Just looking for some guidance or other experience.
Background - I'm 43, do a mix of elliptical, running and cycling. RHR is in the mid-40s (currently 46, but generally 43-48 for almost a decade now). I was obese growing up, lost weight 20 years ago, and then went vegan and got very dedicated and consistent with fitness in 2011. Done century rides, marathons, and lots of shorter distance stuff. Almost never missed a day of cardio in a decade. I've definitely slowed down in the past year due to a few things (hip injury), but still going, sweating, breathing hard and maintaining my weight and ability to push power.
It seems like no matter what I do, my watch/Connect generally tells me I'm unproductive or maybe maintaining. And this actually pre-dates the slowdown I mentioned above, including happening in a time when I was doing regular sprinting interval runs (4-6 miles total, w/ 4-6x 1min sprint/2min recovery) on top of plenty of other daily cardio and weight work.
I just did an interval run with all out sprints, and it still said zero anaerobic effect. I was in Zone 4 and even Zone 5 for about a quarter of the time. Before that, I did 40 min of cycling on the trainer (in 90 degree heat!) with some climbs, and HR getting into the 150s a couple of times, with an average of 136 (Zone 3 for me).
I'm not looking to cheat on the Zones just so it tells me I'm doing justice to my training, but I'm super frustrated to see that a genuine effort doesn't seem to matter, and think my zones are just not right. It takes a lot to get my heart up over 140, so a 155-165 HR effort is a good clip for me (feels like when I'd get to the 170s/180s a decade or two ago). My cardiac condition is something I'm proud of, but it seems like it's working against me on Connect, which is just weird.
I played around with them recently, going from %MaxHR (202, according to Garmin) to %LT (167, per Garmin), which set them all too high for me (like Zone 2 was up around 160, which is def not true).
Right now, I've set:
Z1 - 92bpm / 55%
Z2 - 105 / 63
Z3 - 125 / 75
Z4 - 142 / 85
Z5 - 155-202 / 93-121%
What do you all think? Based on effort, this feels right to me, or more right than the MHR settings, but still doesn't seem to matter for training effect, which doesn't seem right.
