Hi guys,
Not a question but some work around ideas for those who have noticed that their beloved instinct has been intentionally knee-capped by the manufacturer.
I do love my Instinct Solar for many reasons, the battery time being one thing, but also simply the look and the fact that does only have a monochrome display. However, what I really hate is that for the price it costs (almost 400 EUR) you could expect it to have VO2Max measurement and Running Dynamics support.
I am assuming (like other's have) that product cannibalization with Garmin running lines or license fees are to blame. But Garmin also has to consider the price point issue from a brand reputation point of view. If they did it to protect the higher priced Running lines, it would sort make sense, but a cheap 150 EUR Garmin Forerunner has those features, why not a higher priced Instinct? It just doesn't make sense. It's pretty strange one does feel jibbed, and it looks to me that someone didn't think about the product portfolio and positioning hard enough.
Anyway, because I wanted a solution for this, I started using Runalyze.com which calculates the VO2Max based on your runs and syncs with Garmin, Withings, Polar and others. It also is a veritable quantified-self nirvana actually does a lot more than that, such as calculate fatigue and fitness and a lot of other sport science metrics. If you ever wanted a dashboard for all your body and health data, this is it, and: it's free, but I recommend paying the measly 2,50 EUR/month to donate to this amazing project that basically makes Strava look like a small toy in comparison.
While I do feel cheated by Garmin for not getting VO2Max on my Instinct, I also heard a bunch of people questioning the validity of these measurements anyway, which why I started using something else as well. So this isn't an idea to get the missing VO2max metric for the Instinct in a different way, but rather if you want to get more in-depth into learning how to improve fitness from a physiology point of view that may be more effective than VO2max to begin with. Check out the HRV4training app which measures your Heart Rate Variability with your camera's flash and camera, very reliably to get a real view of your physiology, HRV and RMSSD (Root Mean Sum of Squared Distance) and other data points, by taking measurements in the morning and tracking development over time. This is another cheap option for a one time app price of around 11 EUR. The app allows your to track and analyse data over time with lots of correlation tools and a very detailed blog by its creator and also syncs with Strava.
To be honest, most of the measurements we take on watches may be questionable anyway, but psychologically they do keep you going, regardless of if there is some pseudo-science involved. So not having VO2max was really a downer not because I was missing an important scientific data point about my fitness, but because I was missing something to motivate me to keep going. Using these two services has helped me replace this, full-well knowing that I just love looking at metrics and stats and reports about my physiology as being half the fun.
Hope some of you disappointed about the missing VO2max find this useful to still track fitness metrics in a meaningful way.
Happy running,
Alexander
