I'm also not a big fan rate of perceived effort. If you feel that an identical session, say a few weeks previous, was a certain RPE then you can start to convince yourself that something is wrong if it didn't match or feel easier.Boomer wrote: ↑June 9th, 2019, 11:40 amI’m not very good with perceived effort which is all over the place with me so I find HR monitors useful as an objective measure of how I’m doing. For example an easy 10k 6 months ago at 2:10 was 65% MHR this week it was at 80% MHR (No surprise due to my lack of erging during the winter hockey season). From the notes in my log they felt the same but my HR said my cardiovascular system thought they were markedly different.
The human brain is hard wired to want to see progress and achievements for hard work so it can be demotivating if this happens, rather than just accepting it as a bad day for whatever reason.
If you want to see progress the HR monitor is a lot more reliable and useful than RPE in my opinion but I only value it for the long slow steady sessions