Performance Condition and Training Status Don't Make Sense

If you want to use the training status information in your training it is worth spending some time familiarising yourself with the details. DCRainmaker linked to useful tables in his Forerunner 935 review (https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2017/03/garmin-forerunner-935-depth-review.html). You can, of course, also refer to the Firstbeat site for more information (https://www.firstbeat.com/en/consumer-feature/training-status/).

First, congrats on making it 1 mile non-stop.
Second, I wouldn't worry much about training status until until you have a few more runs where you are able to run 10 minutes or more at a steady state. The system really needs 10 minutes or so to even make a vo2max judgement. Over time the watch will adapt and you'll get better information out of it. That said, I still get unproductive from time to time even when I feel like I'm getting faster. All that is really telling you is to pay attention to recovery, sleep, nutrition, and the 100 other little things that make a difference in how your body absorbs the load of adding physical stress via training.

First, congrats on making it 1 mile non-stop.
Second, I wouldn't worry much about training status until until you have a few more runs where you are able to run 10 minutes or more at a steady state. The system really needs 10 minutes or so to even make a vo2max judgement. Over time the watch will adapt and you'll get better information out of it. That said, I still get unproductive from time to time even when I feel like I'm getting faster. All that is really telling you is to pay attention to recovery, sleep, nutrition, and the 100 other little things that make a difference in how your body absorbs the load of adding physical stress via training.

Thanks for the encouragement and explanation. It makes sense - when I'm running/walking, the software likely calculates that as a lower overall heart rate to cover a given distance, and it appears worse when I run continuously, since my HR is continuously elevated. I'll see what happens as I do more continuous running.

So I've been training for half marathon, using one of the Garmin connect training plans, while watching my training status. All the right ingredients are there - slowly increasing training loads, longish endurance runs, some intervals... I've just run my first 10k race this Saturday, in time that I was really quite happy about. And guess what my watch has been telling me for the past 8 weeks of training? It's been switching between Maintaining and Unproductive. I've only seen it say productive once, pretty early on, mostly because it probably didn't have enough data. I've also seen recovery once, which did make sense since I eased up on the load for little while. ;)

I was excited about this feature and read all the white papers from Fitbit, but now I don't really see much point. From all I read, this only goes by VO2max estimate. That is just one metric. Sure, it's important, since it ultimately determines your aerobic performance, which you need for anything, but it's still just one. It doesn't quantify improvements in your running style, your muscle fibers, or any other 100 things that will also make you better runner. Oh, and getting VO2 max up is hard. It gets progressively harder, and pretty much impossible when you're over 50. All you can do is slowing down its decline. Maybe I am already too old to be quantified productive by Garmin/Firstbeat, I should probably just stop trying. :rolleyes:

As others pointed out, it also needs a base of somehow typical runs to do much for you. My VO2max actually dropped during my 10k race, presumably because it was so much harder effort than anything in recent memory. It went up the next day though, and I got a badge for it. :D

I find performance condition somehow useful. When I lack sleep or party into the night, it will probably be negative the next day. So it adds little bit of motivation. But sometimes it's also negative for no apparent reason, though that's to be expected.

Ultimately, though, these are just parts of the complete picture. There's milion more ways you can quantify your progress then generalized metric based on HRV. If you are objectively improving, you can rung longer then before, your times are getting better, then, really, celebrate that and maybe the watch will catch on eventually. And if it doesn't, just use a metric that works for you. ;)

Mine just keeps telling me I need to run for 20mins twice with a heart rate monitor, which I've done numerous times using the OHR which apparently is fine but it doesn't seem to work.

The OHR doesn't read the heart rate variability that it needs to determine the VO2Max. I'm pretty sure you need to do a run with GPS and a Heart rate strap. I might be getting that confused with lactate threshold though.

I always get those two confused. Maybe the runs aren't long enough or strenuous enough for it to register? Even with a HR strap I have had a heck of a time getting Lactate threshold to register, even on a very hard run where it should have registered. The VO2Max usually updates pretty good and tracks along with my training plans and fitness fairly well for me.