Monitoring your efforts

You might have heard, “On a scale from 1-10, how hard are you working out?” This relative scale of perceived exertion is the simplest way to measure the difficulty of your workouts. However, a 7 one day may or may not be equivalent to a 7 the next day. Rating your perceived exertion consistently is an acquired and important skill.

Heart rate monitors have been around for approximately 20 years, and are now a traditional and acceptable way to measure exertion, because they assign a quantitative number to the effort. However, several factors affect heart rate, such as dehydration, fatigue, and energy levels (the bonk). Although it is a relatively stable number within a range of parameters, the same effort on a different day might require a higher or lower heart rate. Even though we can assign heart rate ranges to your training zones, when you are at or above functional threshold (all race pace intensities), heart rate is not the best tool for measuring intensity.

For all endurance athletes, pace measures your training intensity and can track your progress. You do need to take into account the terrain, for example, a hilly run is slower than a flat run, but an accomplished runner knows his minute/mile pace, a swimmer knows her 100m pace, and a cyclist understands mph.

For cyclists, power meters have become the gold standard for training. Power meters provide a quantitative number unaffected by outside factors, and we can set training zones and track progress accurately. The big drawback to the power meters is price.