Most fitness apps treat heart rate like it’s the only thing that matters. They tell you that if your heart is beating at 160 beats per minute, you are in a specific “zone” and doing a specific amount of work. But if you live in a place like South Africa, you know that isn’t the full story.
Running at 160 bpm on a cool morning in Cape Town feels completely different from running at 160 bpm in the middle of a Durban heatwave or at the high altitude of Johannesburg. In the heat, your body has to work much harder just to keep you cool. At altitude, your heart has to pump faster because there is less oxygen.
We call this the “Physiological Cost.” It is the difference between the work you do (your pace or power) and the price your body pays to do it.
At Immersive Authority, we are building the the SWEL Health platform to calculate this cost. We don’t just look at your watch data. We pull in weather and altitude information and combine it with your heart rate. This tells you the truth about your workout. If the heat is making your run 20% harder than usual, our system tells you to back off so you don’t burn out. It’s about training smarter by looking at the environment, not just the numbers on your wrist.
Leave a Reply