Rob Cliffe has given us the information from Joe Friel’s book which explains a scale of effort using the numbers 1 – 10. It makes interesting reading. Hope you all enjoy looking at it – I’m sure you will know now what it all feels like!
My explanation of what I wanted from you was much simpler and left much for you to fill in for yourself
“Please imagine a a gauge which is marked from 1 to 10. 1 represents absolutely minimum effort in order to move and 10 is lung bursting, eyeballs out, throwing up pace.”
.
| 1 | extremely easy | Could sing | 1: Active recovery | Help recover from hard training | no limit on duration |
| 2 | very easy | Can talk in complete sentences | 1: Active recovery | Help recover from hard training | no limit on duration |
| 3 | easy | Can talk in broken sentences | 2: Aerobic threshold | Build aerobic endurance | less than 12 hours |
| 4 | moderate | Talking fist becomes difficult | 2: Aerobic threshold | Build aerobic endurance | less than 12 hours |
| 5 | somewhat hard | Heavy breathing begins (!) | 3: Tempo | Challenge aerobic system | less than 8 hours |
| 6 | moderately hard | Deep breaths, talking is avoided | 4: Sub-Lactate Threshold | Improve lactic acid tolerance for long runs | less than 3 hours |
| 7 | hard | Deep and forceful breathing | 4: Sub-Lactate Threshold | Improve lactic acid tolerance for long runs | less than 3 hours |
| 8 | very hard | Laboured breathing & cannot talk | 5A: Lactate threshold | Build lactate threshold performance | less than 1 hour |
| 9 | very very hard | Very laboured breathing | 5B: Aerobic capacity | Maximally challenge aerobic system | less than 20 min |
| 10 | extremely hard | Gasping for air | 5C: Anaerobic capacity | Maximally challenge aerobic system | less than 2 min |