Suggested workouts doesn't match load focus

I also experience very low anaerobic load, and a aerobic (way over) overload,  and yet no anaerobic trainings for my 21k plan

Jochem said:

My Load Focus is now completely off the chart. Why is this not in sync?

You have exceeded the sweet spot zones of both high aerobic and low aerobic.

At first glance, it looks like you have been exceeding the expected training load overall. Is this true? How is your training load doing? What is your load ratio?

I can imagine other possible reasons that could contribute further to biases in the focus allocation. For example:

- you have been over doing easy runs. For example, you ran base runs too fast and/or longer and they end up being rated tempo

- your anaerobic training end up being rated tempo (high aerobic)

Upon completion, how often does your workout label match the expected type?

Finally, I see the watch is not expecting a specific focus on anaerobic, since your anaerobic sweet spot zone seems to be starting from zero. What type of race are you training for?

Notes:

I have completed only 2 5k races with daily suggestions plans now so my own experience is a bit limited. The  training plans didn't quite succeed to balance the training focus despite having a coherent set of metrics and predictions. 

I noticed that the week structure of daily suggestions is always about the same. One, maybe two, threshold or above workout (s), one "long" run and the rest is filled with mostly short base runs, but also some times recovery or rest days to keep the training status, readiness, load, recovery, etc. and overall periodization aligned.

dizzzy said:

1) set the goal type to HR instead of Pace

This may be OK for sub-threshold intervals, but not for threshold and above. HR Lag, nature of Anaerobic Threshold and associated HR dynamics vs effort, etc.

dizzzy said:

2) set your zones right, so based on %LTHR or at least %HRR, not the default crap %MaxHR..

There is nothing crap about % MaxHR. In fact, this is the simplest and very effective way to set up zones, the only problem is to know your HR Max accurately... therefore %LTHR is a very good approach because it works well and is easier to get a good estimate for LTHR. %HRR is a bit more complex and works well, but has the same dependency on accurate HR Max and of course accurate Rest HR.

Jochem said:

my Load Balance tells me I should take a rest and pushing too hard.

I just saw that. That confirms my suspicion. When I look at your load balance chart, the watch is expecting a maximum training load around 600. How do I guess this? The total of the beginnings of each sweet zone should be close to the top range of your ideal training load. In your chart, I guessed 0 for anaerobic, about 400 for high aerobic and about 200 for low aerobic were the lower limit for each corresponding zone.

A the same time, you accumulated 128+853+430=1411 points for that period. So yeah, even if the evaluation is approximative, your went overboard.

Jochem said:

But I still get high intensity workout,

Your out of bounds situation is not necessarily a showstopper if other elements of training status and training readiness, etc. are not pushing the algorithm to avoid high intensity trainings. Maybe you started using this watch very recently, or started training seriously recently and you have not ramped up your training load "green zone" enough, in comparison with your potential, maybe...

My recommendation is:

- if your workout TE is matching your workout goal for each workout type, take it easy and focus on keeping your training load below the max,

- if you workout TE is not matching your workout goal, there is an issue with the metrics or training history.

Etupes25 said:

There is nothing crap about % MaxHR. In fact, this is the simplest and very effective way to set up zones, the only problem is to know your HR Max accurately...

Agreed! Ha, I was directly quoting the reddit poster. I'd been using MaxHR for years, based off of a failry reliable max HR.

I was just suggesting this in case the pace-based workouts OP had been working on had the pace "zones" misaligned with his HR zones, which was the concern.

Your insight here is really interesting. Do you know how Garmin goes about setting these pace-based workouts in accordance with HR zones? Given that training load is based on HR rather than pacing?

Garmin calculates anaerobic training load from your accelaration, not (only) from your HR. This way xou also get points for e.g. 10 second sprints.

The anaerobic workouts in the DSW are still prescribed by pace when you selected training by HR

 Correct, but still not the best for threshold workout, again because of lag and drift. Now, training with HR is not bad at all. Heck, this as the only way before GPS devices gave us speed info.

The point though is that training on the flat with pace helps with targeting steady effort intervals.

If users switch from pace to HR because pace targets do not seem right, the better thing to do is to address the problem with pace.