Suunto ZoneSense
-
Is still something happening with Zonesense? I don’t think it is mature enough to stop development. Or maybe its in a dead end?
Apart from @brad_olwin there are not many reports about the feature working.
For myself I am using it to verify my HR and Powerzones from time to time. Just comparing Zonesense TSS with TSS(HR) and TSS(p). But real time its still absolutely random
(New belt, new battery, moistened with water and gel, 10min slow intro, tight fit and sweating like in hell)I’ve found ZoneSense to be interesting but problematic. First, the ten minute calibration I’ve found needs to be managed carefully. You can’t go too hard, but nor can you go too easy, or else you’ll get problematic results. I normally consider my AeT / LT1 to be 144bpm, but yesterday doing a Wahoo SYSTM structured indoor bike workout ZoneSense thought it was 122bpm, as the workout featured a very light warmup. With a proper warmup it’ll give me my expected result, are very close to it (e.g. 140-148bpm range).
Because it’s a lagging indicator, interval sessions sometimes don’t even register. A track workout of 400m sprints, with 400m walks may or may not register; 100m sprints almost certainly will not.
For an indoor rowing workout, where sessions might only be 10-20m with short intervals, the calibration time takes most of the session, the intervals are too short, and I can’t really glance at my watch during the session so it’s useless for that modality live. If I do a longer 20-30m session, starting steady-state for the first 6-8m at 120w, then increase to my rowing FTP of 160w for the final couple minutes of calibration, that tends to work decently to get it right but I still can only make note of the data after session and not during.
I find it best in running as a “secondary indicator” after normal HR when returning to a longer, slower effort after a harder push. If I do 1km at a threshold effort, then return to a lighter effort, I’ll first notice my HR dropping down to zone 2, then about a minute later ZoneSense will return “green,” and sometime (typically when weather is hot), I need to dial down HR a bit more, so rather than settling in at say 140bpm I’ll go a little slower and get to 136bpm and then ZoneSense will be happy.
At this point though a lot of this I’ve internalized as RPE so looking at ZoneSense “live” during session I don’t typically need. Now, if ZoneSense could “remember” say my last week/month of data, and use that as “temporary, provisional” info while during the calibration, then that might be helpful but I suspect that’s against the philosophy of what it’s doing.
-
@raven This is also my experience. But today I watched a spanish YouTube video analyzing Zonesense. They say if you correctly calibrate Zonesense, then it also works during runs. Slower and just three zones, but zone based training should bring better results.
They say (per sport do):
Once : 10 minute warm up, then intervalls > 5 Minutes covering all zones
Every Training: 10 minute Warmup as you described
After this you should trust Zonesense. So if its not red, you are not pushing enough
Maybe I try it…
-
Because it’s a lagging indicator, interval sessions sometimes don’t even register. A track workout of 400m sprints, with 400m walks may or may not register; 100m sprints almost certainly will not.
Suunto has stated that it needs at least 3 minutes before the data stabilizes.
-
@VoiGAS It’s also been problematic for me. I was hoping it would be a good proxy for lactate threshold testing, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. For my workouts, I do Norwegian style sub-threshold intervals of:
- 10×3:00 @ ~12K effort
- 5×6:00 @ ~HM effort
- 3×10:00 @ ~30K effort
I’ve got my efforts dialed in fairly well based on a long history of racing, so I’m confident if I were to lactate test, I would not be surprised by the results. But when I look at the ZoneSense data, sometimes it shows a V̇O₂ max response, sometimes it doesn’t. Even though the paces aren’t changing.
I’m willing to give some grace for heat, fatigue, niggles, and other things, but the data varies too wildly to make any type of reliable or consistent decisions. Sometimes it claims my AnT is around 160 bpm, sometimes 140 bpm. I honestly am not sure how I’m supposed to interpret that.
I want it to work, as it would be great validating how I’m training, but I’m not sure how to interpret the frequent large day-to-day and within-workout swings.
-
For me I use it on my easy runs and I look at it after the workout. Usually it gives good results for me in those cases.
However, I struggle to make it really useful in races: There you have no 10 minute warmup. Even more so, if it is a trail race, how to make the values actionable if it lags at least 2 minutes? -
@2b2bff Right, I think in a Race the first 10 minutes are critical. A lot of people get too excited and start too fast. This is where I check the Heartrate very often. Not possible with Zonesense in the first 10 minutes and I am also not sure if it would react fast enough too warn me pushing too hard
-
Right, I think in a Race the first 10 minutes are critical. A lot of people get too excited and start too fast
iirc Joaquin Pérez suggests a 10-minute warm-up before the race and saving that session to have a specific calibration for that day. Then you can start the race at full intensity.
