I’ve got to say that I love my new watch, the Garmin Venu 4. I’ve been very interested in tracking my training, but have only been tracking my number of training days until getting the watch. Now I get to see what my speed and heart rate are during my workouts, among other things.

I try to do most of my workouts in Zone 2, but my watch says I’m actually in Zone 3. My next bit of research is determining if I’m going harder than I should or if I am just in good condition for my age. More data needed before I decide.

Today was my second time with my watch on an interval run. I do a warm up walk then 8 intervals, high intensity for 1:15 and low intensity for 1:10 eight times, then a cool down walk. The high intensity is really just for a minute and about 3 seconds because it takes 12 seconds to get the treadmill from 3.4 at low intensity to a range between 8.6 to 9.4 for my progressively faster high intensity intervals.

What’s really awesome is getting the data about my workouts from my watch. Here is just some of the data:

This is just my second data point for intervals so I’m creating a baseline from which I can hopefully see progress. Until now my only data has been how tired I feel. Now I can dig a lot deeper and actually see gains. I can also make sure that I’m training at the right pace. High intensity intervals aren’t exactly fun. Collecting data on them and getting results to compare over time will make them just a little bit more enjoyable.