This can be a technical rabbit gap submit, which in the end finally ends up blaming not one, however all three of my younger daughters for my Garmin watch woes. Hope you take pleasure in!
Subsequent week will mark a 12 months since Garmin launched Endurance Rating on their Epix Professional & Fenix 7 Professional merchandise. Since then they’ve expanded it to different top-end watches, together with the Garmin Forerunner 955 and 965. Endurance Rating was designed as a little bit of a counter-point to watching your VO2Max quantity by no means truly transfer. There’s a easy actuality that your VO2Max rating can’t infinitely improve, and particularly as you age, it’s truly going to slowly lower.
Fast Endurance Rating Background:
Thus Garmin’s Endurance Rating gave a brand new metric that primarily rewarded longer cardio actions. Or extra particularly, time in principally increased coronary heart charge zones. The longer and more durable a exercise was, the upper impression it had in your rating, which trended over longer intervals of time, and had values upwards of 11,000 or extra.
For most individuals, the rating will solely shift by a number of tens of factors every day. Take my run I simply completed. This was an hour at a long-run-ish tempo. My rating went up 18 factors.
A 12 months in the past, once I first launched my evaluate of these two watches and Endurance Rating (and Hill Rating that was launched concurrently), I mentioned “there’s shortcomings that appear exhausting to attach”, however went on to notice that “I feel Endurance Rating in all fairness within the ballpark of issues for me”.
A 12 months on, with loads of information, my understanding of those two metrics has improved barely. With an emphasis on ‘barely’. I’ve discovered/noticed the next:
– Endurance Rating gained’t typically improve instantly after a exercise like Acute Load, however as a substitute the following day.
– Apart from actually large exercises (e.g. many hours), through which case it should typically pop extra rapidly
– Endurance Rating actually appears to care extra concerning the final 90 days common trending in some capability
– For those who get sick and cease coaching, it’ll rapidly drop your Endurance Rating (to rub salt in your wound)
– Once you resume coaching once more, it’s unlikely these first few exercises will change the rating in any respect (like, zero), as a substitute, it’ll take at the very least every week or so to see any rating change upwards
– It truly rewards persistently above outright period. DesFit is the poster baby for this, doing roughly 90-120 minutes of driving day by day, however not often (purposefully) doing something greater than 3-3.5 hours. His Endurance Rating has reached 11,000, although at present sits just under 10,000
That mentioned, a 12 months later, and I feel it’s nonetheless typically within the ballpark of the place I’m at. Not in a fast-race means, however slightly only a ‘do I’ve lengthy endurance’ means. So in different phrases, matching the identify of the characteristic. It’s acquired quirks, however once more, I feel it’s roughly aligning to what my physique is able to (in fact, ignoring any feel-good titles it offers me like ‘Elite’).
The way it all went fallacious:
So final Friday, my endurance rating was floating round 8,000pts. The final short time it’s been within the 8,000-8,200 vary. However given I had a bunch of journey within the previous 7 days, my rating was down a bit because of jet lag driving decrease coaching volumes.
For this Friday exercise, I picked one thing at random from Zwift’s exercise library, and ERG exercise of kinds to check out some gear I’m poking at. It wasn’t tremendous exhausting, nor tremendous lengthy. I needed to get out and watch my 6 & 7-year-olds sail their tiny little boats solo across the lake. The exercise was slated at 39 minutes, although I’d find yourself driving 52 minutes:
I had each Zwift recording, but in addition the Garmin Epix Professional recording the exercise, like standard. Some 45 minutes later I accomplished the exercise with none problem, able to go about my day. It was then although, that I seen my Endurance Rating had skyrocketed, gaining about 1,000pts because of this single mundane exercise. Right here’s an image I took from the dock watching the children:
I texted Des of DesFit, and we went by means of a fast troubleshooting record, notably questioning whether or not one of many energy meters produced a crazy-high misguided energy spike, or inaccurate information (e.g. 800w for 45 minutes)? Nope, checked each information. Did Acute Load randomly skyrocket? Nope, additionally good. Any bizarre coronary heart charge skyrocketing points? Nope, completely clear too.
Additionally, he later had a humorous remark: “FirstBeat engineers be like, Oh FML”.
At this level, I couldn’t determine any apparent purpose why it’d have sky-rocketed. All the pieces gave the impression to be wonderful, besides this quantity. Then, whereas sitting there later that evening watching a TV present, I bumped the watch and seen an odd worth for my FTP:
(Apologies for considerably blurry sofa photographs)
For context, my FTP is generally round 3.4-3.5w/kg. Some 16w/kg places me properly over 3x the best world class Tour de France degree athletes.
However that gave me a clue. Given I knew my energy values from the exercise have been regular and wonderful, FTP within the context is actually written as “watts per kilogram”. So, had my weight modified?
I dug into the watch settings for my weight, and certain sufficient, it was now exhibiting:
Effectively, there are a lot of issues I’m, however weighing 19kg (42lbs) is just not considered one of them. However how’d it get to that? Had I unintentionally in some way pressed a boatload of buttons and altered a setting on the watch?
As a substitute, I went to Garmin Join app, to see what it mentioned as my weight there, and certain sufficient, I discovered three distinct weigh-ins, for values between 18kg (40lbs) and 52kg:
After which it hit me: My youngsters.
