training.

[Riazor Blue]

In the past I have had a very basic HRM which only showed my heart rate, peak and average, and nothing more. I could use this to measure improvements or otherwise in my training but was not useful as a training aid.
There are a lot of people who swear by HRMs, but I think that if you train on your own, you need to get a good one, where you can programme whole exercises, with warm ups, exercises and cool down. Then you'd want to upload the data to your PC.

Of course I'm still in a testing period with the HRM so it's still early days, but I think the thing is that by setting the limits at which you want to run, no matter where you run, or if you are stressed or relaxed, you will be working in the range in which you want to work. The advantage of this is that you remove the variable factor of perception (OK, it may not be an advantage to some).

Some say that it's a bit boring running at a constant (slow) pace, to avoid this I've taken to looking for new places to run, off road. The idea is to venture down to my measured routes once in a while to see how the training is going, apart from that, the distances are not that important. In this sense, running with an HRM has made my running more interesting.