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Cross-country skiing?

Former Member over 8 years ago

It seems like the 235 doesn't have a cross-country skiing app built in. Is this correct? I've been eagerly awaiting the Vivoactive HR to drop here in Canada, but I have to admit that I like the form factor of the 235 more. I cycle (have an Edge), run some when I can't get on my bike, and cross-country ski every single chance I get when there's snow. So it's of primary importance to me that my watch do a great job with skiing, as messing about changing activity types after the fact and all that just isn't going to cut it for me.

With the 235 the same price as the Vivoactive HR at the moment, I'm wondering if that will work for me or if I should just stick with my original plan and get a Vivoactive HR.

Thanks,
- Andrew.

0 schinder over 8 years ago

It kind of depends on what you expect of it. If the app on my Epix is the same as the app on the Vivoactive (probably), then it really isn't doing anything that specific to cross country skiing. During the 4 days last winter when there was enough snow here to go out skiing, it recorded the usual stuff, speed, distance, heart rate, estimated calories. It also recorded "cadence", which I personally don't find very useful at all. I don't know if you expect it to do more than that, and just using a 235 on running (is there an other?) mode should be sufficient. (I used to use an Edge 705 for skiing, and that was adequate.) But if I remember right it does automatically upload as "cross country skiing" on Garmin Connect, so there is that advantage to the app.

The problem with both the Vivoactive HR and the 235 for skiing is that you're either going to get heart rate from the optical sensor or be able to see it easily, but not both. If you wear it on the outside of your clothing like I do my Epix, you're going to need to wear an HR belt of some sort.

0 Former Member over 8 years ago

Thanks for your helpful response. I realized after typing my question that maybe I should have asked a slightly different one and you've touched on that.

Last winter for a while I had a Microsoft Band 2. It only had two GPS-enabled modes: cycling and running. There was no way to change the exercise type after the fact. Therefore, my skiing was either polluting my running or my cycling stats.

With the Garmin watches, I've wondered if the different modes on the watch actually set the watch up differently or not. I mean, are they capturing different metrics, the same metrics at different rates, etc. If I have two Vivoactive HRs and I set one up in running and one in cross-country skiing, then change the running activity to cross-country skiing in connect.garmin.com, do they the display identical metrics or will they differ due to the fact that the on Vivoactive HR thought it was running at the time?

Is Garmin smart enough to change calories burned to match the activity after the fact? I think so as when I use my Edge 305 for running, once I change the activity afterward from cycling to running, it changes the calories burned.

I assume the Strava integration will require me to change running->cross country skiing both in Garmin Connect and Strava, just like when I run with my Edge I have to change the activity in both places after syncing.

Regarding the HRM, I have a chest strap so I can use that with the watch when I want to.

The only hardware component the 235 lacks over the Vivoactive HR is a barometric altimeter. I expect that to be just as much of an issue/non-issue for skiing as it would be for running. Since really the apps are only software, it's a shame Garmin is choosing to differentiate their watches based purely on fairly arbitrary software implementations like this. However, if in the end switching a 235-based activity from running to cross-country skiing after the fact yields identical results, I'll have to consider more carefully whether I'm willing to deal with that for a form factor I like more, plus the extra running stats would would be nice to have.

0 schinder over 8 years ago

I've only used my Epix for cycling (both road and mountain), hiking, and cross country skiing. I don't really notice any fundamental difference between the modes. Of course, cycling picks up cadence and power from sensors which the others don't. But calorie burn, etc., all seem reasonably the same. The major difference is what fields are going to be displayed in what order, and that's really all I want from the different apps.

So far as calorie burn goes, those are estimates, not measurements. There's a correlation between heart rate and calorie burn for a range of heart rates during aerobic activities, and I doubt they try to tune the algorithms for specific sports, except maybe for running. The error bars seem to be large. I use several different web sites and OS X apps to record my activities, and many of them make their own calorie computations (Strava, for example). Garmin Connect always just takes the number that the device records at the end of the activity for all of the devices I've used (Edge 705, Edge 800, Fenix 1, Epix), and doesn't seem to recompute. The different calorie numbers from the same HR track always lie in a range which is hundreds of calories wide, so I don't take any of the numbers very seriously. I watch my scale and don't bother much with trying to estimate calorie intake or burn.

Strava does not take cross country skiing (which they call "Nordic skiing") that seriously, since they're primarily swim/bike/run. It doesn't show calories, doesn't compute a "suffer score", and no segments if you're into that. Garmin Connect actually does a better job.

0 Former Member over 8 years ago

I just changed an activity in Garmin Connect from cycling -> running -> cross-country skiing, and the calorie estimate didn't change. I am aware of the fact that it's an estimate, but for some reason I thought the point of having all those specific sports on the Vivoactive was more than just which fields are shown on your watch.

In the end I guess energy used is directly related to heart rate, and if my heart's beating ant 160bpm I'm burning the same energy whether I'm skiing or running.

I'm late to getting on the Strava bandwagon and really only find it useful for cycling so far. I guess I could just disconnect Strava from Garmin Connect for the winter while I'm not cycling anyway.