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Faulty training status, Forerunner 955.

1022208

I have upgraded my Forerunner 935 about 4 months ago with a Forerunner 955 and came across multiple issues which render the Training Status widget useless for training. I was wondering if more people have had the same experience? The following issues occurred: 

Training Status:
Once the watch had gathered enough data to predict racetime, HR variability and training status. I started a 15 week training program for a half marathon. During this entire period my training status stayed on "Maintaining". In this period my endurance had gone up significantly, I felt really fit and come race day I broke my PB with ease. So it is safe to say that the training was effective but the Training Status did not reflect the process. 

My theory is that the Training Status is partly based on the Load Focus widget. It kept saying that based on my Load Focus I was "Maintaining" my fitness and I had to do more anaerobic training to increase my fitness. If this is the case it would make the whole Training Status widget completely useless for a half marathon or longer distance training, since the focus will be more on aerobic and threshold training.   

VO2Max Steady?:
During the whole training period my VO2max status kept saying "Steady" even though the graph showed a continuous incline. I went up about 4 points in total. I am really happy that the VO2max doesn't jump up and down with each run as much as it used to but a "Steady" status during 15 weeks of training with 4 points of VO2max increase just seems silly. The VO2max status does not reflect the VO2max measurements of the device. Again it seems that the status of the VO2max is also based on the Load Focus and not on the actual measurements.  

All in all the 955 has been a great companion during my training in providing HR data and GPS/Pace. But sadly in 4 months of running the Training Status, one of the cornerstones of the Garmin setup, has been not useful at all. I don't think it is a bug rather than what data the 955 software uses to determine the Training and VO2max status with. It seems that in both areas the software gives priority to calculation/prediction as to actual measurements in determining the status. I hope that whatever is causing this will be updated soon. 

Are there more people who have noticed this?

  • 0

    In my latest weeks, I passed from "stressed" to "overloaded".

    In between, I was very cooled with a very low value of HRV.

  • 0 in reply to Merlinox

    Good point! Since there are so many factors that can influence your HRV, it is really hard to say when it is caused by overtraining or other aspects in your life. I get why they take it into consideration regarding the Training Status, although it is a tricky one. During my training period it stayed within my 'normal' range, so it did't contribute to the Training Status. 

  • 0 in reply to 1022208

    What I can say is that the HRV went down in strict relation to my cooling status.

    The non-optimal breath engraved the "breath revelation" and increment the heart BPM.

  • 0

    Same here, I had to reset the watch after the update to 13.x in order to re align my HRV with the baseline. During the 3 weeks of HRV data collection, my training status was Productive but as soon as the HRV baseline was up (and balanced), it changed to Maintaining.

    I am training for a 10K and I can't understand VO2Max, nor race prediction time variations. They seem to be more influenced by software updates rather than physiological changes.

    Also noticed since beta 14.08:

    * Issues with Lactate threshold detection and had to deactivate MaxHR automatic detection (that seemed way too high)

    * And unexpected changes of running HR zones (default values based on %LTHR)

    3 days ago, the target loads for low and high aerobic suddenly went down although the acute load target is still increasing. This does not seem consistent

    All in all I agree with your conclusion, the FR955 is collecting accurate GPS and HR data but the algorithms on top of this are not yet stable enough to make the training status a reliable nor useful tool. Moreover corrections take very long time and are not explained...

    So, let's be patient...

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