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I came back from a swim this morning where I recorded a RE of 26. My friend carried out the same swim -- roughly the same pace -- with a *much* lower heart rate (127 bpm vs my 149 bpm), and spending LESS time in higher-intensity heartrate zones … and recorded a RE of 65.

Any ideas why this discrepancy?

May as well add that over time (have used Strava for about 8 years now), relative effort scores seem to have decreased considerably for me -- runs from when I had recently joined tended to received much higher RE scores compared to runs I do now, even when controlling for HR and HR zones.

Curious if anyone has encountered similar issues

Hi ​@mattsantos 

Thanks for your post. To answer your first question, we don’t recommend using RE as a way to compare efforts with other Athletes since several factors go into the calculation of these scores. Instead, RE scores are most useful for helping you compare your own efforts and for noticing any trends. The number itself isn’t as meaningful as the trends - it allows you to see where you’ve been putting in the hard efforts and where you’ve been taking it easier.  

You also mention that your RE scores now seem to be lower recently than on similar runs completed in the past. Have you changed your heart rate zones? Even small changes to these zones on your profile can have large impacts on your RE scores, RE is calculated by how much time you spend in each of your heart rate zones

 

More details on Relative Effort here

 

Hi Jane, thanks for the response. I guess not making comparisons with other athletes is valid, however it still seems odd to me that my friend could spend less time in a higher intensity HR zone, yet get a much higher RE score. If you compare this to cycling with a power meter, for example, if my friend puts out less power, he’d receive a lower training impulse than I would on Strava’s fitness tracker -- here the opposite is happening.

Regarding updates to my heart rate, yes I periodically make custom changes according to my heartrate at my threshold paces, that could explain some of the changes I’ve seen. It is a bit frustrating to see RE decrease for running however, since this feeds into a lower training impulse on Strava’s fitness score tracker -- essentially I’m getting “penalised” for getting fitter!

That’s how it is, if you get fitter but you don’t intensify your training accordingly you’re resting on your laurels :-)

Be aware that the Strava fitness score isn’t really a fitness score but a training load tracker. This confuses everyone but Strava keeps this wrong naming.

Hi Jan, yes that makes sense :)

It would be nice to compare "fitness" from season to season, but it also makes sense to track training load in this way.

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