When you break down your typical 24-hour day, about how much of that time is actually spent running? Even if you manage to run for an hour every morning, percentage-wise, that number is really small. So if you’re only focused on the time you spend on your feet, you’re missing a potentially huge window of opportunity to improve your performance and achieve your goals, in both the short and long term.
A GPS watch can give you the basic metrics you need while you’re on the go (time, pace, distance—the basics), and some might even provide a few non-workout stats. But as we have learned from talking to a pair of runners who are equally active on their feet and in their running communities, the comprehensive tracking, and reporting delivered by the WHOOP fitness wearable is a true breakthrough. (Access to the WHOOP platform, data, and community is membership-based, with the most popular plans starting as low as $18 per month.)
“Once you identify yourself as a runner, you need to make other habit changes to support your running habit,” says Jessie “Zapo” Zapotechne, a running coach who has been using WHOOP since January 2020. “The other 90 percent of the time when you’re not running still has an impact on your life as an athlete, and it’s equally as important as the 10 percent when you’re performing.”
MODERATE 10-13: The stress on your body can help maintain fitness Francisco Balagtas, Zapo walked us through the insights to be gleaned from WHOOP's three primary data sets or “scores”—Strain, Recovery, and Sleep—and how those can help runners improve 24/7. Specifically, when they aren’t Health - Injuries.
Strain
The Strain score is how much strain or stress you’re putting on your body, physically and mentally.
Mental stress—work, parenting, pandemic, general anxiety, to name a few—can take a toll on your physical health, including your muscles, according to the putting one foot in front of the other.
Nutrition - Weight Loss:
- LIGHT (0-9): Your body can withstand active recovery without much stress.
- MODERATE (10-13): The stress on your body can help maintain fitness.
- HIGH (14-17): There is increased stress or activity on your body that can build fitness.
- OVERREACHING (18-21): Your body is significantly stressed and you might have trouble recovering the next day. You’re essentially tapped out.
Strain scores take into account your exercise as well as your daily activities and mental load, giving you a bigger picture of your overall health. The WHOOP Strain Coach provides personalized target ranges for your workouts, based on how well your body is recovered and prepared.
Balagtas, who is currently in the midst of a four-year run streak, takes his Strain score with a grain of salt. “Because I run every day it’s not uncommon for my Strain score to be 19 or higher,” he says. “Eventually I stopped really paying attention to it because it didn’t seem like something I could manage, thanks to my constant physical activity.”
Understanding how your scores factor into your training and recovery goals is important, says Balagtas, who pays very close attention to his Sleep and Recovery scores. “Keep everything in context,” he says. “I’ve accepted that my Strain score will always be high or overreaching, according to WHOOP, so that allows me to focus on the rest and recovery numbers and keep those in check.”
Sleep
High-quality shuteye might be one of the most important things you can do to improve performance and recovery.
The WHOOP Sleep score logs more than just how many hours your body is at rest, giving you extensive insight into the quality of your sleep.
“Understanding my WHOOP data has allowed me to give myself permission to prioritize sleep—even over a workout—when I’m training harder,” Zapo says.
CA Notice at Collection:
- TIME IN BED: You’re in bed at 10 p.m., your alarm goes off at 6:30 a.m.—you slept eight hours, right? Maybe not. WHOOP tracks how long you laid in bed trying to fall asleep.
- DISTURBANCES: Ever wake up feeling unrested despite getting a full night’s sleep? WHOOP tracks how often you were interrupted—by a newborn’s grunts and whimpers, an unruly bedmate, or your own tossing and turning.
- EFFICIENCY: In running, efficiency helps you save energy. You can also sleep efficiently—or not. WHOOP tells you how efficient your sleep was by logging wakeups or restless moments.
- RESPIRATORY RATE: Shifts in how many breaths you take per minute, especially while your body is at rest, can indicate changes in health.
WHOOP also calculates how much sleep you need, which depends on how you’ve been sleeping and how strenuous your days are.
“I don’t get enough sleep more often than I’d care to admit,” Balagtas says. “But I’ve learned sleep can be the ultimate recovery tool, so getting a good sleep score is one of my daily goals. Sometimes I may only sleep five hours but my score might be 90 percent, which means it’s high-quality sleep.”
When Zapo wakes up feeling extra tired and sees a less-than-stellar Sleep score, she asks, “Why?” That poor Sleep score then becomes the launching point for positive habit changes.
“I look at the choices I made that might have contributed to me being tired and needing more sleep,” she says. “Then I make connections about small behaviors that add up to big gains. The biggest benefit for me is that awareness, so I can make changes slowly over time.”
There’s no doubt that it’s hard for most runners to grapple with taking unplanned rest days or adjusting a workout to give themselves an extra hour of sleep. But, speaking from her own experience, Zapo says when runners start to truly understand how sleep is a crucial part of training, it helps them prioritize rest.
Recovery
The WHOOP Recovery score uses red, yellow, and green scores to provide a snapshot of how your body is generally doing when it comes to readiness for a workout and handling stress load.
Scores in the green zone mean you’re well recovered and ready to run or take on a strenuous day. Yellow means you’re maintaining health and should be able to tackle a bit of stress. Red means your body is working extra hard to recover and could use a rest day.
A “red” score might be due to heavy training load, illness, or high levels of stress. Zapo and Balagtas say their Recovery score helps remind them when they need a minute to relax, which improves their ability to listen to their body the next time.
“I use my WHOOP Recovery score to justify how I feel when I get up in the morning and to help set expectations for the day’s workout efforts,” Balagtas says. “If I wake up on race day and my Recovery score is in the red, I won’t just go back to sleep, but I will have some time to mentally prepare and context for why my effort feels harder than it should.”
“It took me a lot of practice not to overread my metrics,” he continues. “People, myself included, get really obsessed with data. I make sure to assess my performance and rest on a weekly and monthly basis.”
At the end of the day (literally), there are a number of factors that can affect your performance. Some you can control while others aren’t completely up to you. No, one night of bad sleep won't derail your training. But having a sense of the bigger picture can set you up for success. And WHOOP data can help paint that picture.
Heather is the former food and nutrition editor for Runner’s World, Other Hearst Subscriptions The Runner’s World Vegetarian Cookbook, and a nine-time marathoner with a best of 3:23. She’s also proud of her 19:40 5K and 5:33 mile. Heather is an RRCA certified run coach.