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Bug in the interval workout screen with "pace" as target. The watch doesn't use instant pace.

Mirko_Italy
over 4 years ago

When doing an interval workout with pace as a target, in the screen the watch shows not instant pace but step pace (average pace during the interval). I set an audio alarm when outside the desired pace, but with step pace it's not useful. For short intervals of 400 m, for example, if I'm running at 3:45 /km pace (instant pace of Runscribe footpod), step pace especially at the beginning is very far  from true value (for example 4:30/km). I'm now using footpod pace only for speed and not for distance, so step pace is pace of gps.

One possible solution is to set distance from footpod, but in my opinion it would be better to show in the "speed gauge" not step pace but instant pace. Today for example I changed the "interval page" with a different page where I could read Runscribe footpod instant pace. When I'm doing intervals I want to read instant pace and not average pace. What do you think?

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to JanH

    Interesting what you discovered that Polar uses "instant pace".

    Maybe we can open a survey in this thread among the forum users and ask if they prefer to have in the workout screen instant pace or step/lap pace.

    If a lot of people would like to have instant pace and not step/lap pace that Garmin is using now, then we could all send a mail to Garmin/ideas asking to give us the option to choose between instant pace or step/lap pace in the workout screen.

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    Used a structured track workout today for the first time on my 945. Ran into this same problem, displayed pace is the average for the entire "lap" or "step". This means that on longer steps, it will not change much at all towards the end, even if I am going way too fast or way too slow - having a foot-pod (stryd) gives me really good pace values, if only I could see them!

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to Mirko_Italy

    Yes, a survey is a nice idea! Is it possible to set one up in the forum? We could also have a common text that we all write to the Garmin support... just to make it as easy as possible for everybody. 

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to JanH

    ... and on a side note: of course, unlike Garmin's, Polar's alarms are easily distinguishable as "go faster" and "go slower". 

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to JanH

    @JanH If you agree, you could open a new thread with the title "Survey for using instant pace in the workout screen" and a text to send to Garmin, because this thread is a bit too long now, so probably it's better to open a new thread for the survey. In my opinion the best would be if Garmin gives both option (instant pace and lap/step pace) so everyone can choose what he prefers. Of course in the workout screen Garmin should write "pace" or "step pace" based on the target chosen from the user

    If we see that a lot of people would like to have this feature, like for example @Fredderic, who is using Stryd, everyone could send the same text that you could prepare and send it pasting in the website   

       https://www.garmin.com/en-US/forms/ideas/            

     I think that this is the correct site, because Garmin support should only correct bugs and not implement new features.  @crispinellisdon noted that if a lot of people suggest the same thing to Garmin->ideas, the probability that Garmin implements the new feature is greater.

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    Actually this can be seen as bug, or at least as misleading UI design. Initially my interpretation of the display on the watch was that this is the live pace, at no point does the word "average" appear. Had to learn by experimentation that this simply cannot be the live pace and must be something like lap/step average. At the very least it should show the word average somewhere and not make you think this is your actual pace right now ;).

    Making it adjustable would be nice, it would also be nice to not be fooled by the UI into thinking the value means something else than it does. Maybe it would even be possible to design the UI in a way to show both - one arrow showing the current step-average, and annother showing the current pace.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to Fredderic

    Great idea the two  graphs and two arrows for instant pace and step/lap pace in the same screen .

    This is what I actually do during intervals, I have a two field page with instant pace and lap pace (but without arrows and graph).

    @JanH can you add this feature in the request to Garmin?

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to Mirko_Italy

    It has an odd behaviour. I have been doing intervals on a treadmill. I spin up the treadmill to speed a few seconds prior to the interval starting and my Fenix 5 initially shows the pace is within the range. A second or so later, it drops down to what looks to be some average of the current pace + the recovery pace and then slowly ticks back up over the course of the interval. Finally, the time take to complete the interval is shown and everything is as expected, also in the Garmin app or web. If I spin up the treadmill so that I am up to pace about 5 seconds before the interval, then everything is reported correctly. This should be a simple fix for Garmin, viz, even starting a new interval/action in Garmin Coach, just pre-fill the average buffer with the current instant pace (or even better still, the instant pace after a few seconds to allow the runner to get up to pace).

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    Funny that I had a Polar V800 and it had this instant pace for interval workouts. So I reported a bug to Polar as I needed interval pace, not some instant pace. My training plan said things like: do 10x800m at 4min/km. It seems natural to me that this means my average pace of each 800 should be 4min/km. And instant pace is too imprecise, it evens out but you need to give it some time. So average interval pace works much better.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to grzeg1

    Averaged pace really doesn’t work. One example of many,  Say you stop at a road crossing and then sprint to get your average pace back up, that totally destroyed the interval at a set pace you were trying to do.