Garmin Running Trends 2026: What I Noticed

The Garmin running trends 2026 read like a study of all runners, and one number sticks: an average VO2max of 50, plus an average pace of 5:49 min/km for men.[1] If you wear a Garmin yourself and have 44 on the display right now, or run at 6:30, you read that and think: left behind. That exact feeling is what I take apart here. Because these „good average values" mostly pressure the people who sit below them — and in the vast majority of cases that pressure is unfounded.

Real Data — but the Average of What?

Garmin's numbers are real; what's open is only which group they describe. Garmin sits on millions of logged runs — a volume of data no single research team ever collects itself. For trends, meaning what shifts from year to year, that's genuinely valuable.

The problem starts the moment „the average of all Garmin runners" sounds like a benchmark for the general population. Garmin is mass-market, not a niche brand for ambitious runners like Coros — from cheap entry-level trackers to expensive multisport watches, beginners included. Which is exactly why such an average should drift toward the general population, not land on a peak value. And here's the snag: many people run little, irregularly, or almost only easy in the low-intensity base zone (Zone 1–2) — the kind of running that barely pushes VO2max up. Yet a VO2max of 50 is „Excellent" on Garmin's own scale. That this broad, fairly average group should average „Excellent" doesn't add up. Logically there's only one option left: in this number the less-trained are underrepresented, the well-trained overrepresented — or both. That the sample is skewed is therefore plain logic; only the why is my hypothesis.

And the why is exactly that — my suspicion, nothing more: the selection probably doesn't happen at purchase, but in the data. The less sporty do own a Garmin, but might barely show up in the VO2max average — because they never get a value calculated (an easy run often stays below the ~70% of max heart rate Garmin requires for it), walk more than they run, or wear the watch only in daily life. One fact on top: this is explicitly a runner analysis, not a statement about all watch owners. How strongly the effect actually pulls can't be measured from outside — but which metric has which bar, I'll look at in a moment. That a wearable is a good tool but not a benchmark is also shown by the review of 188 studies on wearables in training.

One thing up front, so it's clear where the following comes from: Garmin doesn't disclose which users feed into which number. I'm not a statistician, but a practitioner with a sports-science background — and first of all, I'm glad real data of this scale even exists. I just look at it critically and ask the questions Garmin leaves open. So what follows is not official Garmin information, but my reading — pieced together from Garmin's public system requirements, the VO2max norm table built into every watch, and the research on wearables.

VO2max 50: Why That's Already a Good Value

On Garmin's own norm scale, a VO2max of 50 would already be a really good value for many, not just an average. Garmin's table, fed by data from the Cooper Institute, rates a man between 30 and 39 as „Good" from 44.0, „Excellent" from 48.3, „Superior" from 54.0. For women in the same age group, „Superior" already starts at 47.4.[2] A reported average of 50 therefore lands men in the „Excellent" band and women even in the „Superior" range, the highest segment of the norm scale.

An average that sits near the top of the in-house scale — that only adds up if two things are true. First, Garmin itself calls the metric „average best VO2max".[1] Not your yearly average, but your peak value. Whoever once reached 52 and has been running at 46 since goes into the statistic with 52.

Second, Garmin doesn't measure VO2max directly but estimates it from the relationship between pace and heart rate. A review of several validation studies shows: for recreational athletes it works decently, most reliably in the mid-range.[4] For the genuinely well-trained, the Forerunner 245 even systematically underestimates the lab value, by around 6 to 7 ml/kg/min.[3] What stays open is the question Garmin doesn't answer: how selected is the group that gets a VO2max value at all?

At 44, you're „Good" on exactly this Garmin scale — that's solid, not „below average". And the number on the display remains an extrapolation anyway, not a lab value: your watch doesn't measure VO2max, it estimates it from pace and pulse. How accurate that really is, I took apart in calculating VO2max with AI and a wearable — short verdict: usable as a trend over weeks, not as an exact point value down to the decimal.

Cross-Check Cycling: Even Higher, Same Reason

Garmin released cycling data in parallel, and the average VO2max there is 51 — even above the runners' 50.[8] Read that and you quickly think: cyclists are simply fitter. More likely it's the same pre-selection, just one notch sharper. A cycling Garmin with a power meter and FTP measurement tends to be worn by even more ambitious people than a simple running watch.

And here it gets interesting: with the cycling numbers, Garmin makes the split visible itself — the very split I could only guess at with the running numbers. Whoever rides more than 257 kilometers per week averages a VO2max of 62; everyone else sits at 51.[8] Same logic with FTP, i.e. threshold power: the heavy riders reach 243 watts, the rest 220.[8] So a single average hides two very different groups — and with the running numbers it's highly likely the same, Garmin just doesn't show it there.

Pace 5:49 — Fast Compared to Whom?

The average pace describes people who upload their runs with a sports watch, not runners in general. 5:49 min/km for men, 6:32 for women[1] — that sounds like a pace you „should" hit. But nobody reading 5:49 thinks about the pre-selection behind it.

The fastest countries in the data — Ireland at 5:39, behind it Portugal at 5:43 and Italy at 5:44[1] — are a good example of how little such rankings say. Because Garmin doesn't state how many users per country actually feed in — and without that figure, a country ranking is simply statistical noise. A country with a few thousand ambitious trackers moves to the front, a country with millions of casual runners moves to the back, without one saying anything about the other. Why Ireland leads can only be guessed: maybe a smaller, more ambitious Garmin user base, maybe the strong running and parkrun culture, maybe the cool climate that delivers good running conditions almost year-round — heat is the biggest pace killer. Part of it is surely real: Ireland's running and parkrun culture does produce an active community, I'm not explaining that away. But what comes down to actual speed and what comes down to the selection of trackers can't be separated out from the data — and that's exactly the point.

