I created a plan just now using Coach Jack, and I chose to go with a heart rate-based plan. Normally, I would choose indoor and do these workouts on a Tacx unit using power as the plan unit, but since I’d like to take these workouts outside - the weather has been great except tomorrow - and I do not have a power sensor on my bike, I opted for HR.
However, it is unclear to me how to export these workouts. It seems to me that none of the file formats that I can export to - from “my calendar” → “export”: ERG, MRC, PLAN, and ZWO - contains heart rate info.
Does this mean the HR feature was never meant to be exported and then imported into, let’s say, a Garmin Edge unit?
Is there another way that I’m not seeing right now to get this info into some sort of workout file and, if so, how and in what file format?
You can send to garmin as hr but none of these file formats support hr. We should make that clear. Fit files probably do but we would need to add that. Why not just send to garmin?
I only noticed the “send” button after my post. There I can send it to a.o. garmin, I see, per workout. I never use the garmin website or garmin express. I just manually copy things from and to computer and run small scripts to calculate totals etc in R. I’m a bit hesitant to put my location, training data, and other online.
But I think I have a dummy garmin account setup after buying the unit, so I’ll take a look at that and see how that works. Thanks.
And, yes, I think fit is the file type that does contain HR info. Would be wonderful to have it as a download, but at the same time I don’t want to exhaust your programming resources if you have way better things to work on, and you very likely do.
I had a look at garmin connect just now. I can indeed send my workout there. It gets added to the calendar and I can send it to my devices. Since I don’t have a windows or apple computer, I cannot make use of garmin express. I haven’t checked the android app - I don’t have it installed -, although that probably works. Within garmin connect there is no possibility to download a fit file for a given workout, it seems.
I then opted for intervals.icu. Like with garmin connect you can send a workout there. And there you can also download it in five file formats including fit. These fit files you can then transfer to your garmin unit. This works nicely.
I then sent my plan to intervals.icu, only the first week works - this is likely how it is set up. But sending a plan apparently only sends power-based workouts: you don’t get the dropdown for HR/power. And even though I’m seeing my plan in HR - I had to switch the first workout to HR to get that for the entire plan - it still sends power. Is this expected behaviour?
So the way to go, for me for now, seems to be sending each workout separately. Which works fine.
btw, when you send HR-based workouts to intervals.icu, the resulting workout there has less detail; so, no small changes within a HR zone that you see in the original workout file on TrainerDay. This is expected behaviour and for the training outcome it does not matter much, I guess? See pics for comparison.
Yes HR should be simplified, short HR intervals with small variation don’t make sense. It’s kind of hard to explain. But the problem is our UI should be showing these simplified also when you select HR. I need to review why these look different. But the second one is correct.
- and I do not have a power sensor on my bike, I opted for HR.
