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Garmin heart rate zones are inconsistent with my race result

9399688
over 1 year ago

According to the definition, I shouldn't be able to run within the maximum zone for more than a few minutes. However, I can stay in my threshold zone for nearly 60 minutes. Surprisingly, during my 10K run yesterday, I remained in the maximum zone for 96% of the time. This has led me to question the accuracy of my heart rate zones recorded by my Garmin device. What are your thoughts on this?

The temperature was 22 C.

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    I think it depends on which definition you use to set your zones.

    I set my zones based on my LTHR (172). I raced a 10k two weeks ago and spent the entire race (save the first two minutes) in Z5. It was an all out effort and I had to really dig deep but I finished in 40:00. If the LTHR rule of thumb is that it’s your ~1 hour pace then I don’t see the issue. In my example I ran slightly faster than my LTHR pace for 40 minutes  

    Plus, if you feel that your zones aren’t set correctly you can always change them. 

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    It looks like your maximum heart rate is not set properly (setting the zones based on max HR is the default). By default Garmin uses the common formula 220-age, but that's not reliable and gives too low results for many (but on the other hand, makes it also "safer" as a default).

    It would probably be useful to do a max HR test to find a more realistic maximum (there are many test you can do yourself on the web, if you have no special heart conditions, etc.). And as already mentioned, you can change the HR zones to be set based on the anaerobic threshold by doing the guided lactate threshold test (that's what I'm using also). But if you do that, the zones and their meaning change slightly (for example, the threshold zone becomes narrower, as the threshold is known with greater accuracy).

    But regardless of whether you use the lactate threshold zones, I suggest you find out your max HR. It's also the main factor in getting accurate VO2max estimates.