Hi!
I’m a 38 years old male, I have a few years of endurance training and familiarity with physiology behind me. I just did a running MAF test during test week at the beginning of ironman training. I hopped on the treadmill and performed my MAF test. My final pace for the last 10 minutes of the test was around 9:40 min/mi on the treadmill at a HR of 143. I saved it and hit calibrate and save for the workout then adjusted the mileage according to the treadmill, which I am pretty confident in its accuracy. Garmin displays the calibrated final mileage at the top of the workout, however reviewing the data it still has paces that are a full 1:30 min/mi faster than my actual paces. During the final 9:40 min/mi pace, garmin has me clocked at ~8:15 min/mi. This data translated to athletica and athletica has calculated me a new threshold of 6:38 min/mi down from 7:15 min/mi with a threshold HR of 178 which is completely not true. From previous lactate testing I know my threshold HR is around 167 and my HRmax is around 181.
What should I do with the data of this workout? should I throw the data out? is there something else I can do? It appears to have collected some real garbage data.
Certainly the MAF test isn’t garbage data as far as your health is concerned, however as far as Athletica AI is concerned, you do have a point. We haven’t yet integrated that into the model for more accurate Zone 2 calibration, but we’re working on it. Currently it is an FYI test only.
Currently we use pace over the last 3 months for your critical speed (6:31/mi) and a fraction of that for your predicted VT1/MAF/Z2 which according to your run pace chart shows 8:21 (similar to Garmin). This was from the session you did on 1/11/25. To you question, I see that you’ve figured this out as you have critical HR in your settings at 168. You can always modify that in Overview=>Zones.
If you want to geek out you can read the paper that Phil and I have written on this here. Simply put, your MAF level represents your base foundation of your performance. With training (and potentially lifestyle changes) you will reduce the drop in running speed you can see towards the end of your test - at the same HR you’ll continue to run a strong pace right through that test. Scientists are now terming this phenomenon ‘durability’ however they’re all talking about the same thing. Fat oxidation supporting your performance. Hope that helps a bit.
Thanks for the quick response and useful information. The data collected says I’m running at a 7:30min/mi pace when in reality I’m running at probably a 9:15min/mi pace during the test. So are you saying that shouldn’t be a problem because the calculations in your algorithm are actually collecting over a larger data set and one MAF test with garbage data is not going to move the needle much?
Your training (and lifestyle) moves the needle. Check back on this test after a solid period of training and compare then to now, your MAF HR and pace. Its fyi only but if you do things right you should see a relationship between those numbers and your performance. Athletica isn’t doing anything with the data (yet).
