Relationship between Training Readiness and Race Day Widget

I love the suggested workout feature. I sometimes think it's made me a slave to my watch 

My assumption is that the suggested workouts are tailored based mostly on training load metrics (acute load, load focus, load ratio).

I doing think this is consistent with what Garmin states about Suggested Workouts - they say it is based on a number of metrics, including sleep, training load, v02max and more.  support.garmin.com/.../

Thanks for all the feedback.

I took a closer look on another Garmin support page, and it appears that Training Readiness *is* factored into daily suggestions when you're using the Primary Race Glance/Widget –

"Your Training Status, HRV Status, and Training Readiness will all contribute in managing your training volume and intensity to get you ready for race day."

https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=TW359dqkIVAI0OGRpakmT6

Still not sure how it's all working, but I had a pretty easy time with my last two runs (a base workout and a threshold workout) and my watch seems to have increased the duration for this weekend's long run and increased the duration for next week's threshold workout. I'm not working with a coach this cycle – and my finish times aren't my primary focus this fall – so I guess I'll just keep at it and see what happens. 

I'm using the daily suggestions now for 4 months, and the last 3 months my trainingstatus is productive. It really works, VO2Max increased a lot. The race widget is just a nice addition that tailors the daily sugggestions when getting closer to the race day, and creates a 3 or 4 stage training plan towards it. 

In the first (base) stage there's a lot of boring easy runs off course, but it gets better over time. I just love that i don't have to find a training plan and program every training like before.

Still i think the training readiness and suggestions are completely unrelated: on a day with very low training readiness i get a suggestions to do a VO2MAX training and the other way round. 

The way i used the training readiness is just to override in some cases the training suggestions, cause i found that doing a VO2MAX on a day with low training readiness was not a wise thing. :-). So for me training readiness is a good advisor. Basicly it's just: how do i feel..And Garmin was right in most cases..

Anyway, good luck on your marathons!

I'm still in the build phase, which is fine since I had two rough races in the spring and have been focusing more on strength training this summer than I have in the past.

That being said, I'm relieved to see that my long runs are actually quite long already (2+ hours) and next week's threshold workout is 1+ hours. Those seem like reasonable workouts 13+ weeks out from my first race of the fall.

Garmin release a short vid last week on this.  It doesn't directly answer your question, but it might help guide you to an answer. ("how does this work," is a great question.)

"Garmin® Race Widget - Train for your race."

https://youtu.be/hYy03rOFXVc

DEVELOPER58 said:

Still i think the training readiness and suggestions are completely unrelated

They are related because they share some metrics as components (HRV status, acute load, recovery time).

It is possible that training readiness is lower because of a poor sleep score, sleep history or stress history, while the training status is clear for training in the context of the training plan and periodization.

Vice versa, your training readiness could be high(er) despite recovery needs because of excellent other metrics, while the training plan includes a pre-programmed rest day, maybe before a hard upcoming workout.

I always take the metrics at their face value, but I don't always heed the recommendations. For example, recovery needs can be underestimated if your have activities (like strength training) that are not well estimated from an EPOC perspective.

We'll see how chronic load is incorporated moving forward, and whether it is effective at limiting chronic  injuries like inflammation, for example.

Thanks for the feedback.

I also received responses from Garmin that were helpful –

"Great question! Your Training Status, HRV Status, and Training Readiness are all considered. It isn't uncommon to have a suggested rest day even when you are well recovered (especially if there is a threshold run the following day)."

"Not wearing it all day may impact your HRV Status, but overall you should be ok as long as you're wearing it at night and during your activities. *The accuracy will increase if you wear it all day, but you should still see pretty good information."