“Relative Effort” Why does this metric ‘dumb down’ on anything other than cycle or run?

[RubyStar]

Today I did 2 hrs weights and cardio, logged activity with HRM and Wahoo app. Result posted to Strava, Time 2:05hrs, av.HR 130, max.HR 155, calories 1513.

Yesterday Zwift cycle. Result posted to Strava, Time 1:25hrs, av.HR 145, max 162, calories 713.

Relative Effort yesterday 135, fitness +2, stronger effort than usual, right at the top of the red zone.

Relative Effort today 3, and right at the bottom in the pale blue zone?

Seriously?? I sweated and put in just as much today as yesterday but you ‘dumb down’ on weights and don’t count it for “effort”. Your metric is surely wrong?

[RubyStar]

anchskier, brilliant observation! I never noticed that Strava posted ‘elapsed time’ and ‘moving time’. You are correct. The elapsed time it has shown as 2:05hrs but the moving time is logged as only 5:23 mins. So yes, Strava thinks I’ve only done 5 minutes exercise! I’ve tried to edit the activity but cannot see any way to change sadly, but thank you for pointing this out.

[anchskier · Accepted solution]

When looking at the activity loaded into Strava, is it showing the time of 2:05 as a "moving time" or is that just showing as "elapsed time"?  It could be that Strava is looking at an elapsed time of 2:05, but only seeing a much shorter "moving time" depending on how it interpreted the data.  This could mean it thinks you were only reaching those HR numbers for a short portion of the 2 hours, and thus considering it very little total effort.  Just speculating though.  Might be able to see more if you posted a link to the activity.  

[Jan_Mantau]

Do you use custom heart rate zones? In that case maybe the heart rates around 130 are in the wrong zone.

If you feel the computed relative effort isn't appropiate you can also set the perceived extertion for the activity and enable that to be used instead of heart rate data for the relative effort.