Moving to Athletica for 2024 training - hoping to work out any wrinkles this week.
Since getting the Form goggles (been using for a couple of months and I really like them), I’ve started printing structured workouts and tracking swims in both Form and on my Garmin watch.
TL;DR and main question
After the initial import of Garmin activites by Athletica, I deleted my Garmin swims and uploaded the Form .fit files because they more accurately represent my workouts over the past couple of months. However, even though I get emails stating that the files have been processed and the workouts imported, the workouts are not showing on my Athletica calendar, so my swim load data is quite inaccurate. Is there a way to fix this / should I have gone about this in a different way?
Background
The reason that I have been tracking swims in both Garmin and Form is that the Form goggles do a great job of tracking intervals and drills without me having to hit any buttons, and they display good in session data like stroke and heart rates. I also track on my Forerunner so Garmin tracks the load and training effect for the workout, even if the distance and calorie count are inaccurate. (If I don’t track in Garmin and then import the Form file into Garmin, Garmin Connect does not calculate a training effect or load for that session).
What’s interesting is that the resulting .fit files are almost always evaluated much differently by training platforms (for example a load of 40 vs. 90). The garmin .fit files result in a lower load than the form .fit files. When there are lots of drills that I don’t track with Garmin, the reason is clear - the distances can be quite different. But even when the two track the same distance, the load is different (although probably close enough - say 60 vs. 65).
This is very helpful, I’m glad you’ve asked this question. Also, as a bonus question, which might be pertinent to you–how do you sync Athletica structured workouts to training peaks? Without this, I can’t figure out a way to get my structured workouts onto my form goggles. I use them for the same reason as you, Garmin is a length or two off (usually ahead), which is probably affected by my swimming form, but the Form goggles are very accurate. Thanks!
Thanks for this one Nathan. Our aim is to be able to calculate more accurately swim fitness from past historical swim training fit file data like you’ve provided, but unfortunately our backend team hasn’t yet caught up to this yet. We only recently applied the ability to capture unlimited historical data (front end work) and now that data such as yours and everyone else is coming in from the past, our challenge is to have calculated annual power/pace profiles for users right off the bat. We are onto this and hopefully we’ll have a solution available in coming months. In particular your data will be most interesting to us because of these more accurate FORM fit files vs standard Garmin files. I’ve also made a request to FORM for direct API integration. If you or anyone else reading can make a request to FORM directly it can assist with our integration as they more or less mostly listen to their customers (as we do). Hope that makes sense.
I am a loyal FORM customer. Will write a request. That would be great! Having workout import from TP to the goggles was a game changer feat (even just written structure is imported now. It’s amazing)
Thanks @CharlieStolen . I’ve bombarded their Linkedin facing team as well. I’m off to Endurance Exchange next week also and I’ll try to run into a few of them directly there to discuss.
