Vitalie Ciobanu

Data Analyst as a Service

Author: Vitalie Ciobanu

  • Using Garmin’s Daily Suggested Workout for running – Week 3

    Using Garmin’s Daily Suggested Workout for running – Week 3

    “Daily Suggested Workouts are workout recommendations made by your watch to provide a level of challenge to help you maintain or improve your current fitness level.”. This is the description of this feature from here https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=oYknGZ910l1pfBNzkDHX6A.

    This is week 3 of what I will be doing. As mentioned already in Week 2 post, So far, I seem to get used to do something daily although the rest days are always welcomed! 🙂

    Here are the training stats details after two weeks of training. Info taken from Training Status on Garmin Connect page. Under Reports – All activities.

    Running VO₂ max: 52, increased from 51 on Tuesday, Apr 25. “VO₂ Max is a good indication of your cardiovascular fitness and should increase as your level of fitness improves.”

    “Exercise load measures how much oxygen your body consumes for recovery after an activity. The longer or more intense the activity, the higher the score.”

    “Acute training load is a weighted sum of your recent exercise load scores. It’s rated low, optimal or high based on your fitness level and training history.”. The green tunnel seems to be heading up now.

    Note that since I changed my watch a little over a week ago, the Acute Training Load graph change its title to 7-Day Training Load and it seems to be missing data for now. Garmin support said I need to wear my watch more time so that this graph starts showing data. Although this seem like a bad excuse, since I can view this data in the Connect app on the phone.

    Below is the same screenshot from last week. Current week shows no data in this graph.

    Week 3MonTueWedThuFriSatSun
    PlannedRestBase 30:00 @5:55 /kmRecovery 24:00 @6:45 /kmThreshold 2×8:00 @4:45 /kmRestBase 30:00 @5:55 /kmTrail Running Race 11km
    Week 3 planning

    Regarding the plan itself, below are some screenshots from how Garmin described it. As a note, I have a trail running race on April 30 and June 18. June 18 being the primary race, so the plan is build so that I reach this race with the best possible form.

    As you can see, there are several phases to go through: Base, Build, Peak, Taper, and the race day. Depending on when the primary race is, in 1 month, 3 months, 6 months etc, the entire plan will be built accordingly with each phase taking a specific timeframe. This same approach is described as “periodization” in Joe Friel’s book “The Cyclist’s Training Bible“. I can’t recommend enough this book! I’ve read and followed this book several times when preparing for mountain biking cycling races and every single time, I reached my peak performance right when needed and all my races were a Personal Best! I can’t say the same about his “The Mountain Biker’s Training Bible” book though. It just confused me more I guess…

    Monday: Rest day.

    Tuesday: Base workout.

    Wednesday: Recovery run. It costs me a lot to run at 6:45, my legs feel more sore after this run 🙂

    Thursday: Threshold run.

    Friday: Rest day.

    Saturday: Easy, base run. Tomorrow is my trail running race. Will be interesting, since I only trained on asphalt lately. Garmin says 57 minutes as completion time. Well, on asphalt I can believe it; on trail I kind of doubt but will see tomorrow what can squeeze from my legs.

    Sunday: Finally, the day with my first race as part of this “Garmin” test is here and has been completed successfully but not easily. First of all, what surprised me the most is the watch showing “no events” in today’s suggested workouts list. I was expected it to say something about the race but no… nothing. Only the morning report showed a screen about it but nothing else as far as I could see.

    Now, remember up until yesterday the watch was kind of guessing the race completion time. It dropped from the 1h 5 min about 10 days ago and dropped to 56 once and yesterday showed 56 min and 50+ seconds, so 57 minutes. Guess what, I did 57 min 18 sec! This is my start to end activity time, during which I ran 55 min and walked 2 min.

    About the race, overall it was good. I knew the trails like my hand because I lived there for 2 years and ran a lot on those trails, but today’s run was “all-in”. I suffered a lot, I tried to run as much as possible and stopped only one some hills to drop my hear rate a little. But, I did not notice I forgot to run fast on the descents. Could be due to lack of training on the trails, since I trained only on road lately. I think I will start doing more runs on trails, even if my workout execution score will drop a little. I need to be better prepared for running up and down the hills.