-
Right, I think in a Race the first 10 minutes are critical. A lot of people get too excited and start too fast
iirc Joaquin Pérez suggests a 10-minute warm-up before the race and saving that session to have a specific calibration for that day. Then you can start the race at full intensity.
I’ve done back to back sessions where the first was 10-15m, ended and started a new session, and ZoneSense still waited another 10m on the second session before reporting.
-
@raven afaik if I correctly understood the stuff I’ve read ZS in the next 10 minutes, considering that we start with a higher intensity, would not be able to perform the calibration and therefore, at the end of the 10 minutes, it will use the calibration data previously performed. However, the 10 minutes are still necessary for ZS to allow the body to reach homeostasis.
-
@snow My overall point is, in my experience, there’s never any session where you’ll get a “live” ZoneSense reading in minutes 00:01-10:00 whether it’s your first session of the day or your second or later session. If you stop and save a workout and immediately start another, there’s still a 10m wait.
-
@raven Did you try it with the same activity type for Warmup? So no Crosstraining - Running, but Running - Running?
I heard this should work. Not happy with it as running activities also creates VO2MAX values.
Race S
Vertical Titanium Solar
Ambit3 Vertical
Eon Core -
I analysed about 80 of my runs (mostly aerobic) for which ZS had values for the aerobic threshold.
The root mean square error (relative to the mean HR) was 5.6 bpm. The mean HR was 142 bpm. My old (2-years ago) lab-tested threshold was 138.
Unfortunately I think ZS is not precise enough to use to update zone boundaries.
-
@raven Did you try it with the same activity type for Warmup? So no Crosstraining - Running, but Running - Running?
I heard this should work. Not happy with it as running activities also creates VO2MAX values.I more typically do a “walk” startup, then end and switch to “run,” but I’ve done “run” then “run” too and it didn’t make a difference. Admittedly it’s been a bit since I tried “run” then “run” so if an update changed things my info may be out of date but I don’t recall updated talking about improvements to ZoneSense on the Race S.
Now it may be what is being referenced isn’t the ability to get ZoneSense “on” at start of session, but instead, a “run” then “run” might mean you can start the second run at race effort (i.e. no need to restrict yourself to only a warmup) in the first ten minutes, such that you still only see ZoneSense after the 10m mark but the fast start won’t mess up the calibration. That nuance I have not tested and I’d be uncertain how to verify.
Yesterday I did a 2.2km in 18:07 walk with a little “pickups” here and there to make an average 8:08/km pace. ZoneSense measured my aerobic threshold lower than I’d expect, 134bpm compared to my normal 144bpm. Actual HR averaged 123bpm, max HR 146bpm so my pickups did elevate a bit.
When I ended the walk I immediately did a run effort, which was 8m threshold, followed by 8m recovery, then 8m threshold again, for a total 5km in 26:50, average overall pace 5:22/km but “attack” efforts averaged 4:29/km and 4:36/km. Average HR 152bpm, max HR 168bpm. ZoneSense measured aerobic threshold as 160bpm, which is close to what I think of it at 162bpm. It did not make a recommendation for aerobic threshold.
The second session did not “start” showing ZoneSense until after the first ten minutes. I did not rely on using ZoneSense for either session “live” as the first was too low effort to really care, while the second I was more focused on maintaining my attack pace for the work efforts, while the recovery I simply used standard HR and RPE to make sure I was down to zone2 but not allowing myself to get into zone1.
So if the claim is “without that first session, the ZoneSense graph on the second session would be worse,” then perhaps. I’d need a second Suunto device to properly test that, using the first as normal, and the second not recording the walk effort at all and only starting it on the actual run, then compare results. But what I want is a “full” ZoneSense graph starting from session start to session end.
Hello! It looks like you're interested in this conversation, but you don't have an account yet.
Getting fed up of having to scroll through the same posts each visit? When you register for an account, you'll always come back to exactly where you were before, and choose to be notified of new replies (either via email, or push notification). You'll also be able to save bookmarks and upvote posts to show your appreciation to other community members.
With your input, this post could be even better 💗
Register Login