How Do You Feel?

Why Qualitative Feedback Is Half of Your Training Data

A few months ago, I listened to a podcast featuring Joe Friel — co-founder of TrainingPeaks and one of the most influential voices in endurance coaching, with roots going back to the 1970s. He described the early days of working with athletes: customers at his running store would stop by each week to pick up a paper copy of their training plan. No GPS watches. No automatic uploads. No data streams.

His primary question after every session? "How did you feel?"

It seems quite rudimentary but I think it's one we don't ask — or answer — nearly enough in modern triathlon training.

NUMBERS TELL HALF THE STORY

In triathlon and IRONMAN® coaching, we are surrounded by data. Power, pace, heart rate, TSS®, training load — the quantitative metrics are everywhere. And they matter. But a number without context is incomplete information.

When you log a TrainingPeaks® comment and your RPE after a session, you're doing something important: you're pairing how your body performed with how your body felt. That pairing is where the real coaching insight lives.

RPE — Rate of Perceived Exertion — is a bridge between the qualitative and quantitative. It takes a feeling and assigns it a number. That's powerful, because it forces you to register and report your internal state, not just your output.

"A number without context is incomplete information. RPE bridges the gap between what the data shows and what your body actually experienced."

WHAT QUALITATIVE FEEDBACK TELLS YOU

One of the unique strengths of qualitative feedback is that there is no good or bad — it's simply what was true for you on that day, in that session. But over time, those notes become one of the most powerful tools in your training arsenal.

Here are two examples of what I mean:

Running the same pace, but it feels easier. That's a sign of real fitness development — your body is becoming more efficient at a given output. If you hadn't been logging how the effort felt, you might not notice that shift for weeks.

Suffering just as much on a VO2 set, but your paces are faster. The RPE didn't change — but the output did. That's measurable progress in both physical capacity and mental tolerance for discomfort.

These aren't outliers. This is what honest, consistent qualitative feedback surfaces for athletes who do it well.

How often do you leave a TrainingPeaks comment for your coach?

• Nearly every workout
• More than half the workouts
• Less than half the workouts
• Almost never

FUELING IS ANOTHER CLEAR EXAMPLE

Coach Krista works with many of our athletes on nutrition and race-day fueling. She often asks an athlete to tell her how many grams of carbohydrates per hour they consumed during a long effort. If the answer is "enough" or "more than usual" — that tells her absolutely nothing.

She needs a number. Quantitative data is non-negotiable in fueling protocols.

But here's the thing: the number alone isn't enough either. The number only becomes useful when matched against how your stomach felt and what your energy levels were during the session. Did you bonk at mile 18? Were you bloated at the halfway point? Did you feel steady all the way through? That context is what lets a coach make a real adjustment.

You need both.

"The number only becomes useful when matched against how you felt and what your energy levels were doing. You need both."

HARD DOESN'T MEAN BAD. EASY DOESN'T MEAN GOOD

This is an important reframe for many athletes: a workout feeling hard is not necessarily a negative data point. In triathlon training, fatigue is part of the process. A difficult session isn't a failed session.

A VO2 interval feeling easy is good feedback that lets your coach know to make the next one harder! If you're not working at the effort the session calls for, the session isn't doing what it's supposed to do.

Qualitative feedback sharpens your self-awareness as an athlete. The better you get at registering and recording how a session felt — the effort level, the fatigue, the mental state, the digestive response — the better equipped you are to make smart decisions about training, racing, and recovery.

YOUR NOTES ARE A SELF-LEARNING TOOL

Matching qualitative and quantitative data isn't just something your coach uses. It's a self-learning system for you as an athlete.

The better your note-taking, the better your future decision-making. The goal isn't to be perfect — it's to be consistent and honest. Log your RPE. Write a comment. Say how your legs felt on the 3rd rep. Note that the heat was a factor, or that you hadn't slept well, or that you hit a portion of the workout feeling unexpectedly strong.

All of that data — qualitative and quantitative together — builds a picture of who you are as an athlete. And that picture is what allows your coaches at Paragon Training to do our best work with you.

So after your next session: yes, upload the file. Check the numbers. But also ask yourself the question Joe Friel was asking athletes fifty years ago.

How do you feel?

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