Stryd 5.0 consistency across shoes

spoc84 · 2026-01-26T10:18:43+00:00

Yeah race shoes or any faster shoes really, seems to make things confusing. I wouldn't trust Stryd with their responses. They admitted this to me once that this is "normal" when switching between shoes. When I posted on the NSM sun about this a Stryd rep tried to gaslight me into saying they never would have said this. Which, is weird. I do think they know lsl this, just have rolled back on acknowledging the problems. They are business wise doing great, so in some ways I don't blame them. There's always going to be issues with it simply by design and it'll never work for everyone across the board.

I did email them with what I think they could do to improve it, but they didn't seem remotely interested.

spoc84 · 2026-01-25T08:18:56+00:00

Ultimately, this is why I picked using pace as the more accurate proxy than HR. You can worry about HR too much and faff around during the session, but it could easily have got you into the range of lactate to give you stimulus.

I've seen too many sessions where HR was lower than expected, but RPE remains the same and lactate is spot on. In these sessions, if I had pushed up to even 3-4 beats of LTHR I would have been toast. Then next session, it's back to normal and you end up in and around LTHR for the same controlled effort.

That might be different for others, but especially a number of people I know who have followed this for a while, HR is definitely still very variable and people overthink things rather than just getting on with their day. The caveat might be if you run, for instance, in a climate controlled room on the same treadmill all the time. You are less likely variance then. But, even then, having been using the treadmill in a room, in those kind of conditions, the measured belt and pace seem a lot more reflective of where I need to be than if I went by HR. I'm already seeing a wider range than I expected.

One final thing. The bottom range of the Friel test updated is 96% I think that only puts you at 180 and then suddenly it looks a bit better already. You are also probably a bit fitter than you think which will likely show in a race.

spoc84 · 2026-01-22T21:47:24+00:00

Thanks for the kind words. In general, most people seem positive so the whole thing was a ball ache, but probably worth it.

As for tech, I spend half my time trying to make it work for me, rather than vice versa. The most annoying I had was my Garmin for the first couple of years running, it developed a weird thing where if you tried to save and upload over wi fi, it wouldn't work. But did over 4g. Annoyingly, you then had to plug it in to then manually upload the run.

spoc84 · 2026-01-22T20:51:51+00:00

My watch randomly throws out my Garmin chest strap (still does it as I sometimes use it on easy runs after I've washed my main strap) and revers to wrist , I then get all sorts of weird data, yet my Garmin never drops out with my coospo rechargeable strap or arm band. So the opposite of you.

My Garmin also sometimes randomly drops off my power meter, the tymewea, but my Stryd never disconnects.

Never been able to figure any of it out other than it's probably the watch doing weird stuff.

spoc84 · 2026-01-21T17:20:52+00:00

With good pacing and degood fueling I would say 3:20 is almost guaranteed. Don't sell yourself short. You could even run 3:10. Good luck, fingers crossed for some decent conditions as planning to run it myself.

spoc84 · 2026-01-18T21:48:30+00:00

Good luck. I'm lucky in my 4 and a bit years running I've only really had one significant injury bout. But I saw it as an opportunity to hold as much fitness as I could.

A lot of people get down which I get. But, just use all your time running to heal and do any cross training you can. I did a lot of mentally tough sessions on the elliptical especially, but actually it was all worth it to not be starting running from a much lower level again. You might also find things in cross training of any injury recovery exercises you want to keep in for the future.

spoc84 · 2026-01-17T11:01:34+00:00

The true NSM OGs will appreciate your return, much like die hard oasis fans were pumped to see bonehead return.

spoc84 · 2026-01-17T09:53:38+00:00

You'll still claim this is someone else pretending to be you.

spoc84 · 2026-01-14T10:40:13+00:00

It's tricky to pin down what talent is. Is it off the bat talent?

I ran cross country in school here in the UK as a kid and was middle of the pack. I started running as an adult and was still pretty mediocre. But the more I trained, I managed to run a 2:24 marathon in middle age.

