Hello,
I was wondering about the usefulness of the VO2 max feature on the Venu 3 in general. Firstly, it can only be used during outdoor activities, and secondly, it requires at least 70% of your max heart rate if I'm not mistaken as it attempts to "guess" your VO2max from your pace and your heart rate, and that's it... which means the only way to realistically measure your VO2 max is to go running outdoors, cause you would have to be walking battlepace to come remotely close to 70% of your max heart rate. Now I typically go running through the woods 2-3 times a week where satellite coverage probably is not that great. I only noticed that today when my pace jumped from 6/km to 5:20/km within 10 seconds without me noticably speeding up or slowing down, and my overall pace for this kilometer was at 5,35/km. I'm also writing this cause I started running maybe 3 months ago and my VO2 max went up surprisingly fast from 39 to 45 over the 2 months when my fitness level had increased to the point where I could run 5km in under 30 minutes without feeling destroyed afterwards (I do this entirely for my overall fitness and health, so I'm not training for the next triathlon. So I may shoot for 10km, but that's not the point I'm trying to make anyway ;-) ).
Also, my resting heart rate has decreased from 65+ to 55 and below. I even hit a resting heart rate of 52 occasionally, and my lowest pulse in any given night now typically hovers around 50. None of this is surprising considering I used to do alot of high intensity sports when growing up (between the age of 9 -19/20 I played both soccer and badminton on a professional level, and my lowest pulse at 19 was at 43, which the cardiologist wasn't too happy about but which I've read is not so uncommon in athletes). I hold a PhD in biology (I'm 39 now btw), so I know that muscle memory / epigenetics are probably the most likely explanation for my ability to seemingly rapidly adapt to going back to doing more sports.Now, what is starting to really annoy me is, that over the last weeks my VO2 max has consistently gone back down from 45 to 43 over the last couple of weeks (going on 42 after my latest run today) while simultaneously my resting heart rate keeps decreasing, I sleep better. It is probably entirely coincidental that it jumped to 45 when my wife and I chose another running track, which happened to be around a large lake with next to no trees instead of the woods we usually choose as the forest is alot closer to our home and especially in summer just more feasible (I'm not such an fanatical runner that I would go outside and even try at 30°C+, so I typically run before work after dropping off my wife at her workplace).
Most recently, I just can't shake the feeling that I'm being trolled by my Venu 3 anymore, cause after each running activity through the woods the watch tells me that this activity helped increasing my VO2max, only to then see that it actually decreased. So, according to Garmin I did something that improves my VO2max, and the end result is that it decreases, while every other metric points towards the contrary, such as it getting harder and harder for me to even hti the 150 intensity minutes or my consistently decreasing resting heart rate. Last run I even hit another record when I ran both my fastest kilometer and fastest mile, and naturally, despite this activity supposedly helping me to improve my VO2 max, VO2 went down instead. Now, I read alot that people shouldn't obsess over their VO2max as it is just one metric out of many, but a) I acutally hate running (always have, it always was the least favorite part of both soccer and badminton training when when we went running, in part because I have a tendency to run faster and faster as I become more fit, so I never get that endorphine high everyone is talking about, so VO2 was my way of motivating myself that I kept improving), but what is the use of a feature when it doesn't work when you're running through an area where signal strength is low? Is this any better on the more expensive watches, or is their ability to actually track where you are as bad? I know the new Samsung Galaxy Watch comes out with a dualband GPS, which is likely alot more accurate, so I'm wondering what Garmin is cooking up to counter that.
I must admit that golfing isn't one of my hobbies, and hiding previously free features behind the now premium connect+ service (such as the ability to share a live activity with friends and they could follow your progress, now hidden behind a subscription service, no thank you, I don't need it that bad) don't really compel me to stay in the Garmin sphere (guess I'm not superfan enough for that), or the option to buy an outdated scale (no word on an Index 3 yet, right?) or a heart rate band to give more accurate readings. There are other companies that offer the same with better interconnectability than Garmin. Either way, the real question is: Are there any plans to improve the algorithm, or is this an issue that just can't be mitigated on a software basis, and this is a hardware issue that can't be helped other than by switching to a different health tracking device?.