identify split time

The fastest mile will be recorded as a personal record even if it was done during a marathon. The run just has to be a bit more than just a few % longer than the measured distance. Not sure where exactly the threshold is, but if you do not wish running for example a 50% longer distance, just trim the activity to the exact distance in Garmin Connect, and assign the record there manually (Set as PR in the Activity menu under the cogwheel). 

trux said:

The fastest mile will be recorded as a personal record even if it was done during a marathon. The run just has to be a bit more than just a few % longer than the measured distance.

Yeah, the reason for this is that if you run a mile race (for example), and your recorded distance is slightly longer than a mile, Garmin will use the time for the *entire* activity to determine your mile record. This is to avoid giving you a "fake" PB for races, where you recorded a longer distance so your new PB is faster than you actually ran.

e.g. Say you run a half marathon in 1:30, but you recorded 21.4 km instead of of 21.1. Garmin is going to use the time for the whole 21.4 (1:30) for the purpose of determining a PB, as opposed to the time it took to run 21.1. That way the integrity of your PBs is preserved.

It's somewhat unexpected, but it's better than what Strava does (IMO), which is to give you fake PBs whenever your recorded distance for a race is too long.

wcadkins said:

When I search for a fastest time, i.e. "fastest mile", or "fastest 5k", it would be great to have it find the info even if it is recorded within the body of a larger workout. So if I have my fastest mile and then cool down for .2 miles, Garmin doesn't see the record mile time if I didn't stop my watch at exactly one mile. I'd like Garmin to identify that mile time within the 1.2 mile distance, as opposed to only being able to measure "fastest mile" if I run *exactly* one mile.

So in this case I would just put the cooldown in a separate activity (unfortunately), or run a much longer warmup and cooldown if they're going to be in the same activity.

yes - the behavior as you described it is the crux of my request. As for the PB aspect and against what distance etc, my feature request is to let me make the decision about it. I'm fine if Garmin flags the activity as edited (and thus not necessarily "truth" as it knows it to be) and puts some kind of restriction on what/if edited files/data can be exported or shared publicly. The need is for me to track internally and measure within some set courses I run if I have improvements within the run or the activity.

To put it in real basic terms: I get my Activity data and it tells me my running avg pace is ~7:00/mile. I can share those activities to Garmin Connect (public/friend share), to Strava, etc. If I edit each of my activities so that I have Olympic Sprinter mile times on my results, then Garmin can flag each of those activities as "edited", it can send "edited" flags to Strava, or it could only allow external sharing of the original data. That way public sharing of edited files can be marked/limited so no one can game their results except for their own internal viewing. Ultimately that's someone's choice so who cares. The only times/reasons I have are for deeper data-dives into my formal and informal splits. If I run a fastest mile from mile 2.4 to mile 3.4 (as opposed to only tracking every 1.0/2.0/3.0 mile as a marker) then I'd like to note that, or at least *know it*. So it's less about trimming an activity and knowing and studying data within an activity.

I get what you're saying but I'm saying something a bit different - I'm looking for measurement within an activity that might happen to be a PB. It could be the bulk of my activity or just a part of it (best 5k in a 3.5 mile run or best 1 mile in a 6 mile run) but not marked at the "mile" point (i.e. 1.0/2.0 mile measurements). 

As an explainer in the sport of F1, when the teams have practice sessions, they test at the tracks which have pre-marked sectors (1/2/3). They will try to obfuscate their performance throughout the weekend to throw off the competition. They will  go full out in one sector and slow in the others, then switch up and do the subsequent sectors, and add together a lap based of fastest sector out of multiple laps. Or they will create their own sectors which are different from the ones used at the track, and do the same 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 work on their own sectors, trying to fool their competition from having accurate data of true pace of the competition. So they have fastest sectors they can track virtually anywhere they want, and they can also string together a narrative for speed by looking at overall pace from multiple laps.

The analogy here is trying to find best pace within a workout that may not align to "which mile of the 6 you ran is fastest" if my fastest mile was mile 2.8-3.8, I'd like to know that. If I start seeing where I'm fast, especially on courses I use a lot, I can track where/why on that stretch and learn from it. I can also track relative speed to overall time.

The data is already in there, I'm just trying to expose it for more analysis.

wcadkins said:

As for the PB aspect and against what distance etc, my feature request is to let me make the decision about it.

