Monitoring the intensity of your training is such an important aspect of any training plan to ensure you achieve the desired improvements from your hard work as well as avoiding risk of injury from overtraining.
There are different ways that you can use to do this such as monitoring heart rate, rate of perceived exertion (RPE), running pace, and finally power (which is one that is gaining increasing popularity in the running community).
I will delve deeper into the specifics of using each of these methods in subsequent blog posts, but for now I will just mention a brief outline on how to use each of these methods.
Heart Rate – Your heart rate increases as the intensity of your exercise session increases. In theory, by monitoring your heart rate you are able to track how hard you are working to achieve your current running pace. This process can provide excellent feedback for your aerobic runs (at less that 75% of your Maximum Heart Rate), such as recovery runs, easy runs and long runs. On the flip side, your heart rate will not necessarily be the best tool to use when training on hilly routes or in interval type training.
Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) – The most commonly used method to monitor RPE is the Borg Scale which is a numerical scale that ranges from 6-20, where 6 is at rest and 20 is maximum effort. The theory behind using this scale is to multiply your RPE score by 10 which should correspond to your current working heart rate. You can, therefore, match your RPE with the working HR to find the intensity that you desire. This makes complete sense in theory, but practically it can be challenging to remember the scale while you are exercising.
Table 1 – Borg Scale of Perceived Exertion:
| Rating | Perceived Exertion |
|---|---|
| 6 | No Exertion |
| 7 | Extremely Light |
| 8 | |
| 9 | Very Light |
| 10 | |
| 11 | Light |
| 12 | |
| 13 | Somewhat Hard |
| 14 | |
| 15 | Hard |
| 16 | |
| 17 | Very Hard |
| 18 | |
| 19 | Extremely Hard |
| 20 | Maximal Effort |
Yes, this scale is fairly complex and challenging to remember so for ease of use I like to use my own scale of 1-10, as shown below.
Next Percent Training RPE Scale:
| Rating | Description | Internal Cue |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Extremely Easy | I feel like I could keep running at this pace forever |
| 2 | Very Easy | I feel like I am holding myself back by running at this pace |
| 3 | Easy | I feel like I am holding myself back just a slight bit |
| 4 | Comfortable | This pace feels natural, not holding back and not pushing |
| 5 | Fairly Comfortable | I feel like I am pushing myself ever so slightly |
| 6 | Slightly Difficult | I feel like I can keep this pace for 30-45 minutes |
| 7 | Somewhat Difficult | I feel like I can only keep this pace for 20-30 minutes |
| 8 | Difficult | I feel like I can keep this pace for 1-2km max |
| 9 | Very Difficult | I feel like I can maintain this pace for maybe 3 minutes |
| 10 | Extremely Difficult | I feel like I can maintain this pace for 1 minute max |
Running pace – Simple… you will need to exert more effort to be able to run faster. Yes I know, you can run faster on a downhill with less effort, but as a general rule there is a positive correlation between pace and effort.
Power – This is one that is quite new to the running world (although cyclists have monitored intensity using power for some time now). With new technologies you can now include external effects such as wind resistance. For instance, if you go out for a run in 20kph winds you would expect this to have a huge effect on the effort you need to put in to run at a certain pace. Likewise, if you went from running on a flat road to running up a hill, your effort would need to adjust accordingly. These power devices will register the slope of your run along with the effects of wind, so you can adjust your pace to maintain a consistent power output (and effectively a consistent effort).