Help with burned calories during run

[Timothy1]

Hi,

I’ve owned Peak Pro since end of November and have been happy about it but it estimates of burned calories is puzzling and I help with it.

Here’s screenshot from Sports Tracer of my last run:

As you can probably see from stats, I’m not a goal oriented runner. I run for handling stress, fresh air and balancing my other health choices. I’ve started running in December after 6 month break. I’m sure my max speed in picture isn’t true.

Back to my problem… I don’t believe I burned 1526 kcal during my run that lasted 1h15min and was 11.37km long. My old Garmin Fenix 5 plus always estimated that same run something between 700-800kcal. I’m not expert about these but it would be nice to have somekind consistency.

Any ideas what’s wrong and tips to fix it?

I searched here older similar topics and found one where there was about heart rate zones. Could skewed heart rate zones have effect for burned calories? I’ve entered my weight, height, age and resting hr to Suunto app. Peak Pros gave me hr zones that looked bit off so I searched new ones from online and found potentials from Polar blog.

Old zones:

• Max 185 bpm
• Z5 min 161 bpm
• Z4 min 152 bpm
• Z3 min 142 bpm
• Z2 min 133 bpm

New borrowed zones:

• Max 185 bpm
• Z5 min 168 bpm
• Z4 min 149 bpm
• Z3 min 131 bpm
• Z2 min 112 bpm

Sports Tracker pictures run was done with new zones. I was lot less in Z5 compared to old zones but it didn’t have effect on burnt calories.

Sorry about this long winded wall of text. If someone has explanation new zones for 35 year old hobbyist runner/jogger I’ll gladly have them.

TLDR: Burned calories during run looks skewed upwards to me but I’m not expert. I tried to solve this through changing heart rate zones but it didn’t have effect. Hints and tips needed.

Thanks beforehand!

[zhang965]

@Timo-Kauppinen
My calories from a 10k

I use the heart rate zones from lab test,

[zhang965]

I seems Garmin will update your hr zones automatically?
Suunto 's default hr zones are not realistic

[sartoric]

@Timo-Kauppinen said in Help with burned calories during run:

Here’s screenshot from Sports Tracer of my last run:

Just to be sure, what do you see in watch log and Suunto app ?
Because data can be messed up since Sport Tracker is not the “official” Suunto app.

[sartoric]

@Timo-Kauppinen said in Help with burned calories during run:

TLDR: Burned calories during run looks skewed upwards to me but I’m not expert. I tried to solve this through changing heart rate zones but it didn’t have effect. Hints and tips needed.

Did you change it after the run or do you mean you’ve done it before another run ?

There’s a post somewhere here (search for it) explaining the different ways you can calculate your zones

[Timothy1]

@sartoric That picture is after changing HR zones. Yeah, I’ll try to find info about it… I’d fine just some default ones that would make sense. Maybe I’m someone who thinks he runs casually but body experiences it professional athlete level.

[Timothy1]

@sartoric Here’s what my Suunto app shows about that run. I wasn’t aware before until last week that Suunto app is connected with Sports Tracker. I red about it and noticed that I can log in with Suunto account,

[Timothy1]

@zhang965 Yeah, I didn’t even need to change HR zone levels with Garmin because numbers felt reasonable unlike these Suunto ones.

[Timothy1]

@zhang965 Okay, my numbers definitely are wrong then. Could using HR-belt help? Meaning is it presumed that everyone uses HR-belt because OHR is unreliable.

[el2thek]

@Timo-Kauppinen Did you check your weight settings?

[Timothy1]

@el2thek I did… Weight is 95 and height 185 as they should be.

[zhang965]

@Timo-Kauppinen said in Help with burned calories during run:

@zhang965 Okay, my numbers definitely are wrong then. Could using HR-belt help? Meaning is it presumed that everyone uses HR-belt because OHR is unreliable.

I only use hr belt

[el2thek]

@Timo-Kauppinen In that case, based on heart rate and weight the kcal seem plausible. Only thing that would explain the difference is accuracy of heart rate data. Perhaps there’s someone you can borrow a hrm from to check.

Zones have no influence on kcal.

[Timothy1]

@el2thek They don’t? Well then I don’t know what to do because I thought maybe they would. Does Peak Pro add BMR burn during run to end calories sum or is it purely burn that running causes?

I was considering hrm already but no I have to.

Thanks for your help!

[isazi]

@Timo-Kauppinen yes BMR calories are added to the active calories burned for Suunto watches.

[el2thek]

@Timo-Kauppinen Well they do as in lower intensity = lower heart rate (zone) = less energy required, and vice versa. And they do since energy expenditure varies from person to person, similar to the zones. That’s why some formulas take VO2max into consideration.

So in that light changing the zones may somewhat influence the kcal calculation. However, it should only fine tune it, not doubling/halving the kcal.

I probably should have worded is as, they don’t have a big influence (perhaps only if they are way off).

[Bradleyd]

Looking at the training summary, these specific numbers are prominent outliers that could be driving up the observed total KCal or are correlated with out-of-range or anomalous data:

42 hour recovery is massive for a 75 minute activity
134 TSS feels high for the training time
4.8 PTE is super high for a training with nominal ~6 min/km pace

15.1 km/hr average speed, with max 30.7 km/hr feels like the culprit

Are there any spikes in the running speed time series that are short duration and wouldn’t add up to significant distance, but could be counted as “burst efforts at warp speed”?

[Brad_Olwin]

@Timo-Kauppinen @zhang965 is very fast and quite fit. His max HR is 185 as well I think. Your zones are set way too low for a max of 185. My max is 181 and my Z3 min is 150. Unless you have very low fitness, which does not appear to be the case the zones are way off. Running an hour in Z4 should be very, very difficult. I could not run an hour in Z4, maybe 30 min or less.
Sports tracker does not set up my zones appropriately, they are way too low.

[Timothy1]

@Brad_Olwin

[Timothy1]

@Brad_Olwin

Hi Brad!

Sorry about my first message that got loose.

I ran today same run than before with new HR zones seen in this picture. Most of the time I was in Z3 and barely scratched Z4 for less than minute when running long upwards hill. Maybe these zones are better for me.