You have it. You can edit the activity in the way you want. You can change the times, the distance, you can trim it, and you can edit plenty of other details. If you did not see it, the Edit function is under the cogwheel icon:

On the same menu, you can also see the function Trim Activity for adjusting the distance, removing the cooldown phase, if necessary, and the function Set as PR to assign the PR manually if it was not detected automatically. 

wcadkins said:

'm fine if Garmin flags the activity as edited (and thus not necessarily "truth" as it knows it to be)

Yes indeed it is there too:

If you just want to know you've run the fastest mile, you just have to run exactly 1mile, or a bit more than ~1.2 mile (?), and you'll be notified, as both WillNorthYork and myself have written previously. I do not know how much more exactly, but I think something like 1.5 mile could be enough for that. Perhaps 2. You best ask on the forum dedicated to your watch model, whether other owners know that exact threshold, since it may also depend on the device.

So, frankly told, personally I am little bit confused, because I do not quite understand whether you are asking some other functionality than the described and available one, or whether you are just not aware of the possibility to edit the data.

wcadkins said:

If I run a fastest mile from mile 2.4 to mile 3.4 (as opposed to only tracking every 1.0/2.0/3.0 mile as a marker) then I'd like to note that, or at least *know it*. So it's less about trimming an activity and knowing and studying data within an activity.

Yeah I totally get it. Sooo, this solution isn't free, but if you sync your garmin data with strava, then you can connect your strava account to https://veloviewer.com/. TBH the site is geared more towards cyclists, but it has some useful features for runners, too. The feature I use the most is "best splits": you open an activity, specify a split time or distance that you're interested in, and the site will analyze your data to find the best matching split(s) (from *anywhere* in the activity) and give you the time, distance, pace, power, HR and cadence for those splits. For example, if I run an 8 x 800m workout, and for some reason, I want to know my five fastest 100m (non-overlapping) sections, veloviewer can tell me.

It's a pretty unique feature which I haven't seen on any free Garmin/Strava-related site or app so far.

Veloviewer is 10 GBP per year tho. You can try it out for free, but it only does a one-time sync of a small number of activities.

Of course, if you're only interested in automatically tracking PBs for common distances like 1 mile, and you want to avoid the Garmin PB algorithm, you can just use Strava. It should do exactly what you want, which is to always match on the fastest sub-section of the activity which is exactly equal to the PB distance in question. In practice it means that whenever you run a race PB, the strava auto-detected PB ("estimated best effort") turns out to be a few seconds faster, unless you managed to record the exact distance of the race.

WillNorthYork said:

wcadkins said:

If I run a fastest mile from mile 2.4 to mile 3.4 (as opposed to only tracking every 1.0/2.0/3.0 mile as a marker) then I'd like to note that, or at least *know it*. So it's less about trimming an activity and knowing and studying data within an activity.

Yeah I totally get it. Sooo, this solution isn't free, but if you sync your garmin data with strava

Again, I do not know what model of Garmin watch wcadkins owns, but both my Instinct, and Instinct 2 do exactly that. For free, and without Strava or any other 3rd party service. For example when I do a 10k run, it will tell me if I did my fastest 1km, 1mile, 5k, and 10k. I have several examples of that in my GC history, where several PRs were detected within a single run. No manual assignment, no editing, no 3rd party services. And of course, the fastest section is practically never starting at the beginning.

trux said:

Again, I do not know what model of Garmin watch wcadkins owns, but both my Instinct, and Instinct 2 do exactly that. For free, and without Strava or any other 3rd party service. For example when I do a 10k run, it will tell me if I did my fastest 1km, 1mile, 5k, and 10k. I have several examples of that in my GC history, where several PRs were detected within a single run. No manual assignment, no editing, no 3rd party services. And of course, the fastest section is practically never starting at the beginning.

Yes but there's also this:

wcadkins said:

The analogy here is trying to find best pace within a workout that may not align to "which mile of the 6 you ran is fastest" if my fastest mile was mile 2.8-3.8, I'd like to know that. If I start seeing where I'm fast, especially on courses I use a lot, I can track where/why on that stretch and learn from it. I can also track relative speed to overall time.

The best splits feature of veloviewer can show you which part of the activity contains its best mile split (for example), as well as the associated data (HR, cadence, etc.) The Garmin feature can only tell you whether or not you ran your fastest mile (or other common split distance) of all time in the current activity.

As a bonus, veloviewer lets you ask for information about multiple best splits (like top 3 fastest miles with in the same activity), as well as allowing you to define custom splits (like best 150 metres, best 10 minutes, etc.)

I feel like this feature is closer to what OP is looking for. Can't speak for anyone else, but I use it all the time because I'm a data nerd.