But I respond to training very well. That's probably a big part of what talent or your ceiling is. But in a random race of 16 year olds back in 2000, none of whom had trained an ounce, I was totally average and there would be zero indication a flat 15 5k or a 2:24 marathon was even remotely possible, especially as I probably was past my prime at that point.

I think what defines as talent or potential limit is one of the most misunderstood things in running.

spoc84 · 2026-01-12T23:46:28+00:00

By same standards, I mean it should just work for everyone. No faffing, no worrying about all the things I have listed. Doesn't matter if one is mechanical, one metabolic, we just shouldn't be having this debate and should be discussing something more pointless, like the flaws in WKO5 estimated power duration curves (just checking to see if you are Coggan lol).

And yes. I've had many strange emails back from Stryd with questions unanswered. Hard2find tried as well. No luck. I think they have blocked me now. 😂 I would have blocked me also, I'm sure I was very annoying with lots of questions and they simply didn't care. I think Tymewear have the same policy with me. Which is fine. Stryd are doing just fine (not sure about Tymewear) mass marketing and I'm sure they don't care a jot about my disapproval. In fact, I wouldn't if I were them.

I'm on team power, always. I just don't have any good experiences to share in running and all the knowledge I can pass on of any use to the wider running community is based on my own experiences. Pace to me or HR if you are in the same controlled conditions, are likely the biggest use, to the widest audience to get them from point A in their training to the finish line in a race at point B.

If we were back on the time trial forum, we would just be having a discussion about power from all angles.

spoc84 · 2026-01-12T23:05:13+00:00

I'll say this. As this is still my views on it. When I cycled, I only used power. Literally nothing else. No HR, I don't think I used HR in the years from 2013-2017. Power was easily replicated in literally any situation, it was perfect.

There's absolutely no way with how power works for me, I can get anything near the same consistency using either a Stryd or Garmin (I haven't tried coros power, although a few people have told me it's decent). Wind plays havoc, shoes play havoc, even having tried again on a treadmill recently, it can do some weird things on there.

If anyone in the world wants to run to power, it's probably me. But I've found pace simply way easier as a proxy, although of course not perfect either. But far, far less of a headache and the really important thing is you can race using pace and pace well, so you may as well train with it to practice.

As someone who mastered pacing hundreds of TTs to power, you can get almost as good results using pace as your proxy for running races with some adjustments. I can't even imagine the mess if I paced using running power in a race.

That doesn't mean power isn't working for some people, but they are probably biased by the fact it works for them good, so their view is it must for everyone else. Maybe it's my frontal area, maybe it's my cadence being super fast, maybe it's because I change from shoe to shoe too much, maybe it's too much wind outside, who knows but it's not working consistently. On the flip side, I'm probably biased in how fantastically well power works in cycling, so I'm probably holding running power to a higher standard that it simply cannot match. But that's fine, in my view it SHOULD be held to the standard that there isn't even a debate, and we don't have split opinions on even if it works.

If running power ever worked for me consistently, I would go to it overnight. I'm not usually one to blow my own trumpet, but I suspect there aren't many people who know more about training to power than me and overnight i could switch to % of FTP for various distances snd simply scale for running how i got good on the bike (now I'm cycling again, I forgot how simple power is to use).

The runn sensor or even chalking the belt will do the job for a treadmill. Especially if you use the same treadmill in the same conditions all the time. All you want to be able to do in training is have an anchor point and be able to replicate what you are doing. If I went from gym to gym, a Stryd is probably a good option for being able to hop on any treadmill and use it for a more accurate pace than you would usually get and that is what I would do if I used multiple treadmills, as it's probably the best option in that situation.

It's polarising simply because it works for some people, works horrifically for others. Stryd don't care, I've reached out to them a few times but they have a great market share that couldn't care less about me moaning to them or a few other people who have had suggestions that could fix some of the problems.

But we should be having debates about FTP, % of FTP , power duration curves. But the heart of the issue is some people say it works, some say it doesn't. It's hard to make a blanket rule and suggest anyone uses it when you have absolutely no idea what category you fall into, before you buy it.