  • Using Garmin’s Daily Suggested Workout for running – Week 2

    Using Garmin’s Daily Suggested Workout for running – Week 2

    “Daily Suggested Workouts are workout recommendations made by your watch to provide a level of challenge to help you maintain or improve your current fitness level.”. This is the description of this feature from here https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=oYknGZ910l1pfBNzkDHX6A.

    This is week 2 of what I will try doing. As mentioned already in Week 1 post, I’ve always trained like 3-4 days a week, so doing something almost daily wasn’t easy from a logistics point of view, but I’ll try.

    Here are the training stats details after one week of training. Info taken from Training Status on Garmin Connect page. Under Reports – All activities.

    Running VO₂ max: 51, no changes here. “VO₂ Max is a good indication of your cardiovascular fitness and should increase as your level of fitness improves.”

    “Exercise load measures how much oxygen your body consumes for recovery after an activity. The longer or more intense the activity, the higher the score.”

    “Acute training load is a weighted sum of your recent exercise load scores. It’s rated low, optimal or high based on your fitness level and training history.”. The green tunnel seems to be heading up now.

    Week 2 planning below:

    Week 2MonTueWedThuFriSatSun
    PlannedRestThreshold 15:00 @4:45 /kmBase 30:00 @5:55 /kmRestAnaerobic 6×1:00 @4:05 /kmBase 33:00 @5:55 /kmBase 33:00 @5:55 /km

    Monday: Woke up by something in the middle of the night and saw my watch says to rest today. Good, I actually wanted to rest today.

    Tuesday: Got the threshold run today with 10 min before and after (warm up, cool down). Also starting today my watch started showing me the workouts for 7 days ahead. Now I can plan my time better 🙂

    Wednesday: Base run today. Easy. For tomorrow the plan had a short recovery run with very slow pace. After finishing today’s workout, the plan changed and added a rest day for tomorrow. 1h more sleep for me 🙂

    Thursday: Rest day

    Friday: 1 min intervals today. 6×1:00 at 4:05 /km. I think I did the intervals slightly quicker, around 3:55 and 4 but anyway, this is my second interval workout that it should Anaerobic and I end up in high aerobic. Not sure what I’m doing wrong; don’t think those 5-10 seconds on the intervals is the cause…

    Saturday and Sunday: Base 33 min on both days.

    Ok, so learnings from Week 2:

    • Plan can change from one day to another. For example. if today (Sunday) the plan say 15 min Threshold run for Tuesday. Depending on how Monday’s workaround goes, on Tuesday I can get 2×8:00 instead of 1×15:00.
    • So far, the plan takes into account only running and cycling activities to plan your calendar. If you do a super hard hike, well… the plan for tomorrow will not change a lot. Basically, only running and cycling are directly impacting plan schedule. Everything else is only indirectly impacting the schedule through the use of Stress. This is somehow described here: “NOTE: Non-running/cycling activities that are performed on your Garmin watch do not directly affect the Daily Suggested Workouts. However, these non-running/cycling activities will affect your stress and therefore your recovery time, which does have a direct impact on your Daily Suggested Workouts.“

    Let’s start Week 3 🙂

  • Viladrau-Matagalls hiking

    Viladrau-Matagalls hiking

    This was kind of an unplanned hike. I decided to postpone the Santiago Way for later. Instead, I’ll join a group of people and we’ll do the Mont Blanc circular route, which is about 160 km and 7k total ascent.

    For this purpose I bought some new shoes from Salewa and wanted to test them. If you’re curious, I liked them 🙂

    Also, this was my first activity with my new Forerunner 955.

  • Using Garmin’s Daily Suggested Workout for running – Week 1

    Using Garmin’s Daily Suggested Workout for running – Week 1

    “Daily Suggested Workouts are workout recommendations made by your watch to provide a level of challenge to help you maintain or improve your current fitness level.”. This is the description of this feature from here https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=oYknGZ910l1pfBNzkDHX6A.

