Progress Discrepancies
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I acquired a Vertical about 2 weeks ago. Prior to this, I had been importing all of my workouts from other devices into SA using RunGap. And prior to this, I briefly owned a S9PP from which (I think?) SA got all of my HR data (max, resting, and zones). I also use HealthFit and Runalyze as a dumping ground for all of my workout data.
All of the SA Progress numbers lined up pretty well with HealthFit and Runalyze. However, after getting the SV, the Progress numbers flattened out and no longer reflect what I’m seeing from the other services.
SA:
HealthFit:
All of my zones are set up identically. You can see exactly where I started using the SV around 10/22 in the SA graph. My last two runs were fairly intense, as can be seen by the spike in the HealthFit graph. This only produced a slight bump in SA.
Any ideas why this is happening? I’m not totally up to speed on what all the numbers mean exactly, but everything was lining up nicely prior to the SV, and now it doesn’t.
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@duffman19 I do not get the same numbers with HealthFit and Suunto App but my numbers are identical for TrainingPeaks and Suunto App. I would check zones in Healthfit, I am not sure they calculate these values the same was that TrainingPeaks and Suunto calculate them.
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Thanks, @Brad_Olwin. Apparently HealthFit uses TRIMP and SA uses TrainingPeaks’ TSS score which results in different numbers, TRIMPS usually being higher. The issue I had was the trends seemed to line up prior to using the Vertical.
I seem to have found the problem, though. Most of the activities I imported to SA had inflated TSS scores, often 50-70 points higher than expected. So Suunto thought I was killing it the past few months and then things “normalized” when I got the Vertical.
The imported activities (from Garmin via RunGap) had TSS scores calculated by HR. And it looks like my HR zones and max were somehow reset in SA so all these activities appeared to take place in zones 4-5 and not in 2-3 where I do most of my training. I went back and edited the TSS scores for the past several months. TSSr seemed to work well for road runs and TSSmet worked for trail runs to bring them in line with expected scores.
Now my SA Progress chart looks very similar to HealthFit, just with smaller numbers:
I’m sure it’s been mentioned before, but it would sure be nice if we could view and edit our HR and training zones directly in Suunto App. That would have saved me some confusion and time spent editing past activities.
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@duffman19 As far as I know, when you import activities into Suunto app via apps like RunGap, those imported activities have default HR zones (based on 220 - age) applied. I don’t know the FIT file format, but I think the definition of HR zones is not part of these files. I think that’s the reason why the TSS numbers have been too high.
It would be nice, if SA would use historic data for HR zones when importing activities. For example, if you import a run activity, SA should look for the last run activity the user has recorded with a Suunto device and use the zones from this activity for the imported activity. This way the numbers would be correct (as long as the HR zones didn’t change in the meantime). This way we could use Suunto, Polar, Garmin,… whatever and sync to Suunto App.
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@wmichi Thank you, that definitely makes sense. Looking back at my imported activities, the HR zones look exactly as you predicted, using the 220-age calculation. I suppose most other services overcome this by having the user set the zones in the application, thus applying it to all activities no matter their origin.
Just another fun quirk of trying to switch over to Suunto! I’ve been trying for a few years and I think the Vertical has finally convinced me. At least I get some satisfaction out of working out the kinks. Now I know more about TSS than I ever cared to!
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@duffman19 I think when you import activities to Garmin Connect, Garmin takes the HR zones set in the app, if you have currently or had previously a Garmin watch connected to the app. Polar on the other hand does it the same way as Suunto, even if you have set up the zones in Polar Flow on the web for a Polar watch. Coros I don’t know.
I had the same problems with moving data to Suunto (and before moving to Polar). But regarding TSS it takes just a couple of weeks until ATL/CTL/TSB are correct.
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@wmichi Yep, I realize it takes a few weeks for all the numbers to make sense. I had originally imported my activity history so I could have all my totals (monthly/yearly running distance, etc.) in one place. Seeing how SA handled them in regards to TSS and the Progress charts was a surprise. It’ll be interesting to see what happens now if I import an activity, whether it’ll use the HR zones I’ve set in my Vertical or continue to use the defaults, and which TSS calculation it will apply.
I also noticed that SA did not calculate a NGP for imported activities (well, it did, but it was the same as avg. pace). I assume this also affected the TSS calculation. This was a bit surprising as I’d imagine all the pace and elevation information is present in the FIT file, but I don’t know exactly how that’s handled. Garmin calculated a Grade Adjusted Pace, which sounds like the same thing to me.
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