Wildly Different Intensities Between Apple Watch and Garmin on Different intervals.icu Accounts

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Yesterday I swam with my Apple Watch Ultra and Garmin Enduro 2. I was pleased to see that the two watches agreed very closely in terms of heart rate, pace, and interval tracking. The workout was a structured interval swim I had programmed into intervals.icu.

I created a dummy intervals.icu account for my Apple Watch and uploaded with HealthFit. My Garmin syncs to my normal intervals.icu account.

I was surprised to see that the Apple Watch registered a much lower intensity (58%) than the Garmin (90%). In terms of the measurement against the structured workout, the Apple Watch gives a green 88% and the Garmin gives a red 233%

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Here are the workouts side-by-side:

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I have the swim heart rate and swim pace settings set up identically between the two accounts. Any idea why one workout came in so drastically different?

Interestingly, if I delete the Garmin swim from my main account and upload the Apple swim to the same paired workout, it’s even worse: the intensity is 98% and workout compliance is 272% Uploading the Garmin swim to the temporary account gives a 60% intensity and 97% workout compliance.

What’s going on here? Clearly there’s something different about how the main account is set up vs. the virgin temp account. The swim yesterday was definitely somewhere between an 85-105% effort relative to the prescribed structured interval set. I certainly did not give a 272% effort.

Any ideas? Thanks!

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upload screenshot of settings screens
-168 hr is 90% but 169 hr is 94%…something is wrong here i bet lthr is different
-check the riority of load caluclation (hr,pace) on both accounts
-the diffrence in pace is pretty significant
-intensity vs struc workout is by load
-not sure why the hr graph on the right starts from 85 ;/
…

nahhh i think right account is by pace (close to threshold) giving 90% intensity and left account is by hr giving z2 swim
if im right either your swim threshold is wrong or you hr zones…or both ofc :slight_smile:

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Yep, that was it! I had set lactate HR correctly, but the priority for pace, HR, and power were off. I changed the temp account to match the main account and they now behave as expectedly.

I think I’m going to switch from Pace to HR, though. My swims calculated by pace are always at ridiculous, 200% training load intensity. I know what a 200% workout feels like for runs and rides. Doing it by HR much more closely matches my perceived exertion.

Thanks!

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I’m not a swimmer but if you know your hr threshold you should know your swimming pace at that threshold.
Just looking at left activity 36m 1:26m pace but your threshold is 10 sec slower…hmm i think there is something wrong with the avg pace, maybe it is cutting oout the zeros and just counting intervals? even the blue line showing avg pace is skewd

ps. sticking with hr is a good decision i think

np glad i could help :slight_smile: