Garmin

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larkim 5 Jan 9:23am, 5 Jan 2026 28,233 posts	larkim Lots of concern about understanding how watch metrics match up with reality. I think the best thing to do is to learn to match your lived experience against your watch, and if you see decent correlations then perhaps you can use them on a predictive basis to tell you something you don't already know / feel. I've never seen RHR predict any lurgy for me, but then equally I don't think I've been ill for about the last 4 or 5 years with anything viral etc. Will watch HRV with interest now I've got it available.
57.5 Days of Xmas 5 Jan 1:19pm, 5 Jan 2026 31,726 posts	57.5 Days of Xmas When I had my spinal infection RHR tracked the course of disease and treatment far better than symptoms did.
flanker 6 Jan 12:46am, 6 Jan 2026 21,643 posts	flanker Lkewise for my HRV when I was suffering with my DVT, and for several of Covid/viral incidents too.
R4R 6 Jan 9:19am, 6 Jan 2026 3,837 posts	R4R I must be coming down with something - my RHR has been raised the last couple of days, but my HRV has been lower than usual
flanker 6 Jan 12:07pm, 6 Jan 2026 21,646 posts	flanker That'd be the "typical" pattern for being under the weather.
larkim 15 Jan 9:08am, 15 Jan 2026 28,253 posts	larkim Next Monday will be my first use of the "Track" feature on my new watch, so just wanted to get some questions asked in advance (probably with obvious answers!) I know I am supposed to run 4x laps first before it is calibrated. Does it matter whether I start that 4x lap run on the "finish" line or not? If I run (say) a "proper" mile on the track, i.e. starting from 9m+ before the start / finish line, does it do it's best to track where I've started, and therefore measure the whole mile? If I hit "lap" at any time, does it try to round the distance to the closest obvious place (e.g. if I was doing 1000m reps and stopped at the 200m line (or near as damn) would it try to treat it as stopping on the 200m line. Laps by default on the watch (for autolap purposes) are set at 1600m. Is it preferable to leave like that, or would it make sense to use 400m laps instead (or even 200m) to get "more" data (given I like data). And should I use autolap "by distance" or "by position" when using it on a track? How does autolap "by position" work in reality? Which "position" does it use to autolap against?
SPR 15 Jan 9:36am, 15 Jan 2026 49,753 posts	SPR You don't need to calibrate anymore. Garmin uses a track DB now essentially built from users. Garmin will give you the distance it thinks you've run and it is in 10m chunks so depending on where it picks you up, a rep can be ±10m. I'd never use autolap for a session, I just use open workout mode. I've used it for races sometimes. Lapping by position presumably would be every time you go past your start position (or lap start position if a manual lap was done), doesn't seem like it makes sense on track. Worth noting the tool on activities for splits on Fetch doesn't pick up reps correctly sometimes with track mode. I've logged this but presumably not many people here so as much track as me so it's not been reported widely and is still waiting to be fixed.
SPR 15 Jan 9:49am, 15 Jan 2026 49,754 posts	SPR Here's one where it hasn't worked. Notes contains the real splits. Splits tool has presumably being confused by the algorithm that makes track mode work well. fetcheveryone.com/training-log-view.php?id=23244129
larkim 15 Jan 9:55am, 15 Jan 2026 28,256 posts	larkim Cheers SPR. Garmin's help files still refer to the calibration need; presumably because if a user does actually run a track for the first time it still needs that calibration. Good to hear I won't need it though. Thanks for the other bits - it's that sort of real world usage that I was wanting to understand. I'm not likely to use autolap for the session itself, but if it did turn out to be 4x1k or similar then I would probably want autolap to sort itself out each lap as otherwise I need (want!) to manually lap to see what I'm doing in terms of 400m consistency. If I was doing 400m intervals I would definitely not be trusting the watch to autolap though. I will experiment a little and see what works for my "workflow".
SPR 15 Jan 10:27am, 15 Jan 2026 49,755 posts	SPR Yes, if no one has ever run the track with Garmin track mode you'd need to calibrate but otherwise no calibration needed. The track DB is covered here by DC: dcrainmaker.com