    During last years I’ve been working with a trainer several times when I wanted to get a PR on a running or cycling race. Every single time I worked with him, I was able to greatly improve my fitness and all personal records, so working with a trainer totally worth it.

    In the last year though, due to my schedule changes, I no longer had time to commit to 3-4 days/week running workouts so I stopped working with him. During this time I not-very-often went running alone and did whatever I wanted, aka running at any convenient pace or mood.

    Since watching my kids running as part of their extracurricular activities, they got me motivated and I started running more or less regularly with breaks for moving to a new house or crazy times at work. Since I used Freeletics app for home strength sessions (by the way, using this link you should be able to get a 30% discount on your Freeletics subscription), I started using it for running too. I used it for few weeks, maybe a month or more, but I don’t like few things about using it for running.

    • While you can choose not to post on app’s feed your strength workouts, there seems to be no way to do this with running workouts or I did not find a way to do it. So every run is automatically posted on your app’s feed. Like it or not.
    • Upon starting a run, you have 5 seconds countdown to put your phone somewhere, pocket or belt bag etc. I don’t really like this short countdown and there is no way to increase it.
    • At one time I had like 16 intervals to do. 400m, recovery, 100m, recovery – 16 times. Unless you look at the phone, there is no audio prompt as to how many intervals are left so that you know to get closer to home or to just manage your stamina.
    • Lastly, one minor thing that bothers me always, not only when running, after each workout step there are applauses to cheer you up. I did not find a way to remove/disable this.

    Anyway, leaving everything aside, while navigating my Forerunner watch many months ago I found this Daily Suggested Workouts feature and although I enabled it, I have never used it. Reading more about it yesterday, it seems like it creates a periodization plan behind the scenes, especially if you have any future event added to your Garmin Calendar.

    Looking through YouTube, I found this nice and funny video on The Running Channel about using this feature for a month. I liked the idea and thought of giving it a try.

    I’ve always trained like 3-4 days a week, so trying something daily kind of scares me, from a time-management perspective. I will see if I can stick to daily runs, but I’m curious how it will go.

    For now, here are some details as of today, after the first time I ran using this feature. Info taken from Training Status on Garmin Connect page. Under Reports – All activities.

    Running VO₂ max: 51. “VO₂ Max is a good indication of your cardiovascular fitness and should increase as your level of fitness improves.”

    “Exercise load measures how much oxygen your body consumes for recovery after an activity. The longer or more intense the activity, the higher the score.”

    “Acute training load is a weighted sum of your recent exercise load scores. It’s rated low, optimal or high based on your fitness level and training history.”

    To avoid creating separate posts for each day, I think I will make a post per week, so this will be a living post for week 1.

    Week 1MonTueWedThuFriSatSun
    PlannedBase.
    30 min @5:55/km    		Base.
    30 min @5:55/km    		RestAnaerobic
    6x400m @3:45/km    		Base.
    30 min @5:55/km    		Base.
    40 min @5:55/km    		Base.
    40 min @5:55/km
    Completed32 min @5:47/km31 min @5:43/kmRest44 min @5:41/km31 min @5:50/kmSkipped. Hiked instead40 min @5:51/km

    Monday: trail running. Primary Benefit: Tempo. Avg HR: 147. Total Ascent: 94 m.

    Tuesday: asphalt running (I don’t like asphalt!). Primary Benefit: Base. Avg HR: 143. Total Ascent: 36 m. I never looked at this while on trails, but I paid more attention on it today: although I’m running constantly, my pace seems to oscilate between 5:10 to 8:40! Crazy

    Wednesday: Rest day. Good!

    Thursday: Kinder surprise! I got intervals today. 6 intervals of 400m @3:45.

    I did run a little faster the intervals, around 3:30 to 3:35 on average but the recovery was definitely faster than planned. I just could not do the embarrassingly slow pace of 6:45/km. Maybe this is the reason it ended up saying Tempo as primary benefit.

