Garmin Coach Time Trial Lap Errors - Wrong Button Push?

FlowState thanks for the reply. What I don't quite understand is how to "pause" the watch when it's in this type of workout. Normally, I see the watch transition from one stage to the next seamlessly and if I want to pause I just hit the ∆ button to pause and again to resume. I do this regularly if I want to take a photo/break during a workout stage. In this type of workout, the time trial, the watch appears to be paused until you hit the lap button. The display just shows that it's waiting for you to hit the lap button and even has a helpful indicator pointing to the correct button.

I may try to setup a private workout as a time trial to test if I hit the ∆ button when it's in this "waiting" stage if that acts like a normal pause...that's a good experiment to try.

Hypothesizing what's going on, there may be a glitch in the watch's programming where the display shows that it's paused and waiting for the user to push the button to start the next stage (the correct approach) but in actuality, the watch isn't paused and is recording continuously so when the user hits the ∆ button it creates another lap. Basically, there is a hidden lap being created because the transition phase is incorrectly programmed as a lap instead of a pause. A workaround might be to simply continue directly into the time trial stage without a break after the warmup, then hit the lap button after you complete the time trial to create the extra lap as the 3rd (instead of 2nd) stage in the workout.

Stage 1 - warmup + getting ready for time trial

Stage 2 - time trail (no break/pause after Stage 1)

Stage 3 - hit the lap button to start the time trial but actually this just creates an extra, throwaway lap

Stage 4 - cooldown

mpthand said:

I may try to setup a private workout as a time trial to test if I hit the ∆ button when it's in this "waiting" stage if that acts like a normal pause...that's a good experiment to try.

It will act as a normal pause.

mpthand said:

Hypothesizing what's going on, there may be a glitch in the watch's programming where the display shows that it's paused and waiting for the user to push the button to start the next stage (the correct approach) but in actuality, the watch isn't paused and is recording continuously so when the user hits the ∆ button it creates another lap

It's not a glitch, it's by design.

Just because the watch says it's waiting for you to press Lap, doesn't mean the timer is paused. It just means that you're currently in an open-ended interval, as opposed to an interval that's bounded by time or distance. If you look at any of the regular data pages, you will see that the activity timer is still running, and if you're moving, distance is still being accumulated.

I realize it may be unintuitive if you're not used to Garmin devices.

The best way to see this is to create your own running workout manually.

You will see that the length of intervals (whether warmup, cooldown, run, rest, or recover) can be specified in 3 ways:

- by time (e.g. warm up for 5 minutes)

- by distance (e.g. warm up for 5 km)

- until lap press (e.g. warm up until lap press) (this is an open-ended interval)

When I create manual workouts, I often use open-ended intervals to "pad" my warmup and cooldown.

e.g. Let's say I have a workout that's 5 x 1200m, 60s rest, with 2 km warmup and 2 km cooldown. Typically I'll run from my house to a track, cemetery, or some other place I can run loops, so it's not going to be exactly 2 km. My programmed Garmin workout might look like this:

- Warmup: 2 km

- Warmup: until lap press

- Repeat 5 times:

  - Run 1200m

  - Recover 60s

- Cooldown: 2 km

- Cooldown: until lap press

Of course the final "cooldown until lap press" interval isn't crucial, since the workout is already over (and anything after the final interval will become an interval of the same type.)

It's also worth noting than in the context of a workout, intervals and laps aren't exactly the same thing.

- A workout step (corresponding to a single "interval") can be sub-divided into multiple laps, but only if auto-lap is enabled (and the distance is shorter than the interval length). For example, if a workout contains a 3 km run interval, and you have 1 km auto-laps, the run interval will be divided into 3 laps.

- Manual laps can't be taken (pressing Lap always advances to the next workout step/interval). Using the same example as above, if I press Lap during a 3 km run interval, the watch will immediately advance to the next interval. The exception is that manual laps can be taken after the workout is complete

Thanks for that detail. I think there is a glitch in the programming but it is in the Coach module, which is looking at that intermediate stage rather than the time trial stage. That explains why the Coach module doesn't correctly parse the data file to then calculate the correct pace adjustments in later workouts.

My understanding of the intent of the Coach module is to use the time trial pace as input to adjust subsequent workouts. In other words, if you're time trial pace is 9:00/mile the subsequent workouts will be based on a 9:00/mile being your threshold pace. An "easy" run might use a pace of 11:00/mile, a tempo run might be at a 9:30/pace, etc.

Unfortunately, if the Coach module isn't parsing the data file correctly it will use the wrong input, the pace from the intermediate stage, rather than the pace from the actual time trial stage (segment). For example, in my case it pulls in a pace of 48:09/mile rather than 7:12/mile.

Your suggestion to manually pause the timer during the intermediate stage sounds like a reasonable workaround until (if) Garmin's engineers fix the issue programmatically.

Like I said, it seems that the “open-ended warm up stage” (which is ended by pressing Lap) seems to be classified in the workout as “Run” instead of warmup.

i.e. Your workout seems to look like this:

- warmup for .5 miles

- run until lap press

- run for 5 minutes

But it should probably look like this:

- warmup for .5 miles

- warmup until lap press

- run for 5 minutes

If the “extra warmup” is categorized as a run immediately prior to the actual run interval, Garmin Coach is probably lumping them together, same as it’s displayed in your screenshot as a single “interval” (group).

You could try contacting support about this (their email is [email protected], but some ppl have better luck with chat or phone), but good luck trying to explain the problem to them.

FYI if you pause during any stage of coach Amy's time trials you'll likely get "room to improve". I paused during the "second warm up lap" to sort my laces and despite running a PB mile during the timetrial received the scathing remark from Amy afterwards. A similar thing has happened twice to me and the pauses are the only thing the runs had in common