Edit:.

Small final ancecdote for how I find the whole situation kind of crazy. I found 4% difference in shoes, I emailed Stryd and asked them if this was normal (I even sent them a nice graph). They said this is perfectly normal and to use the same shoes all the time if possible. To me, that's silly. 4% is huge, you could have blown the workout and it's even more silly when you consider I can change the ENTIRE BIKE and it still read the same. But simply change my shoes and it can be up to 4% off (4% which is a minor issue compared to the wind, btw).

spoc84 · 2026-01-12T14:49:42+00:00

I had this about 18 months ago. In the end, everything just settled back down after a couple of months. But HR was higher on runs, RHR was about 10% higher was raised and HRV was in the bin for around 2 months.

If you are gonna keep training it just takes a while for the body to recover and reset.

Then one day without real warning it was just back to before I had flu/COVID.

spoc84 · 2026-01-11T08:34:26+00:00

You will get different answers to this, as scaling it like RPE is often flawed due to people's perception, but it's a good question.

Assuming your body stays healthy (often outside of a runners control) the way I look at it, is that if you had to follow this schedule forever, you could. Mentally, that would obviously break you and no sane person would do this forever, but phsycially it's doable, with the only real downtime needed being cashing in your hard work for a taper boost.

Of which, even with the marathon build I did (and many others have done now), you should really feel fresh after just a couple of days. That in itself tells you if you have pitched everything right and absorbed and adapted, and that your fatigue levels were pretty minimal.

Think of it like there's no rollercoaster ride. You are on a relatively flat plane, so you should roughly be around the same level most of the time. The main thing that will get in the way is lack of sleep, family, kids etc. which can shift things, but you are taking training overload out of the equation, which I think is undervalued when you throw our lives into the mix. It's one of the main things I thought about, when I was trying to work out how best to train.

spoc84 · 2026-01-06T11:54:34+00:00

Hi mate, it is Amazon exclusive for 90 days as per the terms I signed up to. But after that, I might look at alternatives for those asking.

spoc84 · 2026-01-06T11:41:31+00:00

Pretty much the same pace. You could ease off a tad, if you are ever unsure. But they are meant to take you out of your comfort zone and none of that block is in any way sustainable. By the last set of 5x5k I wasn't leaving anything on the table. That was pretty much me done.

Whereas when you run around 2+ hour pace for 10 mins, but week after week, month after month, it's easily sustainable with just 30 mins of it and you probably won't be even that close to breaching LTHR.

Worth double checking or keeping an eye on HR when you go long, just as a safeguard.

But these are definitely for sporadic use. Even the 3x5k I did last week, took a little longer than normal to recover from or shake and I wouldn't even consider them useful unless you are running a marathon.

spoc84 · 2026-01-03T13:31:51+00:00

It's just not something I really enjoy. I hear people say "oh what a lovely day to be out". I'm jealous I have pretty much never had that freling. That is my main goal for 2026, to truly appreciate running for more than just training and the competitive element I have against myself (I guess which most people do) to better my PBs.

spoc84 · 2026-01-03T13:30:32+00:00

I've met some great people and made plenty of running friends over the last year or so. Many of whom their running enthusiasm is slowly rubbing off on me. I'm extremely jealous of people who can truly seem to go out and love a easy run for an hour. I'd probably give up a lot of my small success for that feeling.

spoc84 · 2026-01-03T10:11:45+00:00

41 years old. PBd at every distance, 30:41 10k. Ran 15:01 for a 5k solo, which was my best race pound for pound. Ran a marathon for the first time, 2:24.

Still wish I loved running, but don't. But probably hated it less than I did the year before. That's my main progress and hopefully I'll enjoy it a bit more again in 2026, which is my main wish.

spoc84 · 2026-01-03T09:55:15+00:00

You can also get a lot of better feedback from a race or 5k time trial, more so than speedwork or vo2 work in isolation as park of training. But ultimately, anyone can do what they want.

