April Intense Cardio badge

I'm not making any progress towards the April Intense Cardio challenge, which requires you to record 3 hours of cardio in zone 3. I've recorded two runs, one of which was almost entirely in zone 3, but the status bar is still showing 0 minutes completed. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong here?

  • Sorry, but that's dumb and cheating....

    You are only cheating yourself. It doesn't matter to anyone else or do you think it is a competition to get points?

  • As in the past I figured the Type could only be exactly as described  "Cardio", but I was hoping it could also be other Gym activities like HIIT, Rowing, Elliptical that are obviously for cardio.

    Andy thanks for the tips on change and change back.

    What looks difficult is it says "Zone 3" which means Zone 4 and 5 don't count?

    My Z3 is a range of  just10 beats. It will be hard to moderate my effort to stay in 3 on the Garmin Cardio workouts given the variety of exercise.

    With Rowing I can maintain a steady effort and HR.

  • What looks difficult is it says "Zone 3" which means Zone 4 and 5 don't count?

    Exactly. Only Z3 counts. It can be very hard depending on how wide the zones are.

  • I just finished the April Power Cycling badge. I was surprised I was the second one to get it on your Badges site, after you. 

    That badge requires 4 hours in Power Zone 3. I did it as 4 x 60 minutes at power 3.3 average. The activities showed I had 50+ minutes in HR Zone 3. That makes me think Garmin set my Z3 Tempo power right.

    I liked that enough to want to try for this Cardio Zone 3 badge. I'll probably do most of it Rowing since I can maintain steady Power/Pace and HR

    What kind of cardio workouts did you do Andy?

    To help I'll setup a Data Page:

    *** HR Gauge ***

    * HR Zone #.# * --- * Time in Z3 "

    *** Training Effect *** ( not sure )

  • What kind of cardio workouts did you do Andy?

    I did cycling there too, but on an exercise bike instead of my regular road bike on a turbo trainer with the Tacx app. 

  • I ran into this too.  HIIT doesn't count, running doesn't count.  You have to choose cardio as your activity to earn any time towards the 3-hours.  I also noticed that any activity above heart rate level 3 doesn't count either.  It must be exactly level 3, which for me is a very narrow heart rate range.  This will be a hard one to earn given how restrictive it is.

  • It makes no sense that it has to be exactly Zone 3… I did cardio activities that, as intended, got me above Zone 3 and it seems absurd to me that that doesn’t count towards a cardio challenge.

  • I find two things about how these challenges are defined frustrating:

    1. You must be exactly in zone 3 (e.g. I did loads of cycling in zones 4 and 5 and it does not count towards the April Power Cycling badge)
    2. You must record it as a very specific activity type (e.g. I did loads of walking but had to change those activities to "Hiking" to get the April Epic Hikes badge)
  • 1. I totally agree with this. It should count everything zone 3 and above. The point of cardio training is to get the heart rate high. Not keep it at a moderate level. 

    2. All challenges that require logged activities (except for the "Active" challenge) require that they are logged with that specific type specified in the challenge description. In a way it would be nice if activities would count for as many challenges as possible, but at the same time it would require much less effort to finish the challenges. I like that you must log more training to finish them all. It should be hard.

  • Regarding the activity type my criticism is not that is should not be hard just that you should not need to go into very similar activities and change their activity types. I've changed lots of my activity types this month from walking to hiking and from breathwork to meditation. That's not helping me train harder, it's just plain frustrating.