Silly Smart Watch

Yesterday on the blog I mentioned I didn’t hit my running goals for the week, like getting in a long run or both of the Fast Mile Sumer Workouts.

I didn’t mean to convey that I had a bad week of training. It was still a productive week—despite what my Garmin is saying. This is a look into why you can’t always trust your smart watch; it can’t see some things that a good old fashioned training log can.

Here’s a look at the week of training. Note on the chart that it’s the highest mileage week shown on the chart. It happens to be my highest mileage week of the year. A couple other weeks are close, and those are both races. Sunapee Scramble and the Loon Mountain Race. While those weeks had the same mileage, about 30, they were both about 6 hours of running with 4000 feet of elevation gain.

Last week’s 30 mile week was 11,600 feet over 12 hours.

So why does my Garmin say my training load is down and that I’m recovering?

The main factor here is the terrain. I was hiking up a lot of really steep stuff and tip-toeing my way down. I wasn’t going nearly as fast in comparison to my track workouts—even when bombing downhills. Due to this, Garmin says: you’e going a lot slower than you have been. Your training load is reduced and you’e recovering.

This, combined with the fact that I’m good at pacing and not letting my heart rate get too high meant I didn’t even come near my high heart rates from speed workouts on the track or tough interval sessions on the AirRunner. Another factor for Garmin—your heart rate is staying too low on these workouts, they’re not too stressful, therefore you must be recovering.

It took me double the time to cover the same distance over the course of these weeks—6 hours for 30 miles vs 12 hours for 30 miles.

As I mentioned, the vertical gain and rugged terrain is getting overlooked here. So, the easy math, is yes, I had a down week of training for running a fast mile. But it doesn’t say that I had a really productive week of climbing up mountains getting ready for a long run in the mountains in a couple weeks.

I love my watch and all the data it provides me. I like geeking out about it, and I’m currently worried for Hannah—her HRV is in the tank. Make sure you’re double checking your watch’s work though—and not taking everything for face value.

—Justin Miner

@justinminergain