Suunto ZoneSense
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@raven agree with you! ZS is not great for the training you are doing.
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I‘ve been using ZoneSense since release, I will add another data point:
- Training: it‘s super useful in staying aerobic without worrying about whether my HR zones are set correctly, and it adapts to my form on the day. So 80% of my training runs use a ZS Zone 1 target, with an alarm on my watch if I stray into Z2 for too long. I do not use it for any speed work in training.
- Racing short: without a clear ZS target zone (e.g. „you can hold ZS 2.8 for 45 mins“), I don’t see much use to ZS for half-marathon and shorter races. Or any race event under 90 mins. So I stick to pace (track and road races) or power (trail) targets.
- Racing long: this is more interesting. For example in a marathon or trail race > 120 mins (not a hard threshold, this is subjective), I know I cannot spend any significant amount of time ine the red zone or I‘ll blow up later on. ZS becomes super useful again, especially paired with a pace or power target. I would follow my target pace/power but use ZS red zone as an alarm telling me to slow down and manage my effort better.
Since ZS was added as a target, I no longer use the Suuntoplus app.
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@mickywickyftw long aerobic runs are a nice usecase! But for the long race: Which zone would you use? Green? With Heartrate I use the yellow zone (lower in the beginning, higher at the end) for Trail races. This works for me, but ZS Yellow could be too high
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@brave_dave @aiv4r don’t mean to hijack this thread but since RPE was mentioned in it I’ll allow myself to do so.
I am very much a beginner when it comes to running but RPE is what Suunto is actually asking me when they’re asking me the respond with a smiley after a run, right? And this is then baked into my TSS/TSB etc. Considering getting a chest HRM for ZS but not sure how valuable for me since I usually run between 5-20k. But I have a lot of things to figure out first, like cadence to begin with
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@brave_dave @aiv4r don’t mean to hijack this thread but since RPE was mentioned in it I’ll allow myself to do so.
I am very much a beginner when it comes to running but RPE is what Suunto is actually asking me when they’re asking me the respond with a smiley after a run, right? And this is then baked into my TSS/TSB etc. Considering getting a chest HRM for ZS but not sure how valuable for me since I usually run between 5-20k. But I have a lot of things to figure out first, like cadence to begin with
I don’t think Feeling is baked into TSS but instead into the Recovery metric. If you look at that you’ll see it lists it under Training Fatigue (the overall list is Sleep, HRV, Training Fatigue (TSS, TSB, Feelings), and Daily Resources.
This differs from Apple whose training load metric uses overall time and RPE (1-10 scale). If one wanted to modify TSS based on Feeling, then you’d need to edit and change from the default for the activity (e.g. TSS (hr) and switch it to TSS (manual), then change the TSS value to what you want to modify it as.
I dual record with Apple and don’t bother to adjust TSS in Suunto, except for indoor rowing sessions, where I use the load calculated by intervals.icu as it has access to my rowing power data which Suunto does not. I do compare overall TSB Suunto gives with the iOS app HealthFit, which can show two different TSB scores — one based on HR alone, and the other using RPE, basically giving numerical values to Apple’s training load which doesn’t have a raw score but instead a relative percentage of today compared with history.
From left to right: Suunto, Apple, HealthFit (HR), HealthFit (RPE)
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@raven Yes, sorry for the confusion—meant the recovery metric.
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@GratefulDeadpan No worries, just wanted to ensure you were not confused. As for ZoneSense, it can be useful for learning some things, and in general, using a chest strap for running is a good idea anyway.
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@GratefulDeadpan yea, that is a good question. I do not think feeling emojies are ment to be representing RPE, but I know some people use it for that reason. I personally use it for kind of mark how I felt after excersize, sometimes same workout feels better, sometimes worse since legs are tired or one is mentaly tired or etc.
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@GratefulDeadpan these smileys after the workout are not really defined but they count into the recovery metric. Therefore, you should use them to track how hard the workout felt compared to similar workouts of the same type/pace. Then when you have a typical training week and you see that you rated it less easy compared to the previous ones it might tell you to take it easier for a bit.
RPE is not anything that you can track with suunto and it is not a recovery metric per se. It is more a metric how hard a session was while doing it. This of course can be influenced by speed or length of the session but also by accumulated fatigue from previous workouts.
Suunto uses TSS as an intensity measure. A TSS of 100 is defined as the intensity of an exercise with 1 hour at your anaerobic lactate threshold. So if you set up your HR at your anaerobic lactate threshold correctly (upper boarder of zone 4), then the TSS tells you afterwards how intense the workout was. It therefore takes out the subjective factor from RPE. But it also doesn’t directly tell you how fatigued you are. But you can use it to compare it again against same workouts. If you for example do the exact same workout the week before and all of the sudden, your heart rate is higher, the TSS value for that workout will also be higher. That might be an indicator of fatigue. But it can of course also tell you if you are getting fitter. So it’s still a little challenge how to interpret the values and needs some experience.
HRM is definitely needed if you want to train with HR and TSS(hr) as wrist is to unreliable. But training with HR also needs correct interpretation and set up of HR zones. -
@mickywickyftw I don’t see how ZS adds anything that you don’t get with HR anyway. For me it is just too inaccurate. I wanted to know how ZS actually performs and analyzed 150 runs and rides that I all did as Suunto recommends for ZS. While the mean reported thresholds over all workouts come very close to my actual thresholds, the standard deviation is at 9 bpms for the aerobic and at 7 bpm for the anaerobic threshold. So therefore on normal runs or rides, I get fluctuations of up to ±9 and ±6 bpm respectively and I never know when it is accurate or not. I had workouts where ZS told me that I am pushing way too hard but my HR was as usual and I was able to do the workout/race exactly as planned. I also had it the other way around. If I would have listened to ZS, I would have had a lot of destroyed workouts or races. From years of racing and training, I know that my HR never differs more than ±2 bpm at the anaerobic threshold and ±4 at the aerobic threshold if I am not completely destroyed or sick. So therefore HR and pace in combination with RPE is way more reliable. At least for me.
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