Why is my "fitness age" increasing almost every day?

desertman

I am 65 years old and very fit, probably fitter than most men ten years younger than me. I'm running since ten years almost every day more than 3 miles on a mountain trail, and especially in the last year my times have dramatically improved.

When I started to use a Sports 3 Cardio watch I got informed (in my account on the TomTom website) that my "fitness age" would be 56. Since then my running times have become better, but my "age" has increased regularly - until I today finally reached at an "fitness age" of 66 years.

What is this "fitness age" nonsense about? Since it is nothing but nonsense I'm wondering whether it is possible to eliminate it completely from my account. Is that possible?

desertman

... "Spark 3 Cardio" and not "Sports 3 Cardio."

tfarabaugh

I honestly don't feel you can make any judgments from what it is telling you in terms of fitness points or fitness age. It only uses runs or cycles to calculate points and while it does refine its readings over time but it seems to be a random, capricious measure that ties to very little. It is based on whatever algorithm TT came up with, which is different than what Garmin uses or Strava uses, or anyone else. Ultimately I don't expect a watch to be able to tell me how fit I am. There is no way to turn it off, just ignore it if it does not anything to you.

I hope this helped answer your question. If so, please mark it as a solution so others can look for it if they have the same question.

desertman

Thanks for your reply. This is adding just a little bit to my dissatisfaction with the device.

More important is that the device needs 20 minutes of serious warmup activity before it displays a reasonable heart rate; my usual warmup of just walking the first six or seven minutes before I switch over to jogging is not enough.

I will use the watch for some more time but I am considering to return it (good that I bought from Amazon) and go back to my Polar watch with chest belt to check on my heart rate.

tfarabaugh

desertman wrote:

Thanks for your reply. This is adding just a little bit to my dissatisfaction with the device.

More important is that the device needs 20 minutes of serious warmup activity before it displays a reasonable heart rate; my usual warmup of just walking the first six or seven minutes before I switch over to jogging is not enough.

I will use the watch for some more time but I am considering to return it (good that I bought from Amazon) and go back to my Polar watch with chest belt to check on my heart rate.

I would take care with your buying decision considering TT has left the wearables market and is not producing any new devices (and never even released the Adventurer in the US), I would assume at this point any updates will be limited to bug fixes. I would not expect much more development so what you get in the box will likely be all there is. There are also major connectivity and battery drain issues that have not been resolved in over three months.

I hope this helped answer your question. If so, please mark it as a solution so others can look for it if they have the same question.

desertman

When I bought the Spark 3 Cardio I did not know that TomTom was not developing any wearables anymore and only selling off existing stock; I only read about that later. Yes, that is another contributing factor to my consideration to return the device to Amazon.