Running App for Intervals

Hi and thanks for your answer. 

I already use the possibility to create structured workouts on garmin connect but this doesnt help much for the "problem" I described above. First of all as far as I see, its only possible to set the duration for each interval individually and not for a intervall inculding the recovery phase afterwards, and secondly I dont plan ahead always, so im looking for a easy way to decide directly on the track which kind of intervalls and how fast I want do do, without following a training.

As described above, I would like to be able to see on the watch a "departure"-time. So for instance if I run sets of 400m with a departure time of 2:00min, this would mean I have to run the 400m and do the recovery in these 2:00 min before the next 400m start. 

fgigon said:

I already use the possibility to create structured workouts on garmin connect but this doesnt help much for the "problem" I described above.

I agree. Garmin's workout builder can't handle this workout.

I guess you could install one of the datafields, which allow user-defined functions. In there, you could define a function, which adds the last lap time and the current lap time into a total for these two laps. This will at least give you a visual indication of the time since the last interval start.

Of course, it will not give you any alarms, and you will have to do a manual button press at the start of the interval.

Hmm but what is the practical reason to have such feature? I guess if it is really intervals (meaning all-out pace) then the difference between laps in terms of recovery time on 400m will be so meaningless so it's probably does not worth to consider it.  If you more care about recovery HR then there is such feature so recovery time will be different depends on your efforts. In all cases you can just pause a workout at any time if you just feel that recovery time is not enough.

I agree, that would be the simplest approach. However I havent seen any datafield where you could add those two times in a easy way. I will definately look further in this direction, trying to find a datefield offering the possibilities and flexibility needed.

What I dont quite understand, is that the standard garmin swimming app exactly offers these possibilities. I've read different posts of people in this forum who were looking for a separation between acitve intervals and passive recovery times, so that only the interval is logged and not the recovery in between. The recovery screen would only have to show the duration of the actual pause and the combined duration of last inverall and pause, as well as your heart rate.   

I see two practical reasons for this feature. First of all if you do a set of intervals there is the all-out approach (which would lead to increasingly slower pace the more intervals you do) or you you aim to do all intervals in a steady pace (12*400m at constant pace), where a "departure" time would force you to keep your pace (with a decreasing departure time the faster you get from time to time). This approach seems to be quite common in swimmning by the way...

On the other hand a fixed departure time can be helpful when doing intervals in groups, so the whole group starts again after a predefined period of time.  

Nik_Riaz said:

Hmm but what is the practical reason to have such feature?

Backyard ultras?

(A concept I hadn't heard about until a few weeks ago, but it sounds interesting.)

fgigon said:

However I havent seen any datafield where you could add those two times in a easy way.

Have you looked at Flowstate's Appbuilder5?

https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/apps/fd690281-9c22-4fee-a81e-3b7f39aa67c5#0

I have never tried that field myself, but it sounds very flexible. As far as I can see in the documentation, your formula will have direct access to stats of both the current lap and the last lap. 

Just to understand more. Seems like what you are doing is like those backyard ultra. You are given 1hr to finish one loop. U run faster, u get to rest more etc. 

hence in your case, you’re doing 10x400m and you plan on getting each 400m done in say 3mins. 

1st 400m. U ran 2:30.. you get to rest 0:30sec before the watch counts down to 0:00(or counts up to 3:00)

2nd 400. U ran 2.55. You get only 0:05 sec to rest. 

Is this correct? When do you click lap or at all? Lap at end of each 400m? So in your current case above, 1st 400m. Lap at 2:30(it displayed last lap time as 2:30) then you have another field showing the timer or are you using workout builder in GC to denote each lap as 3mins? Hence you get a countdown?

tryibg to imagine how to implemt this. 

My current 367RunFields app have this “rest timer” which I use for reminding me how long I’ve spent at aid stations. It currently doesn’t beep or anything. 

It seems like you only need a field that shows a countdown timer of 3min (user configurable of course) u lap when you finish 400m, the last lap time is displayed and the countdown timer just continues until 0:00 and then beep and you go off again. 

Eg for the datafield

            last lap distance | over timer

last lap timer | last lap pace | countdown timer

                 Heart Rate | total distance