Training Effect

Average heart rate of 163 if the chart above to be believed and it wasn't too hard? How old are you?

Unless you are in your 20-25, the average of 163 will be anything but easy. Even a 30 year old is gonna be effectively in Z4, and that's an average. Would be a threshold run for me 

Premise: I don't have a Marq but a FR945, I'm looking also this forum because the FR945 could be thought as the little brother. But if the behaviour of the FR945 has something to do with its new firmware, I should report this in the other forum  of the FR945. I was thinking that TE was independent of watch and firmware.

nickk said:

what was an average heart rate for your easy run?

My goal for the run was a run in zone 3 in the recovery periods between sprints (based on %HRR, Garmin says it should be 145-159). I was running with two watches, one the FR610 connected with a Scosche Rhythm+ optical heart rate monitor (yellow in the graph) and one the FR945 with his own optical heart (blue in the graph). As you can see in the graph, both heart rate monitor agree.

rate monitor.

Usually the FR610 and the FR945 with the old watch firmware had similar aerobic training effect, but for this run it was different. The FR610 says: aerobic training effect 3.1 impacting (average heart rate 147 max hr 174). The FR945 says: primary effect base colour green.  Aerobic 3,7 impacting aerobic endurance. Anaerobic 2,1 maintaining anaerobic fitness. Exercise load 180 (average heart rate 148 max heart rate 174).

nickk said:

How high did you heart rate get during sprints?

The max hr during intervals were:

          FR945        FR610

1       162                161

2       160                162

3       164                164

4       169                168

5        173                171

6        170                170

7        171                 171

8        174                172

9        164                162

10     170                 173

11     170                 168

12     168                  166

nickk said:

Are you positive your max HR is correct? Did you get it in the lab or after a all out effort? How often, if ever, do you reach that number in your training? 

I never was in a lab. Max heart rate = 192 I had two years ago at the end of a 10 km race.

11 november 2018 during a half marathon I had average heart rate 176 max heart rate185.

18 may 2019 during another half marathon I had average heart rate 173 max heart rate 183.

I never reach the max heart rate of 192 in training, because I usually never go 100% in training and I usually don't do much anaerobic training. Usually during the hardest training sessions (intervals of 1 km or threshold run) I can reach 182-183, but I only reach this number once in a week.

19 jun 2019 I did a threshold test with the new Fr945 and it said: threshold heart rate = 175, that I believe it was correct because it matched the average run of the hal marathon that I did one month before (max heart rate in that run was 180, but I wasn't looking for my max heart rate. After the test I continued to run to complete my training and I run another km at average 177 heart rate).

I tried to do other two test, but after completing the step between 165 and 185 heart rate, the watch asked me to continue to run with heart rate between 180 and 195, but I was too tired and I had to stop the test. I avoided to do other tests because they are too painful and they don't fit good with my  usual training.

nickk said:

Also, people on the younger side, like below 30.

I'm 49 years old and when I do anaerobic work and fast tempo run for me are the hardest training, on the other side slow long run are confortable for me.

nickk said:

PS TE of 3.7 for 15 km run with 15 60-sec sprints sounds perfectly valid, even if your heart rate was in low aerobic zones most of the time.

I'm looking at training effect from the time of the FR610, and usually this kind of run gives me  a number in the range that the FR610 gave (3.1).

Yesterday I did another run (16km) and for the second time FR610 and FR945 gave very different training effect. I was still tired of the anaerobic work of sunday with the 60 seconds sprints (my perceived effort was a anaerobic TE=4), but I was with a friend who was running fast and I tried to run with him, but in the middle of the run,  after 1 km where my friend pushed a bit harder and I had an average heart rate = 176, I burned out and I had to slow down. It was 30°C (86°F) with sun and GarminConnect shows in his graph 12,8°C (55°F) with clouds. The FR945 reported avg hr 159 max heart rate 180 Aerobic TE 4,7 colour orange highly impacting lactate threshold, anaerobic TE0,5 no benefit.

The FR610 connected with the Scosche heart rate monitor  reported average 158 hr max hr 178 training effect 3,4 impacting aerobic. This is a huge difference 3,4 against 4,7.

