I’ve been Zwifting for 4 years and my setup is pretty simple: Zwift syncs to Strava.
I also wear a Garmin Forerunner 955 which I simultaneously track my sessions on: to do this, I created a new activity based on the “indoor cycling” profile and renamed it Zwift. This also syncs to Strava (but does mean all my activities are double-counted).
My question is more about Garmin than Zwift.
First, my device won’t give me a Cycling VO2 max figure because it says it doesn’t have enough data, even though I’ve got close to 1k Zwift rides logged. I suspect that Zwift needs to be logged as an activity on Garmin in a specific way for it to feed the device’s algorithm on VO2 max: can anyone shed any light?
Second, my Garmin recommends running workouts for my daily activity, but I’m not a runner. I believe that if I can sort the VO2 max issue above, it will enable it to recommend cycling workouts.
It definitely says that Zwift rides are acceptable to trigger someone’s Garmin VO2 max estimate, so I must have set something up wrong for this to not be doing it.
Short answer is that you may get a better reply from Garmin’s forum than this one.
You can sync your activities in Zwift to Garmin Connect (here’s how) but keep in mind this happens after you save your Zwift session and our server passes on the data to Garmin’s server.
This is to say that the data handoff is not happening in real time between Zwift and your smart watch.
VO2 max is not measured by Zwift, so it’s not a data point that’s passed along to third parties like Zwift / Strava. If they use other data points to estimate your VO2 - you’ll have to ask them how they do that.
@B_Bridges Could be that the Cycling Max Heart Rate is not set correctly. I don’t know if it matters whether you set your max HR based on % of Max HR, % of HR reserve or % of Lactate HR but suggest you use whichever setting you have highest confidence in accuracy.
I’d also double-check that you have correct power zones and FTP set while in that config area.
If data analysis is important for your goals, I’d recommend Intervals.icu for all activity aggregation. Reason being is that Intervals, Garmin and Zwift’s VO2 calcs all differ for any given ride I do so regardless of which algo is most accurate, it’s the only app that provides a consistent view. David@Intervals and the power users there are super helpful if I have questions on anything too. Intervals allows you to check VO2 for a specific day’s event for example, which you could find handy.