Training Status - Unproductive

If nothing else, all this reading gave me insight into EPOC, Vo2max, TE and correlation to HR. It also gave me a better understanding as to how the watch works.
I was a little surprised by how good I felt after this run.
I was also surprised that I generated a TE of 3.0 without feeling a thing, whereas I was exhausted trying to achieve the same on 3 days prior (the run that I posted for your reference when I initiated this thread).

Many of you are perhaps are far more experienced runners than I am and the work above may not at all be valuable to most of you. Once again, my intent is not to validate the watch as much as it is to validate my understanding of how it works. Lastly, I write this post believing there may be others who may benefit from my experience.

Your comments and suggestions are welcome.

[All Charts are the property and work of the original authors. I claim no authorship of those works. I am using them from Firstbeat whitepapers so as to explain my study]

CPJ

This video might interest you. It explains why you should run easy. If you liked it, theres a playlist here.

For MaxHR, if you are going to use it for training, "close enough" still unrealistic. You will be better using your LTHR intease.

you could either work it out with the Firstbeat white paper information or you can load your fit file into Runalyze.com and it'll give you that information.

If you really want to delve into all the stats and science you'd need to sign up and use Firstbeat Sports software which is free to trial for 10 days and then super expensive.

Without seeing all your activity it's hard to make any definitive statement, but Garmin classes an Unproductive status as "Your training load is at a good level but your fitness is decreasing" and then goes on to explain that this is likely because you may be struggling to get enough rest and recovery.

What does the recovery advisor say after your exercise, and are you following that?
Another thing you could try if you have a chest strap is to do the HRV Test before each activity and gauge your "Stress Level". If this is really high (I think it takes a few readings before it starts giving anything other than 0 stress) then that would also indicate you need to rest and that any training you do will be unproductive.

Hope this helps!

This run looks really unproductive.

High heart rate at low speed. The average is low because of the walk in the beginning (Why record the walk as a run?).

You did stoped 2 times? Try enabling auto pause, or pause it yourself. It does affect the results, I guess.

Also, avoid using Math Max HR. Use Lab Tested Max HR or use your LTHR.

And first off all, You should try building and aerobic base first (Pass some time on Z2).

One of the things that I noticed in your posted run is a quite significant drop-off in your performance condition towards the end of your run. I am wondering whether the software is seeing this this fatigue, and interpreting it as overtraining and therefore unproductive?

It is also worth noting that while Suunto presents a single TE number, Garmin breaks this down into an Aerobic and an Anaerobic TE, so the numbers won't be directly comparable between the Suunto and Garmin universes.

Another issue is that autodetect may be leading your watch into underestimating your Max HR, and therefore it may think you are working out harder than you actually are. Very few people hit their max HR's because a. it hurts, and b. it's not particularly effective training. If you know your true MaxHR, enter that. Otherwise you may want to do a self-administered MaxHR test - you only need to do this once, and you are then good to go for a couple of years.

Or use this data field.