Level Completed? Level Up!

As winter wears on, I continue to pick off little Garmin Connect achievements when the weather isn’t too horrible. I would be happy to avoid the outdoors for most of our winter, but Garmin doesn’t recognize my Zwift sessions in its criteria for points and badges. It’s weird. Garmin does count Zwift mileage toward my annual cycling goal. (I wish it wouldn’t. From my point of view, I’m still looking for my first real—i.e., outdoor—ride of 2022.) So, out I went yesterday for a bitterly cold 1.2-mile walk to earn the 1-point Be My Valentine badge. I could have satisfied the conditions of the “challenge” simply by walking to the end of the driveway, but I stayed out long enough and moved fast enough to turn the walk into a warmup for the home gym strength training session that followed. And yes, I know Garmin can track strength training and I could use those activities to satisfy challenges like yesterday’s, but I don’t track my strength training activities in Garmin Connect.

Maybe I should start! Just a few days ago, Garmin Connect quietly addressed one of its biggest and oldest customer complaints: the Level 5 ceiling. Badges are little rewards unto themselves, but points are a better indicator of a user’s ongoing commitment to fitness. Harder challenges have higher point values. Running a marathon, for example, is worth 8 points. You can slowly move up the ladder by gaming the system and hitting all of the easy holiday challenges, but you shouldn’t hope to catch the real athletes. Not anymore. For years, Level 5 was as high as you could go. That left some users wondering why they should continue to participate in challenges on Garmin Connect. Last year I advanced from Level 2 to Level 4. This year I fully expect to reach Level 5 and I admit that if there were nowhere else to go I would stop bothering with challenges like yesterday’s. It wouldn’t count for much that such challenges encourage me to cross-train and not to spend all my time on the bike. But now the ceiling is Level 10. In time, even that won’t be high enough but at least it creates some temporary incentives. Going up in levels is almost completely an exercise in vanity, but to whatever extent it keeps a person exercising bodily, let’s reward a little egotism.