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Training Effect / Exercise Load - very low for hiking?

5767025
21 days ago

My exercise load, used to calculate training effect, recovery time and a lot of other stuff, is very low for hiking and walking activities, relative to running, cycling and everything else.

Typical example:

Type Distance Time Ascent Garmin Primary Benefit Garmin Exercise Load Strava Relative Effort
Run 7.3km 0h43m 34m Base 104 18
Hike 31.2km 6h30m (moving), 8h (total) 902m Base 54 81

The run was easy and mostly flat, mainly in HR zone 3. The next day I felt fully recovered.

The hike was a strenuous all day hike with a lot of climbing (in the rain). It was mainly in HR zones 1 and 2, but had more time in zone 3 than the run. The next day I was wiped out.

According the Garmin's Exercise Load the run was almost twice as strenuous as the hike, and also had a much longer recovery time.

On the other hand, Strava's Relative Effort, which seems to be a similar metric, showed the hike to be more than four times as strenuous as the run.

I see the same every time. Is this normal? Do Garmin not respect we hikers or is hiking much easier than it appears? :-)

  • 0 20 days ago

    The Garmin Training Effect and Exercise Load estimate peak EPOC, basically the effect on the cardio-vascular system (which can be estimated by measuring heart rate). Hiking and walking often mainly cause muscular fatigue, which is more difficult to measure. 

    Another thing affecting the scores is that even if you occasionally get your HR up during hiking and walking, it's followed by easier periods, during which your cardio-vascular system recovers (your muscles, not so much). That's why those zone 3 peaks during hiking don't give as much load as running mostly in zone 3.

    Here's one paper describing the EPOC estimate in Training Effect: https://www.firstbeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/white_paper_training_effect.pdf

    And (being also an avid backpacker) I too would like Garmin to come up with a metric that also takes muscular fatigue in long lower effort activities into account. But I understand it's a difficult match. If you have connected your account to Runalyze, its TRIMP metric seems to take low-effort activities better into account. But it underestimates high-intensity activities in my experience.