Running Fitness Metrics - Strava, Garmin, Training Peaks, Stryd, runbritainrankings.com

I also look forward to possible running challenges in 2021.

Subscriber count at time of upload: 1314

[tjaartvanderwalt]

Hello Tim
The moment I got a notification about this vlog, I had to mark it "important to watch"

I have to agree with all the comments of everybody here.

The fitness application are far off with fitness/ performance predictions.

I've used garmin, strava trainingpeaks and elevate, but none of them give convincing predictions.
They all favor volume, and I'm thinking of moving in actually the opposite direction in my preparations for world champs.

The Apps will give a increase to my fitness value after a 10 mile run at a moderate pace of 7:30/mile. But! Let me do a track session that leaves me crawling, (100m, 200m, 300m, 400m, 500m + 2x 400m @ 2:45/km pace) then it gives me hardly any credits

[jasonbarry]

I take the Garmin VO2 Max and race predictor data with a huge pinch of salt. It seems to shoot up with steady runs at 7.15-7.30 pace at 120 to 130 bpm and assumes that equates into sub 16 5K pace if you can max out your HR. No account of ageing legs or maybe I don't race hard enough.

Also gets skewed downwards when my new watch wrist HR was shooting up all over the place. Use chest strap most of the time now so maybe will sort it over long term.

Race times or should that be performances (with some age adjustment) and to some extent splits from track sessions will always be the best metric of where you are

[jamesrose]

Interesting. I look at the strava and garmin stuff but I don’t take it seriously. Strava in particular only seems to take mileage and paces into account, for example if I do a hard hill session it will be a slow average pace and maybe only 5-6 miles and strava will say it was an easy effort. My guess is they avoid hr data because it’s not always available. Garmin is better but again, it goes up too much for a mild tempo vs track intervals. Haven’t tried the other ones. At the end of the day I guess you can feel if you are fit! Or not. Glad you are running a lot again, hope you get some longer runs in.

[joyridaz]

I agree strava fitness seems to get the biggest bumps for long runs. I can do intense workouts three times a week and not get a good bump vs an easy week with a medium length run and then a long run. As for Garmin vo2 max, mine jumps around like crazy, if I run on a hot humid day and really bust my ass, it plummets, I can go out on a cool day for a moderate day and it jumps, also hill work makes that number drop also. I get hr info from the optical sensor on the forerunner 235. .. not sure if that’s accurate or what. I wonder sometimes if it’s picking up my cadence. Love the vid!

[TimHewsonplus]

Interesting video Tim, quick question - what specifically do you think caused the calf injury, and what are you doing to make sure it doesn't happen again? was it just a matter of too much speed/intensity on the track? are you doing more cross training/conditioning to protect yourself against it?

[novagaski]

Good info! Never really checked out Garmin but looks like somw intersting data there. BTW how do you get your Zwift runs to load in Styd app? Only my Live runs show up though It is connected to Strava.

[josephgonzalez_]

If you fancy Scott Overall as a coach let me know! He has joined Kev’s stable!

[jimmyjames]

And of course, there's those Newport Pagnell segments to target 😂. With your rapidly improved fitness, I shall be struggling to retain them!!!! 👍

[andycollings]

I think Strava 'Fitness' is actually misleading. As you rightly identified Fitness relates to your training load, more miles = higher fitness. In Training Peaks terms that's Acute Training Load or ATL. You could keep increasing your miles and think, I'm getting fitter! But we all know there's a ceiling and fatigue sets in, you get injured and bomb out. Fatigue in Training peaks is Chronic Training Load or CTL. Subtracting fitness from fatigue gives you form or in Trainingpeaks, Training Stress Balance TSB. The trick is finding the TSB that works for you balancing how much you train and your fatigue. 👌