My perceived effort was 4,7 because it was very warm and because in the middle of the run I burned out because probably I was tired of the workout of the day before. For me it was really hard to complete the run, and I was running with heart rate 170 at a pace that usually it's an easy run and where usually my heart rate is about 150. But in a day with normal temperature and if I was well rested, then it should be 3,4 correct. Maybe the FR945 considered the heart rate variability and noted that I was really tired, or the FR945 noted that it was really warm and that  the correct temperature was that showed by the internal sensor of the FR945 and not the  wrong temperature of GarminConnect?

nmyeti said:

Anyway the "cruise" and "recovery" portions of the run contribute to load and increased average heart rate, but i think the system over estimates the aerobic TE.

In conclusion, my opinion is that in my case without a coach and without lab test it's too difficult to find my correct max heart rate, my correct zone and do the threshold test of the FR945 is just too painful. I believe that for me it's better to look a bit at training effect and at what the FR945 suggests me in his advices of training load, but it's better to base my training on feeling.

Probably my max heart rate and my heart rate zones change a lot based on the season of the year (summer where I rest, or winter when I prepare race).

I set in the watch that it should find lactate threshold and max heart rate automatic , but if the watch can't do this, the risk that I set something wrong is too high so I can't rely on the suggestion of my watch (until the watch can recognize the correct heart rate zones alone).

I max out around 201 (recorded via chest strap on a hard effort) 

Averaged 184 for 1:49:41 on a half marathon aerobic race effort. 

I'm 43. So clearly 220-43 doesn't quite work out for me.

The aerobic portion of that run was pretty easy. The surges did get the HR pumping, but were not so hard to maintain. The recovery after the long interval greatly increased the average HR even going rather slow. 

Re: weather. Unfortunately, it's crap on Garmin. The watch gets it from Garmin Mobile on the phone. Where the app gets it from is a mystery to me, but it's definitely not one of the popular established choices. There are days when the weather it shows is off for my location (and I'm in New York City, can't get any closer to civilization). And there are days when it's completely off. If I can't get the weather right, everyone else should probably be even worse off.

However, while VO2 Max would be impacted since 945/MARQ are using heat adaptation, I'm not sure the same is true for TE. Likewise VO2 Max presumably gets more accurate with more runs. TE should be independent of that. It should drive solely off heart rate...

Honestly, this is where I have to admit I'm no longer sure what FB is doing: both you and Mirko should clearly be hitting your anaerobic energy system, especially Mirko with his recorded intervals at or above his LT, with subsequent recovery. 

I have been wondering for a while if anaerobic TE changed from when it was first introduced in Fenix 5. It got progressively harder to heat higher numbers. But I always felt it was just lazy wuss in me, overbinging on easy aerobic runs and not doing really hard, anaerobic stuff, really.

Now I'm questioning this self-loathing narrative  What's worse is if anaerobic TE is off, so goes the load balance and overall training load, both of which I happened to really-really like and which were one of big drivers of buying MARQ.

My race effort that i showed above was done on my 5x, so don't count that towards your assessment of the MARQ. I don't have a lot of problem getting anaerobic TE with the MARQ ever since i found that my profile had an incorrect max HR. Once i lowered this down to 201, i don't have an issue. My LTHR is 184, so anything that takes me above that and recovers below seems to get me some anaerobic TE

nickk said:

The watch gets it from Garmin Mobile on the phone. Where the app gets it from is a mystery to me

All the apps that I had in the phone were giving the right temperature for my location.

Another user of this forum Former Member told me to try the app 1Weather, and this gives for my location ARCO (TN) ITALY 15°C but now there are 30°C. It's the same error of the Garmin weather widget. If I select another location 30 km away MALCESINE (VR) ITALY it gives the correct temperature of 30°C.

Maybe Garmin takes his data from 1Weather or they are using the same bad weather station. I sent a mail to the 1Weather app developer.

I don't think this is how it works. The Garmin watch/app doesn't take weather data from any of the apps on your phone, but rather from a weather data service somewhere on the internets. It may be the same service used by 1Weather. It may be different. But whatever it is, it rarely matches the services used most often in the States and it doesn't adjust for humidity, wind, etc. So, the temperatures that you get, while right every now and then, don't really paint the whole picture.

This matches my experience as well. I typically try a sync before heading out the door. Sometimes the watch widget is close to my local weather station, others it is far off. It rarely matches the oneplus weather app on my phone.