Why do Garmin coach intervals not have a recovery on the last interval?

If you get an interval session suggested on Garmin coach it never adds the rest/recovery to the final interval.

If you look at the breakdown in the garmin Connect app, it's there as your effort/recovery x however many times. But on the watch, it just looks like a mirrored workout.

If I've worked hard on that last effort, I don't want to be berated by my watch for going to slowly when I should be recovering.

0 e7andy 1 month ago

That is how it is designed. After the last run you go into cooldown and don't need any more recovery since you are not doing any more intervals.

When you design your own workouts you can select if you want to skip the recovery after the last interval.

0 jeffgrant15 1 month ago in reply to e7andy

But that isn’t how it’s designed as you can clearly see from the connect breakdown. There should be a recovery after every effort. Those two images are the same workout.

if you do one of the coaches programmes, you’ll get a recovery after your efforts, this is something particular to the Garmin coach programme.

I’m aware I can design my own, and if I designed the one there in connect, it would have a recovery after the last effort.

0 e7andy 1 month ago in reply to jeffgrant15

The workout in the image doesn't say if last recovery should be skipped or not. If you create your own workout it will say if skip is on or off.

0 flowstate 1 month ago in reply to e7andy

e7andy said:
The workout in the image doesn't say if last recovery should be skipped or not. If you create your own workout it will say if skip is on or off.

This is true, but the problem here is that:

- Garmin Coach workouts do have the "skip last rest/recovery" option enabled, but Connect doesn't tell the user that

- For either manually created workouts or Garmin Coach workouts, if the last rest/recovery of a set will be skipped, the watch doesn't tell you that

This topic has come up over and over again, so it's obviously a UX fail on Garmin's part.

In an ideal world:

- When you view a Garmin Coach workout in Connect (either the app or website), it should tell you that the last rest/recovery of a set will be skipped (just like for manually created workouts.

- When you view any workout on the watch, it should tell you whether the last rest/recovery of a set will be skipped

The way it is now, most people just assume it's a bug. This isn't the first feature / behaviour change that Garmin has introduced where many people assume it's a bug, because Garmin doesn't communicate it properly in the user interface.

Instead Garmin relies on confused users to either:

- ask in the forums or maybe r/garmin (tiny minority)

- read a support article (also a minority)

- give up / not care (vast majority)