Mixed Firstbeat Workout Messages. Do I rest or go harder?

There are multiple screens from the app being shown. Look under performance stats, training status and then load 

Thanks for confirming. I wear a F5+ all day and the 945 just for running. I was already wondering if this would mess up the new FB analytics. Although it didn't look like that, it's good to have an "official" confirmation. :-)

Thank you again for your response!  This answered my question completely.

By recovery score I just meant the “hours to next hard workout” metric that’s reported on the watch.  I also agree that the forerunner is a superior watch, especially for workouts.  For work I need to be immediately available.  The Apple Watch untethers me from the phone. 

Hmmm, that's actually disappointing to me.  Like the OP, I would imagine that the algorithm would take into account my sleep time and as much other (lifestyle) physiological data to evaluate my recovery state.  Even potentially doing a quick stress (HRV-based) test every morning.  I find that would be the true value of an integrated platform and this way I would never ever wear my Apple watch throughout the day ;)

I think the more important question is whether there have been any true outcome studies published using this particular algorithm.  Basing ones individual training protocol on a non published,  proprietary method,  is troublesome - at least to me.

I wouldn't be surprised at all to, someday, see integration between, for example, stress tracking and sleep quality tracking and some form of training guidance. It's certainly something that some rather influential industry voices have been talking about and asking for recently. At the same time, that opens up a whole can of worms related to the different ways that substantial groups of real people use their watches.

An interesting bit of Garmin/Firstbeat history is the fact that around the Fenix 2 / FR620 generation (which was only like 5 short years ago, jeez this industry moves fast), recovery feedback was more of a package idea. The recovery feedback concept was called "Recovery Advisor" and it had two types of feedback.

The first was the EPOC-based Recovery Time, the countdown timer that predicted how long it would take to fully bounce back from you last workout and residual unsatisfied recovery demands from previous workouts. The second part of the Recovery Advisor feedback concept was a performance test of sorts. About 6-10 mins into your run you would get a buzz and note on your screen telling you how well you were actually recovered - then it would continue to tell you how well you were performing along the way relative to your normal performance baseline. The recovery feedback part of this feature (good, fair, excellent, etc) was dropped after those devices. .

I think it just wasn't particularly granular enough to be meaningful in most cases - and of course there are other reasons your current performance might be better or worse than normal besides your degree of recovery prior to your run. BUT, that type of feedback still lives on today in the form of Performance Condition, which is actually one of what I think is the more interesting, but under utilized metrics that Garmin runners have access to these days. 

These sorts of independent reviews are always welcome, although I'm having a little trouble envisioning what a meaningful investigation of this particular piece of feedback would look like. It's always presented as a guideline and not a strict protocol. I guess you could argue (as I sometimes do) that the countdown timer is overly specific, meaning  - for example - does it really matter in any truly meaningful sense if you have 10 or 5 or 2 hours left on your timer at the start of new training session? For me, and I think most people, the value of the Recovery Timer is an instructive reminder of the relationship between homeostasis disturbance and recovery... and what kinds of efforts create a bigger need for recovery than others. 

I think you hit the nail on the head and that's why training and recovering is so nebulous.  1 vs 3 hours is not meaningful.  1 vs 16 is!  Maybe a % recovered would be more appropriate? 

For me, in my own selfish world, I want a device to tell me how hard I should go and how long to recover to eek out every morsel of training benefit.  I'm extremely time crunched, have an erratic schedule, and at 44 I'm slower to recover than I used to be.  Any device that can allow me to get a small edge would be worth the investment.

There are oodles of training plans, but they're not worthwhile if you're not recovered.  Coaches are great at listening to how you feel, but without objective metrics it's tough to know how hard you can push yourself without blowing up.  I may feel crappy in the morning but an extra cup of coffee can power the workout.  I can do it, but should I?  

Really it comes down to "am I recovered enough to take on this next workout?" and "am I so recovered I should ramp up the next workout?"  My workout may be scheduled for tomorrow, but if I'm at work until 2am and sleep until 7am is that enough recovery?  

I think everyone likes the idea put out by other vendors (Whoop, Quora) that 24 stress effects recovery, but nobody seems to have trial validated results (to bjrmd's point).  But I don't think that anyone's going to openly publish a RCT when there's so much money in finding the secret sauce.  I think we all can appreciate the recovery difference between an afternoon on the couch and an afternoon doing yard work and practicing soccer with the kids.  Meshing this with the recovery of sleep and the strain of a workout and putting it all in one place would be spectacular!

Bringing it full circle, this is why when this metric came up I was trying to understand what it meant.  Am I under recovered or to recovered?  Should I do more or less?  Will it work for me?  I suppose time will tell but I wanted to understand the conflicting information.

Again, HermanB thank you for engaging in the conversation.  It's been very helpful.

Yup.  I just made a composite single image to keep it simple.