A pace ranking without a sample size says more about who tracks in which country than about how fast a country runs. Garmin's own numbers fit that: nearly 40 percent of runners run only 9 to 16 kilometers per week[1] — far more moderate than the pace average suggests. Your 6:30 doesn't make you a slow runner.

What Would Be Far More Useful: the Distribution, Not the Average

And here's the real catch for me — and it applies to every one of these numbers, not just pace. An average squeezes thousands of different runners into a single figure and throws away exactly what you want to know: how wide the field is. Garmin at least breaks the pace down by age group — 5:45 for the 20–29s, over 6:45 for the 70+ — but within each group it shows only the average, no spread.

A distribution would be more honest: how many in your age group run 5:00, how many 6:30, how many 7:30? That would show you instantly that a 6:30 sits right in the middle of the field — no outlier. The bare average of 5:49, by contrast, is the one number that can put you under pressure without telling you where you actually stand. An average without spread hides more than it shows.

The same problem sits inside the number itself: an average across all runs throws intervals, tempo runs, and easy base (Zone 1–2) sessions into one pot. A pace only means something within a zone — your easy base pace, your threshold pace, your race pace. Anyone who runs a lot of easy base volume (exactly what most plans recommend — think 80/20) drags their average down. So a 'slow' average pace can mean you're training smart, not badly.

„All Garmin Runners" — Does That Hold for Every Number?

Garmin probably measures a different, increasingly sporty subgroup for each metric. Here it gets speculative, so I'll say it openly as a guess. „All Garmin runners" sounds like a fixed group — it probably isn't.

For distance and pace, a single logged run is enough. For a VO2max value, on the other hand, I looked up what the watch actually requires — and the bar is high: at least around 10 minutes straight outdoors with GPS, and the pulse has to exceed about 70 percent of maximum heart rate during it.[9] Anyone jogging easy to recover, running on a treadmill, or wearing the watch only as a step counter in daily life drops out of this statistic entirely. So what gets measured isn't the average of all Garmin wearers, but the average of the already brisk outdoor faction. The sleep score, in turn, only appears if you wear the watch at night, and even then it's shaky: against the sleep lab, Garmin overestimates sleep duration by around 47 minutes on average, depending on the study between 28 and 66.[5] I placed the same pattern in context in a Garmin analysis of 224 runners on sleep and training.

If that's true, the VO2max of 50 would come from the sportiest subset of an already selected universe and still be presented as the average of „everyone". Garmin itself writes that VO2max „varies considerably by sex and age"[1] — and in the conclusion still puts the bare 50 out there as the average for all. The rest can't be proven, because Garmin doesn't fully disclose the methodology. But it's the explanation that best fits all the numbers at once.

The One Data Point That Needs No Speculation

An internal ratio needs no assumptions about the sample, and it holds. The number of users who recorded running and strength training in the same week rose by nearly 23 percent from 2024 to 2025.[1] That's a comparison within the same database, from one year to the next — the selection of the group barely matters there, because it's the same on both sides.

The trend is robust, and it makes sense: strength training belongs to running. A widely cited meta-analysis found that targeted strength training nearly halved overuse injuries, while pure stretching did nothing.[6] To be fair, a more recent review specifically on endurance runners came out more mixed. The direction „strength protects and makes you more economical" is well supported; the exact effect size in pure runners less so.

What to Do With Your Garmin Numbers

If your Garmin number sits below the average from the blog, that says almost nothing about you. You're comparing yourself to a selected, device-savvy group whose peak values were averaged — no benchmark you have to measure yourself against.

It was probably never Garmin's intention — the running trends are meant as a celebration of the community, not a yardstick. But below the surface, exactly that can land while reading: „I don't even fit into the average." And you don't have to do that to yourself.

My suggestion, the one that gives you the full power of the Garmin data without comparison ruining your joy in sport, movement, and your own progress: the most useful comparison number on your watch is you three months ago. If your VO2max climbs over the season, things are going right. If it stagnates, you look at training and recovery — not the gap to some stranger's average. That's the whole to-do list. The bad feeling from reading the blog, you can cross out.

Sources

• [1] Garmin: Lauftrends — neue Daten zeigen, wie Garmin Laufende ihren Rhythmus finden. garmin.com

• [2] Garmin: VO2 Max norm values (data source: The Cooper Institute). Garmin Support

• [3] Validity of V̇O2max estimates from the Forerunner 245 in highly vs. moderately trained endurance athletes. PMC12881131.

• [4] Accuracy of wearables for determining maximal oxygen uptake and lactate threshold: a qualitative systematic review. Front. Sports Act. Living (2025). PMC12748164.

• [5] Accuracy of Fitbit Charge 4, Garmin Vivosmart 4 and WHOOP versus polysomnography: a systematic review. JMIR mHealth uHealth (2024).

• [6] Lauersen et al.: Strength training as superior, dose-dependent and safe prevention of sports injuries. Br J Sports Med (2014). PMID 24100287.

• [7] Tanaka et al.: Age-predicted maximal heart rate revisited. J Am Coll Cardiol (2001). PMID 11153730.

• [8] Garmin: Was die Garmin Community bewegt — die neuesten globalen Fahrradtrends. garmin.com

• [9] Garmin: VO2 Max Estimate for Running — Requirements (at least 10 minutes outdoors with GPS at about 70% of maximum heart rate or higher; calculation via Firstbeat Analytics). Garmin Support