Seriously… Race Predictor Useless

1439943 said:

Also my lactate threshold pace is still stuck at 7:30 pace, how can that be?

but you say you re-test it regularly. How can it be the same all the time?

Exactly my point… it moves maybe 2-3 seconds, sometimes getting better, sometimes worse even after better performances. My lactate HR goes form 165 to 175 and anywhere in between…

Well Race Predictor is kinda useless, as many other data from these sport watches (not only Garmin but also other brands). I have the impression that they bring out all this data for marketing purposes, but in the end it is simply not realiable.

For example: Sleep tracking is unreliable, because the watch is only able to "guess" our sleeping time and especially our sleeping phases.

Training readiness is useless, because it is partially based on sleep.

Body Battery is useless, because it almost never exactly reflects how I really feel.

Training status is useless, because it only relies on heart rate to determine how hard your workout has been.

Step counter also useless, etc...

And lets not talk about the optical HR, which is notoriously unreliable by itself!!

Currently I do not keep any data in Garmin Connect execpt Stress (which seems to be quite reliable, especially when I have an impending flu, etc...) and the 7 day summary, that is all...

So I can understand your frustration, considering that these watches are not cheap, but you have to take into consideration that they are simply watches and can only use various algorithms to determine all the (useless) data.

To conclude all this, I give you another example of this absurd data:

My PB in running is very very similar to yours: 5k 18:40      10k 38:38   lactate threshold 03:58 min/km   lactate HR 167

YET my Race Predictor says 5k 16:58     10k 35:46  which is really WAY beyond my actual running capacity!!!

First world problems! ♀️

Are you for real? We’re on a Garmin forum talking about a £500-900 series of watches that don’t deliver on their core functionality… you’ve taken the time to create an account, log in and post a reply… if I was standing in the middle of a war torn 3rd world country and commenting like this then you’d have a point to make

But since we're on a forum and you've paid your hard earned money on a race time prediction watch, I will help you with a possible answer to your "problem".

https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=HUB4yrzJkg1BbgmozWkBm7

Garmin claims that these predictions are ESTIMATED based on your VO2max ESTIMATE (which is... drum roll please... ESTIMATED by the watch). So it's no surprise that you're faster (or some people may be slower as well). Cause your actual VO2max on any given day might drastically differ from an estimation of your watch.

In a race there's also adrenaline produced by the body. Competition plays a big role too. So you might be faster cause of these factors as well.

So be happy that you're faster than the prediction and live on.

Interesting!

I wonder if you're better off using just a stop watch on the track and a journal.

Core functionality for me is GPS (since I don't run on tracks) and general sports tracking, the rest is mostly useless/unreliable/marketing gimmick in my opinion.

Me pasa lo mismo. Las predicciones de Stryd se ajustan bastante más a mis resultados

Ran an 8k today 3 minutes faster than Garmin predicted.