Garmin Stamina Curve, Epic, and Rowing FTP: Three Features Explained

Garmin has quietly pushed out three feature updates that matter to serious endurance athletes: Real-Time Stamina gets a visual upgrade with Stamina Curve and Stamina Zones, indoor rowers get their own FTP and VO2max estimates, and multi-day adventurers get a new logging tool called Epic. None of these are hardware additions. They are software and platform features, most of them rolling out via Connect IQ or firmware updates to existing devices like the Fenix 8, Forerunner 965, and Edge 1050. If you are already on the [Garmin Fenix 9](/en/articles/garmin-fenix-9-and-9-pro-bring-titanium-and-built-in-satellite-2026-08-25), you will get all three out of the box.

Stamina Curve and Stamina Zones

Real-Time Stamina has existed on Garmin devices for a couple of years, giving you a live percentage of remaining aerobic and anaerobic capacity during a run or ride. Stamina Curve takes that a step further by showing you a personalised curve: how long you can sustain each pace band or power zone given your current fatigue state. Think of it as a dynamic critical power curve that updates mid-run, not just a static 90-day best effort chart. The curve is estimated from your running power, pace history, VO2max estimate (derived from the wrist PPG optical sensor and GPS data), and your current stamina depletion.

Stamina Zones divide your remaining capacity into five effort bands, each colour-coded on the watch face during activity. Zone 1 means you are barely denting reserves. Zone 5 means you are close to a hard stop. For a triathlete managing effort across a 70.3 run leg, this is genuinely useful: you can see in real time if the pace you are holding is sustainable to the finish or whether you are borrowing from the final 5km. Coros has nothing equivalent in real time. Polar's Running Performance Condition gives a snapshot at the start, not a live curve. Garmin's implementation is more granular than both.

The limitations are real though. Stamina Curve is only as good as your VO2max estimate and your power model. If you have not done enough structured runs to calibrate Garmin's algorithms, the curve will be off, sometimes wildly. It also does not account for heat, altitude (even though Garmin watches carry a barometric altimeter for elevation via air pressure changes), or glycogen from nutrition. Use it as directional, not gospel.

Garmin Rowing FTP and VO2max

This one is for the CrossFit and Hyrox crowd. Garmin now estimates rowing FTP (the power output you can sustain for roughly 60 minutes on an ergometer) and a rowing-specific VO2max, separate from your cycling FTP and running VO2max. The estimates come from indoor rowing sessions where the watch receives power data from the erg via ANT+ or Bluetooth. The optical PPG sensor on your wrist reads heart rate during the session; Garmin then models aerobic capacity from the power-to-heart-rate relationship over time.

Why does this matter? Rowing FTP is not the same as cycling FTP. The muscle recruitment is different, the cardiovascular demand is different, and your lactate threshold power on a Concept2 will not match your threshold watts on a Wahoo Kickr. A Hyrox athlete preparing for a season might have a cycling FTP of 280W but a rowing FTP of 210W. Tracking both separately gives you a cleaner picture of sport-specific fitness. Whoop does not give you FTP at all. Apple Watch Ultra 2 does not distinguish by sport for FTP. Garmin is, for now, alone in offering this level of sport-specific metabolic segmentation at the consumer level.

Rowing VO2max follows the same logic. It will typically read lower than your running VO2max if rowing is not your primary sport, and that is correct. A 52 ml/kg/min running VO2max and a 44 ml/kg/min rowing VO2max for the same athlete is plausible and informative. The feature requires enough rowing data to stabilise, so expect a few weeks of consistent sessions before the numbers settle.

Garmin Epic: Multi-Day Adventure Logging

Epic is Garmin's answer to a problem multi-day athletes have had for years: how do you combine a 5-day trail running camp, a ski touring week, or a stage race into one coherent record instead of 20 disconnected activity files? Epic lets you group activities, health snapshots (sleep, HRV, body battery), photos, and notes into a single multi-day event in Garmin Connect. You create the Epic on the watch or in the app, assign a date range, and Garmin stitches the data together into one viewable record.

The use cases are obvious for endurance athletes: UTMB week, a cycling gran fondo tour, an Ironman training camp in Lanzarote. Instead of scrolling through individual files to reconstruct how your body responded across the week, you get a consolidated view of total load, sleep trends, and daily notes in one place. Strava does not do this natively. TrainingPeaks handles multi-day load analysis but not in-watch narrative logging. Epic fills a genuine gap.

What is missing or disappointing across all three features? Stamina Curve is still not available on all Garmin devices, it appears to require more recent hardware with sufficient processing headroom. Rowing FTP calibration is slow, and there is no manual FTP entry option if you already know your number from a tested protocol. Epic has no export to third-party platforms yet, so if your coach uses TrainingPeaks or Today's Plan, the Epic view stays locked inside Garmin's ecosystem. That is a frustrating wall for athletes who split their data across tools.

Bottom line: these three features collectively strengthen Garmin's case as the most analytically complete platform for endurance sport in 2026. Stamina Curve is the most immediately useful for racers. Rowing FTP is a niche win for CrossFitters and Hyrox athletes that nobody else is offering at this level. Epic is a smart organisational tool that will resonate with adventure racers and stage competitors. If you are already in the Garmin ecosystem on a Fenix 8 or Forerunner 965, these are free upgrades worth enabling. If you are deciding between the [Fenix 9 and Fenix 8](/en/articles/garmin-fenix-9-vs-fenix-8-which-model-should-you-buy-2026-08-25), the Fenix 9 gets all three features with guaranteed long-term support. Coros and Polar do not offer a comparable feature set at any price point right now.