Garmin Endurance Score calls me Elite - misleading or motivating? Garmin's Endurance Score is a relatively new measure, released in May 2023. It's a fairly useful one too. It tracks your general ability to sustain physical activity for an extended period. how Endurance Score (likely) works All activities contribute to the score, but longer aerobic activities in any sport will have the biggest impact. The top three impacting sports are running, cycling and swimming. Garmin caveats that if you cycle a lot, gains from cycling do not fully transfer to running endurance abilities. Fair enough. We don’t know the details of the algorithm; however, it is known to be multi-factorial, taking into account the following to varying degrees and where available: activity duration, activity intensity, speed, power, VO2 max, age, gender, BMI (weight, sex & height), and activity level. More: Edge 1050 Confirmed A quick Opinion It's another 'made up' composite metric. Garmin is not unique in the industry for using made-up composite metrics. It almost certainly is not scientifically validated at the composite level but will include various bits of science in the constituent variables. If you understand that and take it as a bit of fun, it might, just might, also be useful. https://the5krunner.com/2024/05/20/new-strava-upload-limit-annoying/ My Problem My annoyance, or problem, is that Garmin is saying I'm 'elite' in my endurance Score. Look at the image above, it's literally written in black and white! My score was even higher around this time last year (8137) as I cranked up some decent base cycling miles. However, I'm just not an elite athlete. I don't perform at an elite level, maybe 10 years ago my age-adjusted performance levels under a favourable classification regime based on the winning time for an ITU final might have snuck me into some form of elite classification for Duathlon. So, what is an elite athlete? I guess you can use Google as well as me. It will give you various criteria but the key performance ones that we can compare ourselves to include these Elite Male Marathoner: sub 2:10 (pretty sure I can't do that!) Good for Age Boston Qualifier (2024) for a 40-year-old - 3:10. I'm pretty sure I could hit the required qualification standard for my age group next year BUT I would have to train for it. 100m qualification time for Paris: 10 seconds (wow!) 5k qualification time for Paris: 13:05.00 (also wow!) The 100m qualifying time is just over 4% slower than Bolt's world record and I'm certain that lots of elite runners don't qualify for Paris. So let's say that the definition of elite performance is between 105% and 110% of the best time for that age group. Elite Endurance Score I've recently put in a lot of cycling base miles with several hundred milers (two at the weekend, for example). Elite cyclists on the pro teams will do WAY WAY WAY more miles than I do. I'm training for Ride London (100 miles) next Sunday. But even amongst my group of cycling buddies, some do AT LEAST twice the volume I do. They're not elite either!! Even if adjusted for age. FYI: Ride London 100 miles: I'll probably do 4:15-4:30 and one of those buddies is going for sub4...but it's all drafted and not that hard. sub 4 is hard tho. I also wrote a few months back that I re-acheived an 80% age-graded 5k time (non-track). That's excellent in the eyes of an average runner...but probably average in the eyes of an excellent 5k runner! #Shrug. So what exactly is an elite endurance score? I don't know what exact criteria Garmin is using. But I strongly suspect it isn't elite by any fair measure. Don't get me wrong, it still represents 'good' or 'good for age' or something along those lines. But is that misleading or is it motivating? A: Yes. To both!! I guess Garmin intend it to have a motivational aspect or that it gets used in conversation and indirectly boosts its brand awareness. However, I'm just the kind of person who likes to have an objective assessment, ideally based on science or an official classification system...maybe it's just me? Anyway, I'll take you out for a beer and tell you I'm an elite athlete if you like. We'll probably both feel all the better for it. (I mean, I also had 5 beers at the weekend along with the 200 miles of cycling...elite athletes do not do that for sure) #discuss https://the5krunner.com/2023/05/02/garmin-will-add-endurance-score-activity-impact/
