Perception Is Everything

Think back to the playgrounds you used to play on when you were a kid. Do you remember that feeling of going back to visit years later as an adult and thinking how small everything looks now?

Running is the same way. How you feel today may be different than how you feel tomorrow. 10-minute miles today may feel like a sprint. The 5-minute mile may look like an Olympic medal time. For someone else, 5-minute miles might be a jog. How you perceive the world evolves and how well you listen to and learn from your perception of that evolution through self-awareness will shape your maturity as a runner unlocking the greatest enjoyment of your experience.

Summary Outline:

• Listen To Your Body
• A Body’s Conversation: In The Moment
• A Body’s Conversation: Debrief
• Summary

Listen To Your Body

As you’re reading this article, if I call your attention to the way you are breathing and the up and down rise and fall of your chest, you will probably start to notice it. However, if you were to just be reading without this prompt to check, you would likely breathe without thinking.

Now in that same scenario, if you started coughing, you might become acutely aware of the fact that breathing is difficult and that your body is experiencing some distress. This seems pretty pressing since it could be life or death.

Now think about when you get hungry while you are in class. This is less urgent and you probably tell yourself that you can eat again in a little bit after class and push it off. Then you get a phone call to meet with friends and forget about your hunger until your stomach starts growling loudly at you. The urgency is growing but you can probably keep going for a while longer yet.

All of these scenarios are important in highlighting the fact that your body is sending you feedback all the time and that your awareness of that feedback is contingent on the urgency and strength of its impact to your general wellbeing or status quo.

Usually, even for more urgent feedback, people may not be listening or telling the body to keep pushing forward without listening at all. 

We hear that listening during conversations is a skill we could all do more effectively during conversations. 

Let’s focus now on what listening means during the conversation you have with your body when you workout or go on runs.

A Body’s Conversation: In The Moment

The type of conversation you want to have with your body is going to depend a lot on the type of run, training program, and events in life that you have going on. On your easy days you’re going to want to go a lot easier than on a day where you are trying to go all out in a race. This will also look different than those days where you are trying to go hard but not all out hard. As you can tell this can quickly get very confusing and somewhat overwhelming.

To help athletes of all levels have a better understanding of what effort they are putting out a scientist by the name of Dr. Gunnar Borg came up with a scale that he found to roughly correlate with the heart rate of the individual. This effort level scale also does a fine job of giving you an idea of how hard you should be looking to run.

The Borg Scale looks like the following:

RPE 6-7 (Very, Very Light)

Description: Feels like a very easy effort, almost like a leisurely walk.

Workout Example: Going for a light walk; this would for many individuals not elicit a cardiovascular response.

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RPE 8-9 (Very Light)

Description: Very easy and likely still walking for most individuals

Workout Example: Going for a light walk; this would for many individuals not elicit a cardiovascular response. Others this maybe a light jog.

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RPE 10-11 (Fairly Light)

Description: Comfortable and easy; you're breaking a sweat but not out of breath. You should still likely, depending on your max heart rate, be able to breath through your nose.

Workout Example: A warm-up pace run where you can talk but starts to require a bit more effort.

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RPE 12-13 (Somewhat Hard)

Description: A very easy run that feels like you are running.

Workout Example: Think of the higher end of your easy runs falling in this zone.

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RPE 14-15 (Hard)

Description: This should be a moderate pace effort

Workout Example: Think of your steady state run where you’re running hard but could go a couple of hours if needed. Think of a half marathon pace workout’s start point in terms of effort. 

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RPE 16-17 (Very Hard)

Description: This should be where you’re feeling like you’re really working

Workout Example: Fast intervals or a race pace where you're pushing near your maximum but not all-out. This might be where you would find your 10km pace intervals up to your 3k pace intervals.

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RPE 18-19 (Very, Very Hard)

Description: Almost at the max, can't talk, can only sustain for a short time.

Workout Example: Sprinting or a final race push where you're going almost as hard as you can.

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RPE 20 (Maximal)

Description: Absolute maximum effort, unsustainable for more than a few seconds.

Workout Example: A final sprint to the finish or a short, all-out burst.

This scale is most accurate for when you’re working out in the heat of the moment, which is likely still a little more complex than the average person would like, since again this is related to what a scientist was trying to use to extrapolate effort to heart rate.

A Body’s Conversation: A Debrief

To keep things simpler there is the 10 point RPE readiness scale that does almost as good a job of evaluating in performance effort level, but more importantly evaluates readiness:

RPE 1 (Rest)

Description: No activity, complete rest.

Workout Example: Rest day, no running.

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RPE 2 (Very Easy)

Description: Feels like you can maintain this pace all day without any effort.

Workout Example: A very light jog or a warm-up, maybe a recovery walk.

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RPE 3 (Easy)

Description: Comfortable pace, light and easy jogging.

Workout Example: An easy recovery run where you can easily chat.

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RPE 4 (Moderately Easy)

Description: Starting to feel some exertion but still quite comfortable.

Workout Example: A steady, easy run, slightly faster than a jog.

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RPE 5 (Moderate)

Description: Noticeable effort; breathing becomes heavier.

Workout Example: A standard training run, possibly a longer run at a steady pace.

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RPE 6 (Somewhat Hard)

Description: Challenging, but sustainable; conversation is more effort.

Workout Example: A tempo run or a steady uphill.

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RPE 7 (Hard)

Description: Hard effort; breathing is heavy, speaking in sentences is tough.

Workout Example: Interval training, faster paced runs, or sustained hill climbs.

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RPE 8 (Very Hard)

Description: Very challenging; close to maximum, hard to maintain for a long period.

Workout Example: Hard intervals or a race pace effort.

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RPE 9 (Extremely Hard)

Description: Near maximal effort, unsustainable for more than a short duration.

Workout Example: A near sprint or a short burst at almost maximum effort.

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RPE 10 (Maximal Effort)

Description: Absolute maximum effort, cannot be sustained for more than a few seconds.

Workout Example: An all-out sprint, such as a final kick in a race.

Remember when using the 10-point scale to evaluate your workout to think holistically about how you feel the entire workout went. It is usually best to do this evaluation as soon as you have caught your breath after the workout or run is over. We are pretty quick to shift how we talk to ourselves about workouts and tend to gloss over things.

Summary

No matter what method you choose to employ, employing a method for gauging and listening to your body can help to prevent over or under training in your workout program and also will help to make sure that you are learning to listen to what your body is telling you. 

We don’t recommend obsessing over the details, but your body has more to give than you realize in many cases, but also just as many telltale signs that it is time to recover. The more time you practice listening inside as well as out, the more likely you are to get where you need to be when you need to be there. No one knows you better than you, not even RunByRyan.

The beauty of the scales is that what is a 9 out of 10 or 15 out of 20 is going to be different for you than it is for your neighbor. Work, life, and your attitude can all impact what you can do any given day, and that’s okay.

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References 

1. Arney, B. E., Glover, R., Fusco, A., Cortis, C., de Koning, J. J., van Erp, T., Jaime, S., Mikat, R. P., Porcari, J. P., & Foster, C. (2019). Comparison of Rating of Perceived Exertion Scales During Incremental and Interval Exercise. Kinesiology, 51(2), 150–157. Retrieved from https://hrcak.srce.hr/ojs/index.php/kinesiology/article/view/6882 

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