Auto stop after workout complete

You will see the 5 km data you are looking for in the lap data.

I think how it works now is how most users would like to have it and how most users use it. They do a workout and then continue with their training until they are at the location they want to be.

If you do a coach workout it will stop after the last workout step so then you have to remember to press start after the last step so the logging will continue since most users will not end their training after the last step.

Hi e7andy,

thanks for your reply. I know I can see the right data in the lap data. Unfortunately you do not see the right data under Activities where all workouts are listed so you cannot easily compared +100 workouts. You will have to get in every workout check the laps, write data on an Excel and do it for +100 workouts. It is a nonsense, a bad design. Suppose I have done a 5km workout and the workouts includes a Warm Up and a Cool Down. Under Activities I will see:

20-Apr   Milan-5 km    Time 42:05    Distance 9,13 km     Avg Pace 9:23 km     Avg HR 110    Max HR 158 bpm

This does not make sense as Garmin shows the data of the workout and not of the 5 km.

The right data to be shown should be:

20-Apr   Milan-5 km    Time 25:05    Distance 5,00 km     Avg Pace 5:02 km     Avg HR 132    Max HR 158 bpm

Do you see my point?

In addition "the user is the king" and products and services should be designed based on their needs.

Thanks

Massimo

Max57547 said:

"the user is the king"

There are many users and pretty much everyone got there own requirements. They can't make changes every time a user sends a request.

I don't see that Garmin will show just the 5k part in a workout if you have other steps in it. What if you got multiple run parts in a workout? What should be displayed then?

What you can do is to log multiple workouts for each activity. One for warmup, one for the run part and one for the cool down. Then you can easily filter out the specific distance you are interested in. That is how I log all races I participate in.

I agree that it would be a good idea to add an option to automatically stop a workout when the last step ends. Then each user can select how they want it to work.

That is exactly what I do. My 5 km workout for instance is just "run 5 km". As Garmin does not stop when reached 5 km I have to push the Stop button and ... Garmin creates another lap lasting few seconds with wrong data that corrupt all data as Garmin Sum and make some Avg ... including the unwanted lap. I do not accept that as it is bad design. What's the deal of creating corrupted data !?!?! Solutions: Auto Stop option or let users to delete unwanted laps.

You can trim that last part away. 

Are you a Garmin employee?

No, why do you ask? 

This is a user forum. Garmin employees rarely answer questions here. If you want to suggest a change you need to submit it to Garmin: https://garmin.com/ideas

You answered immediately, asked me to trim (I did!) and so far you are the only one who answered. So I thought you are some marketing guy monitoring Forum to kill people with bad words on mouth regarding Garmin :-) Already sent a message to ideas. Thanks anyway for your suggestion. The chance that Garmin will listen and develop the auto-stop function are included between zero and impossible.

If it makes you feel better, many people have asked for this over the years.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=garmin+workout+auto-stop]

[https://forums.garmin.com/sports-fitness/running-multisport/f/forerunner-245-series/249468/auto-stop-after-workout-complete]

e7andy said:

There are many users and pretty much everyone got there own requirements. They can't make changes every time a user sends a request.

Gotta agree with this. As a matter of fact, apparently Garmin used to stop the timer at the end of a workout, but they changed to the current behavior at some point. I bet they changed it because people complained, and now that they've changed it, other people are upset.

It's not the first time Garmin has done a 180 (or a 360) apparently in response to user complaints. Just recently the behavior of map screen with regards to touch changed several times in the FR955 due to user complaints, until they finally implemented the solution that should've been used in the first place. (Which to be fair, involved turning implicit behavior into an option.)

Max57547 said:

In addition "the user is the king" and products and services should be designed based on their needs.

Yeah the problem is not all users want the same thing.

e7andy said:

I agree that it would be a good idea to add an option to automatically stop a workout when the last step ends. Then each user can select how they want it to work.

I bet Garmin won't do this because every new option adds to the complexity of the product. It's one more thing to test (and potentially break) with each release, and it also makes the product slightly more overwhelming for the user.

Furthermore, most users will never change any options, which is why it's kind of a rule of thumb that the default option should be the "best" option when possible.

Except in this case, nobody can agree on what's best. In a perfect world every "controversial" design decision would be made optional, but each option makes the product exponentially more complex. Imagine a test regime where all combinations of all options has to be tested on every release. Obviously that's impractical (and unnecessary), but my point is that in the worst case, each new binary (on/off) option doubles the complexity of the device.

Max57547 said:

For instance, if I execute a 5 km workout, when 5 km are reached Garmin continues to register information corrupting all data. If I manually stop the workout once completed, a new lap is created anyway corrupting all data.

I mean, can you just keep running when you hear/feel the alert signalling the end of the workout step until you press the START button to stop the timer? This should add maybe 1-2 seconds to the total. Even if you stopped running completely for that 1-2 seconds, it's really not going to impact your average pace much.

Furthermore, I think we all realize that when a Garmin watch says you've run 5.0 km (for example), it's not *really* exactly 5.0 km, due to GPS inaccuracy. Your recorded pace is never going to be 100% accurate for the same reason. Is it really that bad if the watch records ~10 extra metres and ~1 extra second?

As an aside, things like average/lap cadence, average/lap stride length, and even average/lap can be slightly different depending on what platform you use to view your Garmin data (examples other than Connect include strava and runalyze), especially for very short laps (~15 seconds.)

So not only is your data at the mercy of measurement inaccuracy, there are also different methods of analyzing the data that will produce different results for various averages.