HOW TO USE RPE

Most runners use metrics such as pace and/or heart rate to determine effort ahead of time.

But setting an RPE for a workout can help you account for the effect external factors (eg heat, stress) have on performance.

Any such stressor will make your body work harder than normal to hit your RPE. In some cases, that could help you learn how to be comfortable at an uncomfortable pace; in other situations, you may have to adjust your workout to avoid overdoing it.

But assessing RPE is highly subjective. To help runners better track how intensely they worked out, Strava introduced a perceive dexertion feature. The effort zones in the app break down like this:

• Easy (1-3) Could talk normally, breathing naturally, felt very comfortable.

• Moderate (4-6) Could talk in short spurts, breathing more laboured, within your comfort zone but working.

• Hard (7-9) Could barely talk, breathing heavily, outside your comfort one.

• Max effort (10) At your limit or past it, gasping for breath, couldn’t talk.

If all these descriptions sound familiar, it’s because they are often used to outline heart-rate zones. So how do these RPE zones translate to running workouts? ‘Levels one to three should feel like a recovery effort,’ says Roche. ‘Four to six might be a little more strenuous, like a tempo or threshold run, and then seven to 10 are working into those highintensity interval and speed efforts.’

But because the 0-10 scale is subjective, it’s important to figure out what feels ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ to you, not what someone else deems so.