"Listen to Your Body"
How often have you heard the advice “just listen to your body?” This can be a frustrating response when we’re looking for a hard answer about pacing or training. Sometimes we have no idea what our body is saying! But the good news is that we can learn.
Too often, runners depend on data (gps watch, heart rate monitor, power meter) to translate what their body is saying. But technology is not a good translator! We need more than numbers, we need context too.
The Limitations of Data
Our data measurement tools can’t factor all of these things together::
How stressful the workday (or workweek) has been
If the road is slippery
How we slept last night (or last week!)
Our motivation level
If we recently we had the flu
How hard or easy we’ve trained the previous week
What’s going on in our lives
The only one that knows all the factors and take them into consideration is YOU.
Our devices are meant to supplement our perception of effort but often they end up making us either ignore or lose trust in what our bodies are saying. If our workout and race day decisions are completely dependent on what the data says, it means we aren’t paying attention to how we actually FEEL.
Choose to Practice this Skill
To know what “too hard” feels like, we need to run hard sometimes.
Familiarizing ourselves with different effort levels takes intentional practice. There’s no way we can know if we are running too hard, too easy, or too much if we never explore our limits.
Every workout and run should have a goal effort and feel. For example, “today I will run easy” or “today I will start easy and end hard” or “I will run the last lap as fast as I can.”
Most days should be easy, with moderate to hard efforts at least 1 time per week.
Click here for 3 workouts to start learning to listen to your body.
A Real Life Application
How does listening to your body actually work in training?
You might realize that a workout you’ve done many times feels much harder than normal, yet you are hitting your usual paces. The effort doesn’t match the data. In this case, listening to your body means slowing down despite what the watch says.
Alternatively, you may notice the workout feels like a breeze, yet you are hitting your usual paces. In this case, listening to your body might mean finishing the workout faster than ever before instead of just cruising on in.
The Exception
Even runners who consistently focus on effort can be tripped up by race/workout day nerves and adrenaline. This is why I recommend pace, HR or power “guardrails” for the beginning of longer outings or races. In these cases, perceived effort can’t really be trusted - especially when starting from a corral where the energy is sky-high.
These “guardrails” protect runners from starting too fast while caught up in the excitement. They are not pace goals, they are pace limits. It is always okay to start slower than the guardrail pace if your effort is too high.
Once a runner has settled into the race or run, they will be able to dial in to how they feel and guide their effort by listening to their body while using data as supplemental & secondary feedback.
Click here for “How to” tips and workouts to get started listening to your body!
Nicole Sifuentes is a full-time Running Coach for adults of all ages and abilities. She is a former professional runner and 2-time Olympian, and Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist. Read more about her services, and schedule your free coaching consultation.