As we embark on the journey of evolving Effort Pace, it’s important for athletes to understand how this metric will best help them. Currently, in the training world, there are metrics to monitor your absolute output, but nothing that takes into account outside factors and how they relate to you. Running Power can be limited due to several factors. Heart rate can lag or drift upwards dependent on training. However, with Effort Pace, we have now advanced training to analyze your historical workout data and how it impacts your real-time effort!

What Effort Pace Calculates

Effort Pace incorporates your historical data while monitoring your effort on any changes in gradient. What this means for the athlete is that the Effort Pace you see on your watch, is a combination of your past training along with biometric information showing how fast you’d be running on flat terrain. In comparison, Adjusted Pace would only show you a standard formula of uphill pace vs flat road pace. Effort Pace takes into account your efficiency as a runner on different terrains.

Effort Pace learns how you have historically handled uphill and downhill sections, and customizes the pace on your watch to your internal effort. The more time you spend running hills, the better your data will be. Similar to the COROS race predictor, better data in equals better data out!

Effort Pace takes into account your own strengths and weaknesses as a runner.

Effort Pace Real World Scenario

Imagine two runners running at identical speeds on the same hill. We will assume that in the example Runner 2 is a more efficient runner on uphill efforts, despite both runners having a marathon PR of 4 hours.

	Speed (miles per hour)	Runner 1	Runner 2
5% Grade	7 mph	7’55 Effort Pace	8’15 Effort Pace
10% Grade	7 mph	7’25 Effort Pace	7’50 Effort Pace
15% Grade	7 mph	6’45 Effort Pace	7’15 Effort Pace

This concept is important for athletes to understand. With Effort Pace now being personalized, athletes can better train to their own abilities.

Effort Pace in Structured Workouts

Now you can use Effort Pace as an intensity target for structured workouts. This way, when training by effort level or intensity, you are now able to maintain a consistent effort throughout your training – no matter the terrain.

Coaching Overview

With Effort Pace being available within structured workouts, both athletes and their coaches can ensure training is designed at the appropriate effort for their abilities and goals. Further, for an athlete looking to run a hilly or mountainous event, they could input Effort Pace into a workout to help alert them if they are running to fast or slow. Ultimately, race performances are limited by the athletes ability to sustain effort. If an athlete knows their threshold for any given duration, they can better pace with this new feature.

COROS Continued Development

This is the first step at COROS to creating the most comprehensive metric to guide athletes in specific training. As the sports science team continues to research outside factors, we will continue to provide updates to further customize this metric. At COROS, we are passionate about pushing the boundaries of training and researching athletic performance. Stay tuned as we continue to evolve and explore perfection.