    One interesting thing I found, you never know what you will have tomorrow. Neither in regards to time or effort, so you cannot plan when to wake up in the morning (if you do the runs early morning). I searched a little and found that Forerunner 955 does show the trainings for future 7 days: “View your entire week of daily suggested workouts, which adapt after every run to match your performance and recovery as well as the races coming up in your Garmin Connect™ smartphone app calendar.”. I found a good deal yesterday so I bought one. Waiting for it to arrive.

    Friday: I got the Base 30 min@5:55 /km and I did 5:50. Sorry, forgot take the picture.

    Saturday: was also a Base day but with 40 min. I did not do it because I did a 20km hike with 1100m total ascent; more on this in a separate post.

    Sunday: Apparently, the suggested workouts does not consider hiking when planning the workouts and the recovery time. I got yesterday’s Base, 40 min with 5:55 /km. This was the first time I ran with my new watch, Forerunner 955. Interesting enough, after the workout there is a screen about how closely you followed the workout.

    “Some Garmin Connect workouts have target zones, in which your ability to maintain a specific range of pace, power or another metric is measured. Your execution score tells you the percentage of time that you spent in the workout’s target zone. If you stayed in the zone for 30 minutes during a 60-minute workout, your score would be 50%. Keep in mind that execution score measures how closely you followed the workout, not how well you performed. If you run or ride faster or harder than the prescribed target zone, you will receive a low execution score as a result.”

    There are other new screens/features too on this watch but I will not get into too many details. YouTube already has lots of reviews available for this watch, in case you’re interested.

    With this, I ended my first week of using Garmin’s Daily Suggested Workouts feature. I felt better than I was expecting. I thought I would feel more fatigued. The only thing that still kind of bothers me with doing something daily, is the planning as I don’t have much free time every day.

  • Guissona hiking

    Guissona hiking

    This route was part of the Catalan’s endurance 2023 serries.

    My gps managed to direct me to the wrong city so I arrived at the start about 15 min later. The crowd of 2000 people were already long gone and I had to catch them and overpass, because I wanted to walk fast, to see if I can sustain a high pace for this distance.

    It took me about 2 hours to get in the front of the biggest group. At the first checkpoint I was in the 400-ish position.

    The second checkpoint, 372 position. From this point, it was harder and harder to reach and overpass someone, people were walking faster and were more spread.

    Third checkpoint and the place where the lunch was organized, 325. I ate my home-made lunch quickly and left. I did not get anything from the organizers as there was nothing vegan.

    Last checkpoint before finish, 212! I guess there was a good number of people still having lunch 🙂

    Finish, 202.

  • Coma ruga (El Vendrell) – Castelldefels hiking

    Coma ruga (El Vendrell) – Castelldefels hiking

    I’ve started doing long-distance walkings, to prepare for summer’s St. James Way (Camino De Santiago). I got approved 3 weeks holiday from work so will try to do the entire French route in 3 weeks. That would be around 40-50 km per day (depending on which source doc you follow). Not an easy task, but not impossible either.

    So this route was planned as a long (until Barcelona, ~80km in total) and steady one, with a small deviation around Garraf National Park.

    Since planned things do not always match the real life, the small deviation turned out to be the turning point. Nothing really hard in the Garraf, but it was a super sunny day and there is no water up in the hills, so I got very tired there.

    Looking at the route from the beginning, it’s a very easy one until Cubelles (km 15). Asphalt near the beach, nothing else. By the way, this also means that, depending on the season, public toilets may be closed, so you’ll need to use bars/restaurants if you need to pee, for example.