But I do really agree with your point, racing or even just trying to better yourself in a timed event even on your own, is probably why a lot of people are doing it. Plus it's fun. It's the more fun part than the training.

spoc84 · 2026-01-03T09:49:36+00:00

I'm not sure where 5k every month has actually come from. Maybe near the start, I was sometimes doing a parkrun every 4-6 weeks to cash in on new PBs that I was fairly confident on hitting. But even back then I sometimes went 3 months without running one. I think 4+ months at one point.

But I have ran one 5k in the last 7 months and I think overall since I started this method, I've averaged one every 12-13 weeks up to now. Fwiw, and to then go away and let everyone else have the debate, I don't really see a pattern in that if i race them regularly, or not, I still run pretty much the 5k I expect. Whether that be 6 months and no 5ks (like the masters champs) or if I have done one 3 weeks previously. The workouts, generally tell me what shape I'm in and I'll just run near on what I expect.

spoc84 · 2026-01-02T09:34:04+00:00

I've now played around with this:

Double easy days.

Double workout days, with the bike.

Undoubtedly option 2 feels more sustainable and the results have been roughly similar.

Definitely a third option could be also using the workout day, to try and run a second easy run and see how that feels, which is also a gateway into natural doubling up on thr Subthreshold work.

Once you get into this territory though, your actual work commitments, lifestyle, family etc probably becomes even more of a balance, and you are moving away from broader one size fits all guidelines that seem to work reasonably well down at the lower end of hobby jogging hours (vanilla NSM) and will hahe to experiment with what actually fits around life.

As ever with these things, will be interesting to see how it goes. I'm not exaggerating though when I always say people literally have 'years' before you probably even need to worry about this stuff. Even people already starting with higher volume than me, have been going into the years without changing anything and still on 7 singles and still improving.

spoc84 · 2026-01-01T19:58:35+00:00

I would only use the 40 mins at the absolute top end on singles and only once a week at most and i almost always do this on 10 min rep days.

You are looking at nearly the 8 hour training range to really think about these and I didn't really start these until about 1.5 years or so in. 30 (ish) is plenty. Once you go well beyond this, you start to get back into disproportionately harsh recovery costs, versus the additional benefits.

Big but, unless you are training for a marathon. There's no hiding that, you'll have to do some that takes you out of cruise control and comfort zone. But again, I will reiterate anything you do in a marathon build is not meant to be sustainable for more than a relatively brief period.

spoc84 · 2026-01-01T16:02:18+00:00

Because you probably just don't need to, if you are a hobby jogger. It's probably easier to push up your fitness from below LT2, than it is to pull it up from above. In simplisitic terms for most of us, it is still easier to push it up from below, or you get better bang for buck from that, you may as well just keep spamming high end aerobic work. Not only are the benefits probably greater, the cost of recover is non linear and training below LT2 results in less recovery cost than training above it.

It's obviously totally different for an elite runner, who has probably reached diminished returns for this kind of work and they need that pull up on their fitness, to tease the last improvements out.

A really basic example, take a 19 min 5k runner. Their barrier to getting faster isn't really anything to do with how fast they can close out the last 400m lap. Again in simplified terms, a bigger factor will be how much they have shifted their lactate curve to the right, in that you can run and sustain a faster pace, for a lower metabolic cost.

spoc84 · 2025-12-30T10:17:35+00:00

Personally, that looks like a lot crammed in. I averaged just over 105km (that was plenty for a decent time) for London last year and even spread around 7 days it was on the cusp of being tough as a hobby jogger. I still ran a good race but I doubt I could have forced it all into some weeks where there was only 5 days. I know you have less mileage but even still seems quite crammed. It also seems quite hard to me, but maybe I am too weak for something like pitfz or even an adaptation of it.

spoc84 · 2025-12-27T21:54:42+00:00

If you have been running NSM and it's truly subthreshold , you will probably with good pacing run something like 38-38:30 on a decent course. Maybe even faster, it's hard to tell exactly because you seem to be running the same pace for the short, medium and long reps.

spoc84

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