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Training effect 5.0, perceived effort more like 7/10?

30strailrun
over 5 years ago

Hi, 

Some background first: Got my 945 3 weeks ago and have done about 3 runs a week since then, which is normal for me. I only run on trails, and 90% of the time these go more or less uphill or downhill.

I feel Garmin's training effect tends to give too high scores compared to my perceived effort (mostly), but I might be wrong. Today I ran a 12km in about an hour at an average HR of 166, which is in the middle of my zone 4 (Lactate threshold based zones) It gave me a 5.0 aerobic TE, while I'd say my perceived effort was around 7 throughout. I had to slow down a little in the steepest parts of the course to stay out of zone 5, but overall I felt good throughout the run. (One out of my three weekly runs are like this or slightly easier, the others are significantly shorter, but still minimum zone 3.)

Had it been a race I'd probably have tried to stay in zone 4 until the final 20 minutes, at which time I'd go to low zone 5 and increase gradually to spend every ounce of energy by finish. That's the kind of run I thought I had to do to get a 5.0TE, but I might be very wrong - in which case I'd be very interested in an explanation and advice. 

Thanks! 

Tm

  • 0 over 5 years ago

    It sounds like your zones are inaccurate. You might want to retest your LTHR and max HR.

  • 0 over 5 years ago

    Many of the Firstbeat metrics are based on % of maxHR, even if you use LTHR as your zone setting method. You may want to check this in particular, rather than using the age-based default.

    Also, the Trail Running activity doesn't generate a VO2Max datapoint. And the watch uses your VO2Max as a baseline for many other metrics. With a new watch, you may want to track a Running activity (which does generate a VO2Max datapoint) to create a solid baseline - pick the smoothest trail you can for this.

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to mcalista

    Thanks.

    I haven't actually done a test of my max HR. I just set it to the max I've reached during my runs, which was 189, in january.

    The watch has recorded a VO2Max, because I log all my trail runs using the Running activity (Not sure what the difference is?). I also did my LTHR test using the running activity on trails. 

    I would have thought Garmin took the altitude variations into consideration in the metrics, but you're saying I should do these tests again on a "flat" course? 

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to 30strailrun

    If you log all your trail-runs as regular runs this will result in a crap VO2Max and mess up all the other results. When you run your heart rate will be matched against your pace, not factoring in elevation gain or anything else. My recommendation would be to log all your trail runs as trail runs and do a regular run every now and then which you log as regular run. This will improve your data a lot, I experienced the same thing. 

    When I used running for trail runs my VO2Max would go down to 45, while I have a VO2Max of around 60 when I run flat tarmac.

  • 0 over 5 years ago

    The difference between a running and a trail run activity is the fact, that trail run does not affect you VO2max. This is because on trails you are usually slower than on a flat course and your VO2max estimation and also the training effect depend on the relation of speed and heartrate (% of HRmax). The slower you are at a given heartrate (or the higher the heartrate is at a given pace), the lower the VO2max becomes and the higher the training effect is. On a flat course it is easier and more reliable to calculate this relation. On very technical trails your speed sometimes is very low (and HR may be high), even with not much change in altitude so the calculation would be very inacurate. Hope this makes sense...
    So if you want a more acurate calculation of your VO2max, only use the running activity on a flat course and otherwiese use trail running.

  • 0 over 5 years ago

    Thanks all for your replies. Very clarifying. I'm going to try using the trail running activity for a few runs now and see how it affects my stats. But I might return to using the running activity if the watch doesn't record my progress well enough using trail running, as the motivation I get from seeing progress is worth more to me than an accurate VO2Max.

    I see there is a setting for 3D speed and distance on the trail running activity. Will turning these on affect any firstbeat calculations? My courses usually have 2-300 meters total ascent.