Options for a Nordic Walking activity

I've been using Garmin Forerunners to track my running activities since the Forerunner 305 model, so many years and multiple generations. I know the watches and their capabilities very well. 

Recently, I've been affected by vertigo and not been able to run due to instability that accompanies the vertigo. As soon as I no longer required a cane to walk around, I started looking for an aerobic activity that I could do that would provide enough stability to prevent me from falling. I came across Nordic Walking and decided to try it.

I was hoping that I could track my Nordic Walking activities on my Garmin with a similar level of detail that I use to track my running. On checking my watch's available activities, I found that there was no Nordic Walking activity. Big disappointment. I mean, the watch has Cross Country Skate Skiing! On checking the Garmin forum, I saw that many others have faced this situation with mixed results. I was determined to look into the situation deeper than others who have posted about options for adding Nordic Walking to their Garmins. Here are some of the things I found out along the way toward setting up Nordic Walking on my Garmin. I hope that they are helpful to you if you wish to do the same.

• There is no Nordic Walking activity option on the Garmin 965, or on any other Garmin that I've heard about.
• This means that you have a couple of options if you want to record your Nordic Walking activities on your Garmin.
  • Record your Nordic Walking activities under an activity that is not Nordic Walking.
  • Copy another activity and rename it Nordic Walk so that your Nordic Walking activities will have a home. This option gives you the possibility to add additional data screens so that you can record exactly the data you want to record about each Nordic Walking activity. 
• I recommend the option of copying an existing Garmin activity and renaming it Nordic Walk. I ended up trying six different activities as the base for my Nordic Walk activity. The six activities I copied and tried to adapt as Nordic Walking were:
  • Run
  • Cross Country Classic Skiing
  • Cross Country Skate Skiing
  • Walk
  • Hike
  • Snowshoe
• My experimentation with copying these six activities and trying to adapt them to be Nordic Walk taught me that all Garmin activities are not created equal. Here are the biggest differences and my thoughts on their importance.
  • Only Nordic Walk activity I created from the Run activity displays its mileage in the 965’s Last Week glance and also in the widget that can be displayed on the watch’s face.
    • The good side of this is that you can keep track of how many miles of Nordic Walking you do in a week. For me, this is a very big plus as Nordic Walk activities created from the other five activities don’t display their cumulative mileage anywhere.
    • The bad side is that, if you also run, your mileage displays will be the sum of your running and Nordic Walking for the week. This may or may not bother you.
  • If you plan to do Nordic Walk intervals and want to use the Interval option under Training to make it happen, only Run, Cross Country Classic Skiing, Cross Country Skate Skiing, and Snowshoe offer this option.
    • You can do intervals in Walk and Hike, but you have to do them as laps. This means you have to press the lap button manually at the end of each interval. Also, you won’t be able to sort the intervals in Connect. This was too much of a negative for me to consider using either Walk or Hike as the basis for my Nordic Walk activity.
  • Different data screens on the watch that display while the activity is in progress. The default data screens for each activity can be customized and new data screens can be added. My experimentation showed me that not all of the fields listed in my 965 owner’s manual can be added to every activity. There are too many exceptions to list here.
  • A different set of data that displays in Garmin Connect after the activity has been saved. It doesn’t appear that a user can do much to alter what displays. Here’s a summary of how the different options display.
    • Run has by far the most data displaying for each activity.
    • The following fields display for all six activities in Connect: Distance, Resting Calories, Active Calories, Total Calories Burned, Training Effect, Aerobic, Anaerobic, Exercise Load (For unknown reasons, Cross Country Classic Skiing displayed a much higher Exercise Load than other activities for the same course.), Average Heart Rate, Max Heart Rate, Time, Moving Time, Elapsed Time, Total Ascent, Total Descent, Minimum Elevation, Maximum Elevation, Average Pace, Average Moving Pace, Avg Stride Length, Avg Vertical Ratio, Avg Vertical Oscillation, Avg Ground Contact Time, Intensity Minutes Moderate, and Intensity Minutes Vigorous.
    • The following fields display only for Run: Stamina: Beginning Potential, Stamina: Ending Potential, Stamina: Minimum Stamina, Average Power, Maximum Power, Run Time, Walk Time, Idle Time, Workout Intervals: Run Time, Workout Intervals: Run Distance, and Workout Intervals: Run Pace.
    • The following fields display for some of the activities, but not others: Recovery Heart Rate, Best Pace, Avg Grade Adjusted Pace, Cadence, Maximum Cadence, Steps.
      • For me, Best Pace, Avg Grade Adjusted Pace, and Cadence are useful data points to have. Only Run has all three.

For me, copying Run and making it the Nordic Walk activity is the best option because I want to track my miles and I like having all the data. (Though I must admit, it is kind of cool to have the activity icon have the poles. However, it does not appear that one can change the activity icon after copying and renaming the activity.) You should make up your own mind which activity you want to copy and make into your Nordic Walk activity.

Hey Garmin: After all this, isn't it time to add Nordic Walking as a default activity?