Particularly, a number of hours earlier than my coach journey, the physician’s workplace had known as and wanted an up to date weight for considered one of my daughters to fill a prescription. The children have been house with a babysitter, and we texted to have the children bounce on the size and get their weights.
Which scale? The Garmin Index S2 scale.
Now usually, that wouldn’t be an issue. The size routinely assigns weights to customers based mostly on weight. Thus it vaguely is aware of the distinction between me, my spouse, and if our youngsters bounce on, and suggests which account person it needs to be assigned to (through WiFi).
However such technical prowess vastly underestimates a trio of 4/6/7-year-olds interacting with any display-laden object. You see, you possibly can change the assigned person by merely tapping left or proper on the size, because it scrolls by means of a listing of names. Undoubtedly, for no matter purpose, the children tapped once more and it assigned the primary one to me. As soon as that baseline was established, it then assigned the opposite two weigh-ins (as a result of despite the fact that we solely wanted one baby’s weight, all three needed to partake).
Inside a couple of minutes of them weighing in, the size would have routinely up to date my Garmin Join account, which in flip would have up to date my watch. All with out ever telling me. Then, as I went off to do the exercise, it was successfully a ticking time bomb for my Endurance Rating. As quickly as I accomplished that subsequent biking exercise, growth, my Endurance Rating was damaged.
I used to be capable of reset my weights in fact, and upon my subsequent journey, my endurance rating went again to regular. However there’s no solution to take away that spike, it’s there apparently eternally.
Going ahead:
Now, like I mentioned above, I feel the Endurance Rating (as a quantity) roughly aligns with my endurance functionality. It’s a ‘ok’ metric, even when some may argue it’s simply one other ineffective metric. However realistically, nearly each ‘rating’ or metric in sports activities is a made-up metric. There’s nearly no scientific settlement on any metric in sports activities/health, as to the way it needs to be achieved. The much-regarded FTP is a good instance of that. Whereas it’s typically regarded as the max wattage “held for 1 hour”, even its creator has since mentioned that’s extra of a “tough” estimate, and it may very well be another worth.
And even these metrics that do have scientific settlement (VO2Max), can typically be screwed up throughout precise lab testing. I did one two years in the past by an extremely respected location/lab that handles a boatload of professional athletes, the place it spit out an absurdly low (for me) VO2Max of 46. A take a look at my information by another respected folks I do know exhibits they very a lot screwed up the take a look at (I’ve beforehand been examined within the 56-61 vary, relying on health ranges).
Level is, each metric has its quirks. And on this failure case, the quirks aren’t instantly with Endurance Rating. As a substitute, it’s with the info that Endurance Rating builds atop of. Frankly, I’m shocked this hasn’t occurred to others earlier than, as definitely loads of dad and mom have related Garmin scales of their houses that children may poke at.
Thus, a number of issues needs to be tweaked to keep away from this:
1) An excessive amount of weight change: In the beginning: Garmin Join merely shouldn’t enable a 150lbs change in weight from one related scale measurement to the following, on a given person profile. That ought to at all times be rejected, except manually up to date on the Garmin Join profile.
2) Unlikely weight values: Given my account exhibits my age and peak, Garmin needs to be both rejecting my 44lbs scale weigh-in for my account, or requiring guide approval. There’s no grownup that’s 6’2”/188cm that weighs 44lbs/20kg.
3) Non-Human FTP Values: Once more, Garmin merely shouldn’t enable a 16w/kg FTP worth. Collectively the world agrees that is 3x that of any identified human effort. In the identical means Garmin throws away energy values above a given threshold (e.g. 5,000w), they need to even be discarding these values.
4) Huge Unlikely Endurance Rating jumps: The Endurance Rating algorithm needs to be taking a look at whether or not a bounce is justified. I’ve had large jumps earlier than, principally round large efforts. So I’m not saying discard large jumps. However slightly, there needs to be one thing within the logic that claims a 53-minute coach journey shouldn’t trigger a 1,000-point bounce in rating.
Of the record above, I feel #1 and #3 are actually the simplest ones to implement. And would probably resolve for #2 and #4 ever being wanted. And naturally, in hindsight, it’s simple to ask why this stuff weren’t achieved earlier than. However in the end, this hasn’t been an issue for me within the 14 months I’ve had Endurance Rating. Although, wanting again, I can see my youngsters did weigh-in to my identify again in October, but it surely had been timed solely between some runs, so it by no means had an impact.
Garmin has a saying internally (like many firms I take care of), when one thing actually funky occurs. It’s requested whether or not that is “particularly a Ray-only downside”. That means, is that this one thing that solely actually occurs on my account as a result of I’ve so many units and information importing, way over the traditional person, that may typically set off bizarre edge instances?
Typically the reply is ‘Sure, this can be a Ray-only downside”, however maybe is relevant to a couple different folks, and issues in the end get modified. Typically the reply is ‘No, Ray simply stumbled into it first”, however will undoubtedly be discovered by others. And typically the reply is as Des roughly described it above “Out of all of the folks that might stumble into this, why the fudge does it should be Ray?”
I’m fairly certain this one falls into the final camp, however is one thing that I’m betting occurs to extra folks than anybody realizes, and folks can’t fairly determine why it occurs (particularly in the event that they then weigh again in themselves, resetting the values).
In any case, welcome to the tip of my rabbit gap – and thanks for studying!
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