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Inconsistent race estimates and training suggestions

I have entered a race in my calendar, a trail marathon of 42k and 1500hm elevation gain. I have entered a time goal of 5 hours. My flat road marathon PB is 3:58, the watch currently gives 4:10 as marathon prediction.

Now when I go to this race in the race calendar on my watch, it shows the goal time of 5 hours, and above that a time of 3:59:44. What is that time? Is that the time that the watch thinks I can run that race? It seems the watch is not aware what kind of a race it is.

The watch also says to this race: "It's important to include weekly long runs in your training to improve your fitness and lower your race estimates". This is also inconsistent with my current training load as I do 1-2 long runs every week and the watch actually says in the Load Focus that I do too much light aerobic work. Now what, should I do more or less long runs?

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Etupes25 over 1 year ago +1

peterdb said:
Now what, should I do more or less long runs?

The watch is not as smart as you think. First, these "notes" cannot take into account all scenarios across the relevant metrics for an individual…

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0 Etupes25 over 1 year ago

peterdb said:
Now what, should I do more or less long runs?

The watch is not as smart as you think. First, these "notes" cannot take into account all scenarios across the relevant metrics for an individual, times the details of a given race/course. So they are generic.

In your case, things look pretty consistent. The watch is seeing a long run and generically says your need to include weekly long runs, ... which you actuall do since you have a low aerobic "focus". BTW, having some imbalance in the training focus for a specific race is not bad at all. Training sweet spots vary between an ultra-run and track events!

Follow the daily suggestions.

peterdb said:
Now when I go to this race in the race calendar on my watch, it shows the goal time of 5 hours, and above that a time of 3:59:44. What is that time?

Did you specify the course in the calendar event? I have seen, for flat races, more realistic estimates when a specific data and course are entered. Typically in my experience with 5ks, the race specific prediction in the race glance is 15-20" slower than the "ideal" 5k prediction in the performance glance. Your mileage will vary.

Even if you entered the course in the event, youi should have low expectations about the accuracy of the prediction because of the elevation for your race on trails.

Depending on the mix of road and trail you have in your training history, the data used for the predictions will have a bias.

If you had a lot of road runs, your will see optimistic results for a long, steep trail run. If you had a lot of trail runs, but not as steep, long or technical as your race, you will also see optimistic results. The closer your training history is to your actual race, the better of course.

But then the issue is when you train on trails and hills, metrics like Training Effect are not working well and it is harder to achieve the training effect of certain workouts (anaerobic, in particular).