Tracking weekly mileage is deeply ingrained in running culture. But the amount of mileage that allows a runner to stay healthy and get faster is a moving target. What was good for you last week may not be what your body can handle the next week. So how do you find your running sweet spot?
One way is to consider tracking your Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) along with daily mileage or minutes run.
A new study found that training duration in combination with the RPE provided a better estimate of training stress than duration alone.1 This can help a runner reduce injury risk and better monitor performance. Why? RPE adds a quality measure to the quantity of tracking mileage or duration.
RPE is a scale, often 1 to 10. Lower scores indicate an easier effort and a higher scores a more difficult effort. Using RPE helps account for factors in your life that can affect how you feel when you run, like sleep, nutrition, and life stress. How you feel during sport is not always strictly training related. There are many factors that make you a healthy and fast runner, which RPE can help you recognize.
The study suggests multiplying RPE by the duration of each run to track training stress. For example, a 40 minute run with an RPE of 4 would be 160. The next day’s 40 minute run may have an RPE of 7, equaling 280. As the RPE increases, so does the daily “score.” If there is an upward trend in the daily score at the end of the week, it’s time to investigate if you’re really getting the intended training benefits you need or if it’s time to make some necessary tweaks. It gives a quantification to that sluggish feeling of overtraining and/or underfueling. It can be hard to listen to the inner voice that tells us our stress-recovery balance is off. Adding some solid numbers to it can make it easier to identify what we need.
What’s really cool is that RPE correlates well with blood lactate concentration.2 Some runners seek out tests to identify the intensity at which their body is working most efficiently, i.e. how fast and far you can run before your legs build up lactic acid and you slow down. But RPE gives you an accurate estimate of intensity without the time-consuming test.
The goal of run training is to become faster while staying healthy. RPE can help you better identify how your body is handling the internal stress of running, instead of just tracking external factors, like mileage or duration alone.
- Napier C, BSc M, Menon C, Paquette M. Session Rating of Perceived Exertion Combined With Training Volume for Estimating Training Responses in Runners. J Athl Train. 2020;55(12):1285-1291. doi:10.4085/1062-6050-573-19
- Dantas JL, Doria C, Rossi H, et al. Determination of blood lactate training zone boundaries with rating of perceived exertion in runners. J Strength Cond Res. 2015;29(2):315–320. doi: 10.1519/JSC.0000000000000639
Katie Noble is a Doctor of Physical Therapy, a journalist, and a runner. She enjoys empowering and supporting female runners with evidenced-based education.
Dr. Katie Noble, PT, DPT, SCS 