    After km 15, the asphalt ends and you have 2 choices here: go straight through sand or use the public road, as I did. PLEASE go through the sand! One, it is a little shorter and two, the public road is not at all safety! It is very stretchy; there are lots of cars and there are places where you have 5-10 cm between the road and the stone wall, so nowhere to get safe if needed, and the cars don’t bother to slow down or try to avoid you…

    Once you pass this area and until km 21 in Vilanova y la Geltru, all is fine, nice-easy asphalt beach road. Afterwards, there is a half-km of beach walk through sand and then a trail-like road (low to medium complexity) parallel with the train lines. CAUTIOUS here, you go through this road on your own safety, there is a state sign telling you this just when you try to exit from Vilanova y la Geltru, before the Far de Sant Cristofol.

    Anyway, this trail with rocks, and some ups and downs, is nice and there are beautiful views of the calas.

    After this trail you’ll enter Sitges, with its long and nice beach road. In the center of the city your nice-easy walk ends 🙂 Since Sitges does not communicate with Garraf through a beach road, you need to enter the Garraf National Park to reach Garraf city. This is where things get interesting. Depending on the season, refill your bottles with water or buy more bottles, because from here on you go up first through city (nice views, by the way) and then through the national park. For the next 15 or so km there is no source of water. There were 2-3 houses but I don’t know if these are private or not. Anyway, here you will spend 2-3-4 or more hours, depending on your physical condition. You have to climb 2 times to 200+ meters. Does not seem much but the rocks and terrain does not make it an easy task. The first climb is entirely filled with rocks, both the up and down part. The second one goes up using an asphalt road but goes down with using rocky terrain and steeper slope. Again, no water until you reach Garraf and there are plenty of direct sunlight here, so plan accordingly.

    From Garraf to Castelldefels it’s all piece of cake compared to the past hours 🙂. I stopped in Castelldefels because I was tired; the lack of water and the heat beat me this time.

    Anyway, from Castelldefels to Barcelona you have to pass through many industrial zones to avoid the airport, so nothing interesting. I don’t think I will do this part any time soon.

    To summarize quickly: make sure you have enough water during crossing Garraf National Park. Lastly, but not least important, use Vaseline, going through plain asphalt is not an easy task for your feet.

    P.S.: if you have knee issues, think twice before doing this route.

    Coma ruga
    Me, in Coma ruga 🙂
    Coma ruga
    Coma ruga
    Cubelles
    Far de Sant Cristofol, Vilanova y la Geltru
    Vilanova y la Geltru
    Trail between Vilanova y la Geltru and Sitges
    Trail between Vilanova y la Geltru and Sitges
    Trail between Vilanova y la Geltru and Sitges
    Sitges
    Sitges from above
    Entering the Garraf National Park
    Garraf National Park
    Garraf National Park
    Garraf National Park. Mining
    Garraf National Park, second climb
    Garraf National Park
    Garraf National Park
    Garraf National Park. Mining again

  • La Papiola – Bonastre – L’Albeda – Salomo hiking

    La Papiola – Bonastre – L’Albeda – Salomo hiking
    First time with hiking sticks 🙂
    Albinyana
    Ermita de Sant Antoni de Padua
    January weather 🙁
    Bonastre
    Pic de la Mola
    Salomo
    Salomo
    Puig de Sant Antoni

  • La Papiola – Serra Pedregosa – Salomo – Montferri – Santuari de la Mare de Déu de Montserrat Trail Running

    La Papiola – Serra Pedregosa – Salomo – Montferri – Santuari de la Mare de Déu de Montserrat Trail Running

    Pues nada, as Spaniards say, this happens when one Friday evening you’re happy with the work done and think on what to do during the weekend.

    Started planning for a 30-ish km hike, then it went to 45 and then – why not 50?? Then the hike got into trail run… Then next morning this happened 🙂

    Needless to say I’m very tired, tomorrow will be a y tough day, especially for my 2 nails that took all the pressure on themselves 😀

    Bonastre
    Santuari de la Mare de Déu de Montserrat
    Casa Aleman
    Puig de Sant Anton
    Montserrat at the horizont
    Serra Pedregosa

  • Puigmal hiking

    Puigmal hiking

  • Day 4. Fisterra – Cape Fisterra – Fisterra

    Day 4. Fisterra – Cape Fisterra – Fisterra