Pace scale way too long!

The automatic scaling of the graphs is mostly unusable. For about 10 years now, the graph for altitude has also been unusable. I've already pointed out this problem several times and asked for a way to manually zoom in the charts in the y-direction. But unfortunately without any success. I don't understand why Garmin not address this issue.

Yes, you've nailed it. But it's not just the intervals that unnecessarily increase the y-scale. The same thing also happens when you simply have to stop briefly at traffic lights.

And although with GC Web it's possible to zoom into the x-axis, the same feature isn't available for the y-axis.

Yeah it would be nice. But I guess my main point is this is clearly a problem across multiple platforms. For once, it’s not just a Garmin annoyance. And it all goes back to the use of pace (1/speed). We can see similar problems when ppl just talk about pace in plain english. There’s a conflict between the common sense English definition of pace (basically synonymous with speed), and the use of pace in the running world as “the amount of time it takes to cover a certain amount of distance” (e.g. in minutes and seconds per km, or minutes and seconds per mile), which is the inverse of speed. Sure, we could say that it’s just another way of describing speed (which it is), but when it comes to the actual numbers, there’s a problem.

e.g. What does “higher” pace mean? Most people would interpret that as “faster” (which makes sense outside of the running world, where pace = speed), but a pedantic math nerd like me might think it should mean “slower” (although I would never use that definition since it would confuse people). Then again, runalyze uses the “correct” (yet unintuitive) definitions of “higher” (slower) and “lower” (faster) pace for its min/max pace graph settings, which was confusing even to me (since I expect everyone to use the common definitions.)

Same as when people say “zero pace” for standing still. Actually, standing still is literally infinite pace, but nobody would say “my pace was infinity minutes / km” when they were standing still. It’s interesting to me that Garmin watches used to show “—:—“ for pace when you were standing still (or moving below a certain threshold), but now they display “00:00”, which is arguably “wrong”, but makes sense to the general public who doesn’t really care about numbers.

Speaking of pedantic math nerds, I’ve seen some people argue that the pace graph should be inverted, so that lower pace numbers are on the bottom of y-axis, and higher numbers are on the top. While this is “correct” from a numbers pov, it would again fail to make runners happy since, let’s face it, we all think of pace as being synonymous with speed. Nobody wants to see a graph that dips when you run faster.

I think actually graphing speed is the best solution, but normal users wouldn’t understand why the y-axis isn’t linear, so it’s never gonna happen.

Anyway, my suggestion is to use the Connect mobile app if you want a better graph of your pace. I would also suggest runalyze, except it seems to do certain things with your data which makes it different than what Garmin shows. e.g. For me, runalyze pace graphs never show the same highs that the Connect graphs show.