Hiking Load Using the Stryd Foodpod

Training
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Hi everyone. I am trying to calculate my hiking load using the Stryd Foodpod.
At the moment I have created a new activity type category Hike, where I basically copied the Power, Heart Rate, and Pace settings of my Run category. For the Power FTP, I am using the Stryd Critical Power (195W).
Has someone else already tried adjusting these settings for a better load prediction?

The load comparison for Garmin, Stryd and intervals.icu for a recent 33 km hike vs. a 3.4 km fast run looks like this:

  • For the hike, my Garmin Exercise Load was 13. I was in HR Zone 1 and below Zone 1 for 98% of this hike, so there is not a lot to gain here. The run got an exercise load of 174.
  • Stryd calculated an RSS of 81 for this hike. The 3.4k run got an RSS of 66.
  • Intervals.icu calculated a Power Load 111, HR Load 171, and Pace Load 178 for the hike. The 3.4k run has a Power Load 32, HR Load 40, Pace Load 41.

The load from intervals.icu already seems much better than from the two other sources. But I wonder if I should adjust the Power, HR, and Pace zones for an even better load calculation? And is there even a benefit of using the Stryd Foodpod, or should I just use HR or Pace load?

Also, I carried a 10 kg backpack for this hike, which also add to the training load I guess.
There is a Garmin Data Field for Rucking activities (which I did not use this time).

This is the link to my most recent hiking activity. Not sure if it can be viewed by everyone just like this.
https://intervals.icu/activities/i22794640

Looking forward to some insight for hiking load calculation from you guys! :slight_smile:

2 Likes
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Isn’t there a stryd blog entry claiming that for hiking the power data is almost worthless as it somehow isn’t accurate?

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There is a blog entry from 2018, which states, that they started to support hiking.

The power data itself in my activity looks quite good, I think.
Distance and Pace is also correct, I already cross-checked with another GPS Device.

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4

The full activity looks like this:

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No Power Outages or anything. Power always correlates nicely with pace.
Also, towards the end of the activity, where the gradient gets higher and my pace slower,
the power stays pretty constant.

Also the Power – Heart-Rate decoupling seems to be working fine.

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I’m using my Running profile (HR-zones, Pace zones, Power zones and FTP) for power-walking, hiking, jogging and running on my Coros Pace 2 watch. The results are in my opinion quite good. The ‘Wrist Power’ reflects well the effort for all disciplines.
I do always have to start a Run activity because a Walk activity on the Coros Pace 2 does not record Power. But in the end, a slow jog and a power-walk return very similar speed/power/load (in my case), with cadence being the only differentiator.
Hiking in very steep terrain would probably be less accurate but that’s something you see on all watches that don’t have a ‘true’ hiking/climbing profile and has to do with distance/elevation measurement (horizontal distance measurement iso real distance measurement)

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Thank you for your answer! I will then move hiking back to my running profile.

But as you can see in the screenshots I just added above, I am also very happy with the steep terrain power data Stryd is providing.

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I don’t know how Stryd calculates distance on steep terrain. My (cheap) watch just uses the difference in between 2 GPS points as if the earth was flat as a pancake. This isn’t too disturbing for grades up to 10-15%, the difference in distance done isn’t dramatically off.
But if you do grades of 40% and more, the actual distance travelled is quite a bit more then the horizontal distance. This messes up not only distance but also Pace…

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I have similar experiences, and these are my thoughts:
Garmin EPOC priorities high heart rate and therefore does not take into account the strain a long hike with low heart rate puts on your lower body.
The Stryd does not take into account your added weight from the backpack and therefore underestimates the strain. Also, when the pod is submersed in water (crossing rivers/streams), I often get extremely high power spikes.
With a backpack, load based on pace will underestimate the strain.
I suggest using heart rate load.
Personally, I think session-RPE is the best load/strain metric for hikes (and strength training).

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