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Training load Gravel not accurate at all

Hi all,

When I do a 4 hour gravel ride the Training load/EPOC score calculated by Garmin is significantly lower compared to a 4 hour road ride. This basically makes 7-day training load, training status as well as advised recovery time completely useless.

Does any one experience the same and does anyone know how to fix this?

0 Bitti over 3 years ago

How are you getting HR, using watch's optical HR or a HR strap? Do you have a power meter in your bike? And what watch do you have (or do you have an Edge bike computer)? This is the Android app forum, so it's impossible to tell...

0 6004264 over 3 years ago in reply to Bitti

HI Bitti, I am using my forerunner 245. So opticall HR. I've no power meter on both my Road bike and my Gravel bike.

I can't find the weight of single trainings in the 7 day training load, but I am certain Gravel rides are assigned a lower weight. This weekend I rode ~5.5 hours gravel with an average HR of ~130. Last weekend I rode 3.5 hours on my road bike, also average HR of ~130. Nevertheless, the 7 day training load went down over the weekend. Despite that the gravel rides were on average slightly more intensive, with some small off road climbs vs road ride with basically now climb meters.

The only thing I can think of is that the average speed, which is off course lower while graveling, is somehow given a lot of weight..

0 Bitti over 3 years ago in reply to 6004264

In my experience the optical HR has problems in reliably detecting the heart rate while riding a bike, especially on gravel. Your hand is gripping the handle bar limiting blood flow, and the bar is shaking your wrist constantly. All this causes the optical HR to often loose your pulse or accidentally locking onto your pedalling cadence.

Even if the average HR on both rides looks the same, it's difficult to say if it's the correct figure on either ride. If you are interested, you could compare the HR graphs so see if your gravel ride contains less time with high HR (which contributes more to training load). If the optical HR locks to pedalling cadence, it often misses those times with high HR (like uphill).

My suggestion would be to get a HR strap and use that while cycling.

(Concerning your comment on average speed, I don't think training load pays attention to speed.)