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My favourite kit and nutrition
- Maurten — the race nutrition trusted by elite athletes. Gels and drink mix engineered to be easy on the stomach.
- Garmin 90-degree charging adapter — the small adapter that keeps your charging cable tidy at the stem. Essential for race day.
- Garmin charging puck — the fastest and most reliable way to top up your Garmin before a session.
- Ravemen FR300 — front light that mounts directly under your Garmin or Wahoo head unit. Keeps your bars clean and your beam pointed where it matters.
- Garmin Varia RTL515 — radar rear light that alerts you to vehicles approaching from behind. Pairs with your Edge or Garmin watch.
- Stryd — the footpod that brings running power to your Garmin. The single most useful running upgrade I have made.
- Favero Assioma Pro RS2 — the power meter pedals most serious cyclists end up choosing. Accurate, easy to move between bikes.
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tfk is the founder and author of the5krunner, an independent endurance sports technology publication. With 20 years of hands-on testing of GPS watches and wearables, and competing in triathlons at an international age-group level, tfk provides in-depth expert analysis of fitness technology for serious athletes and endurance sport competitors. ID
Does the Core 2 work with a Garmin HRM 600 sending data encrypted.
i used it with hrm 600 as a source of HR
but i believe that core data is unencrypted as are its conenctions
I use Golden Cheetah which has some support for CORE, but I created a custom build that will display core and skin temp, plus HSI. I’m displaying the data numerically and as a graph, and find it’s really nice to see the rate of change as well as current values.
If anything, I’d say that heat training is superior to altitude, at least in the short term. It’s very easy to implement in any climate, it produces very rapid and measurable adaptations, and it doesn’t seriously detract from other training. The research on altitude pretty strongly indicates that if you’re looking for an immediate response, you need a minimum of three weeks, at a minimum of 2000 meters, and you have to follow a live high/train low protocol, which few athletes actually do (and which isn’t feasible in many locations). When athletes I coach ask about altitude, I typically tell them that unless they can move to Flagstaff (pretty much the only place in the US that’s at 2000+ meters with easy access to lower altitude) for three weeks, with a car, you’re not actually doing altitude training. A week in Boulder is a vacation; it’s not an altitude mediated training stimulus. Heat, on the other hand, is a very easy way to take your training to the next level for a race you really care about. It’s REALLY unpleasant, but it pretty much always works.
Now, anecdotally, altitude seems to be most effective as a long-term stimulus, with many athletes and coaches reporting that they feel like altitude really starts to pay off after a few years. Unfortunately, we don’t have research on that. If someone wants to move to altitude or spend months and months there every year, I think that’s probably ideal. But most amateurs don’t have a realistic way of benefitting from altitude. And don’t get me started on those tents.
It’s surprisingly unpleasant to get to a heat index of 3.0 or 4.0. Surprisingly difficult as well. Garmin would say I’m 100% heat acclimated. Core says 52%. Indoor training on bike doesn’t seem to work well even overdressed and no fans (I’m primarily a runner so my cycling is low intensity). Treadmill at high intensity (Z3-4) is effective. Outdoors, effective on a threshold kind of effort when dew point 68-70 degrees f. Or lower intensity full sun mid day summer. You can extend this by sitting in the car, walking in the heat and gain futher acclimation. But I think the core is very actionable because it shows you how much you are likely overestimating your acclimation, and how deliberate it really has to be, even in the summer. I think it’s going to be too much work to maintain year round honestly.
The product is great. The app is absolute **** and I haven’t seen any true improvements to the UI. The app almost makes the product unusable to be honest.
5/5 for product
2/5 for app
3/5 overall due to how bad the app is.
yes. i was keen for them to get the cumulative heat load in the garmin environment then the app isnt needed
your comemnts on garmin heat acclimation seem right to me.
weather is a factor but there isnt a correlation between weather and heat acclimation.
Agreed. It’s not realistic to stay at a high level all year. It’s more of an A-race thing. Even with temperatures in the 90s and dewpoints over 70, I have to wear extra clothing to get into zone 3.
I’m a particularly poor Heat acclimator and I also am particularly badly impacted by heat. Garmin has had me at 100% acclimated here in the Southeast US for over a month now but I am still suffering badly in my outdoor runs in 70+ dewpoints.
I guesstimate I operate about 1.5-2 months behind Garmin’s estimates. Would like to quantify that in some way with a product like this but the price tag is too high in my opinion.
TFK – I checked through your review, but didn’t see it. Why can’t you use the device in a sauna? Because they don’t recommend it? I mean I wear my HRM in the sauna and have a dedicated activity in my Garmin watch, seems like I could add the CIQ app to that activity unless i am missing something.
they say you can and that you cant when swimming
the algo is imapcted by the heat flow across the depth of the sensor (the few mms measurement)