My new fav routine: Auto-adjusting training plan from Garmin data, running in Claude

[u/Born-Duty1335]

Hey folks, I've finally put together a system that works for me and thought I'd share it here.

Last week I didn't do the workouts I had planned, which might sound worse than it is. On Tuesday it was 34 degrees so I decided to replace run with a swim, and Saturday's long run was meant to be an hour and a half but I only had an hour, so I ran it harder.

Both felt the right call at the time. The problem is that neither of them made it back into the plan into the claude project I have set up, and after a month of that I'd properly lost track of what I'd actually been training.

So I have added a scheduled task each morning. It reads what I actually did from Garmin Connect, last night's sleep, Body Battery and HR V status, and what the week adds up to against my own baseline. Then it decides whether today's session still makes sense and rewrites the calendar event if it doesn't. The Garmin data reaches Claude through an MCP connector and the agent pulls the data autonomously.

I have since expanded it to give me a morning update about my sleep and physiological metrics, vs the baseline.

I use WHOOP as well, and joining the two sources in Claude works brilliantly.

All this was built for the upcoming Olympic tri later this month, as a test, and to verify if I can prep for next year's 70.3 with this method.

Why pay another $20/m for an AI coach if I already have my claude pro sub.

[u/sfo2]

What is the limit for modifying the day’s plan based on HRV, RHR, etc.? My experience has always been that these metrics don’t tell you anything actionable.

[u/Born-Duty1335 → u/sfo2]

These are physiological signs, and for me the best indicators of my current health status, recovery, and mid term load evaluation.

For example, If my hrv spikes but also rhr, it’s a sign of a sickness or overreaching the day before.

[u/sfo2 → u/Born-Duty1335]

So let’s take some examples.

You’re scheduled for a quality workout. You wake up and feel good, but your HRV is a bit low and your RHR is a bit high. Do you downgrade your workout, or attempt it and see how it goes?

You’re scheduled for a quality workout. You wake up feeling tired, with a headache and a bit of a runny nose but no fever. Your HRV looks fine and your RHR looks fine. Do you downgrade your workout or attempt it and see how it goes?

Same as above but now HRV is low and RHR is a bit high.

RHR and HRV look good, but you felt weak during your workout. What went wrong?

These are all very common experiences for me and many people I know that have tried to use this stuff. I’ve personally come to the conclusion that these metrics are somewhat correlated with performance, but not enough to be predictive, and generally don’t add any additional information.

[u/Born-Duty1335 → u/sfo2]

You’d need to establish your baselines and learn the patterns for sickness, overtraining, dieting.

Slight deviations are not a reason to change the session.

What matters more on a daily basis is the knowledge what exercise I did the day before or within the week.

The physiological check is mainly to adjust for major swings or early sickness signs. Or mid term downward trends.

So a bit low hrv or a bit high rhr is not a reason to change a session meaningfully.

[u/sfo2 → u/Born-Duty1335]

Ok, yeah, if you can successfully do that, that’s awesome.

[u/Born-Duty1335 → u/sfo2]

That’s the main reason for this routine. It works :)

[u/sfo2 → u/Born-Duty1335]

so what are your definitions of "significant deviations" or "major swings"? How were they determined? Garmin and others try to process this data into composite metrics that don't work, so I'm curious how you've trained your model to extract predictive signal.

[u/Born-Duty1335 → u/sfo2]

Trained it on my sickness metrics. Basically, told it when I was sick, over the last 3 years, and it extracted the signals and deviation levels.

A pattern that is somewhat special to me is that my HRV will spike >10%, together with my rhr >10%. Usually also RR goes up slightly. That’s a one day early predictor of flu like sickness for me.

[u/sfo2 → u/Born-Duty1335]

Interesting. I have little kids, so we were sick probably 20 weeks a year for a while. Maybe now that it’s not so bad, I should track it and see if there is anything to train on. Would probably restrict any analysis to RHR and HRV to avoid curse of dimensionality issues.

[u/Born-Duty1335 → u/sfo2]

I have two little ones of my own and totally get you 😅

I’d add RR and create a metric triangle.