The answer, Tucker suggested, was Borg’s rating of perceived exertion, or RPE, which he described as “the conscious/verbal manifestation of the integration of these psychological and physiological cues.” Moreover, this effort rating climbs gradually as body temperature increases or carbohydrate stores decrease: it doesn’t just wait for the catastrophe; it anticipates it. Pacing, in Tucker’s formulation, is the process of comparing the effort you feel at any given point in a race to the effort you expect at that stage—an internal template that you develop and fine-tune from experience. If the
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