Annual Activity Summaries, Dec 2023

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Recently I downloaded annual summaries for the years that I've owned a Garmin watch - 2016 to late May 2020, Fenix 3 HR, and late May 2020 to Dec 2023, Fenix 6x Sapphire.

Methods

I used the Progress Report function in Connect to download activity summaries for 2017 through 2023. I then wrote a script to merge, massage and format the data. This step could have been done faster in a spreadsheet. But now having written the script, hopefully I can repeat this process without less manual effort. 

Purpose

I was curious to see how volume and other statistics trended over the 7 years. Since I compete in masters rowing, I also wanted to know if there were any trends that would show areas for improvement or anything that worked well. I retired in Jan 2021. Would the data show the expected increases.

Background

I row, bike, walk, hike, ski, erg, do winter sports and a few other activities, all of which are represented in the Garmin data. The mix of activities has varied dramatically from year to year. Some, like rowing and erging, have no ascent. Some, like cycling, are faster than others. All data except METhrs are directly from Garmin Connect. METhrs are calculated from resting and active calories. 

2020 was the pandemic year and I worked at home for the majority of it, which allowed more activity. I retired in 2021, which allowed even more activity. Also, in June '21 I cycled ~900 miles from Seattle to Bozeman, which was unprecedented. 

Even though 2023 was an active year, second only to 2021 by distance, I had 3 significant illnesses - a respiratory infection and COVID twice - that cost 5-6 weeks of illness plus recovery.

In May of 2020 I replaced the Fenix 3 HR with the Fenix 6x. This was partly in preparation for the Bozeman tour the following year - I wanted the Fenix 6 for navigation in lieu of a bike computer. But it was also due to the Fenix 3 intermittently generating false and grossly overstated ascent data. (Much of this I corrected at the time using the elevation correction feature in Connect. But not for all activities, which I think explains the crazy ascent statistic for 2020. Fixed now.)

When I first received the Fenix 6, as a test, I wore both the old and new watches. This was the period from 5/28/2020 through 6/16/2020. During this time I recorded double the actual distance, ascent, calories, etc. So 2020 is overstated by half of 853 km, 46:09 total and 44:27 moving time, 8231 m ascent, and 24,747 calories. Not fixed.

Yet another artifact is with erging. Initially I used just the indoor rowing activity built into the watch. However, it doesn't measure distance. At some point I started using ErgData, the app from Concept 2 that records all erg statistics. I configured auto sync with Connect. But initially I saved the data from both ErgData and the built-in indoor rowing activity. This has the effect of doubling the time, calories and load, but distance isn't doubled since only available via ErgData. My current practice, which I believe is the correct approach, is to save just the ErgData output. Not fixed.

Finally, in the past year, maybe more, I've started bike commuting to the boathouse. Assuming no errands on the return trip, this is 3-4 ish km each way. But the elevation gain on the return is over 100 m. I have dozens of these rides, perhaps hundreds, but none in the earlier years. This is certainly a reason why the activity count is up in 2022 and 2023.

Whew! Data wrangling is always the hard part, even for something as simple as this. No doubt there are lots of other artifacts. 

Summary

Distance is in km, Time in hours, Speed in kph, Pace in minutes per km, Ascent in m.

Table 1 -- Activity Summaries by Year


Findings

Activities have increased consistently, in part because of bike commutes but also overall. A surprise is the decrease in 2021, the year of the tour to Bozeman, the year with greatest total distance, and the year with greatest average distance. See Figure 1.

Calories, METhrs and total Time all have very similar trends, which I think indicates their correlation. 2023 is off somewhat from 2022 and 2021. For the past three years, METhrs and total activity Time (hours) averaged roughly 60-70 and 12-13 weekly, respectively, which compares to the CDC recommendation of 500 - 1000 MET minutes per week (or 8.3 - 16.6 METhrs). 

Total distance increases in 2023, a bit of a surprise considering METhrs and Time are down. It's even more of a surprise considering average Speed and total Ascent are up, while average heart rate is down. It suggests I'm faster with less effort. Great if true. But seems suspect.

Figure 1 -- Activity Metric Trends




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