Suggested daily workout causes auto lap to start a new lap at the end of the workout.

When I do a running suggested daily workouts, if I decide to continue running after the suggested workout timer has finished, the watch starts a new lap automatically, rather than starting a new lap at the next 1km mark.  

This is frustrating as when I look back at my laps data, I get something like this:

Lap1: 1k - xyz

Lap2: 1k - xyz

Lap3: 1k - xyz

Lap4: 0.2k - xyz

Lap5: 1km - xyz

Is there a way to stop this happening so the auto lap only begins a new lap at the pre-set distance, even when completing the suggested workout?

Or if not, is there a way to change the laps in the app after completing the run?

  • You're going to get this behavior for any kind of "workout" (whether it's a workout you designed yourself or the daily suggested workout), whether auto-lap is enabled or not. At the end of the workout, you'll have a new lap.

    Unfortunately you can't edit laps in Connect.

    If you'd just prefer to see your 1 km laps as you normally would if it wasn't a workout, you have a couple of options (outside of Connect)

    - use Strava (which syncs with Connect). It will always show 1 km or 1 mile splits (depending on your chosen units) for every running activity. Strava shows a lot less data for splits than Garmin, though

    - use https://www.runalyze.com, a free site that syncs with Connect. runalyze shows the laps recorded for your activity, but it also allows you to temporarily view laps by any time or distance that you want (including laps of different times/distances.) You can also edit laps here, but I never do this since the temporary custom lap view works fine for me, and nobody else is looking at my data on runalyze

  • Yeah I thought that might be the case. I use Strava currently to look at my 1km laps, but would be nice to see it all in one place.

    Thanks for the tips, I will give runalyze a go. 

  • Sure no worries!

    Runalyze shows a lot of data that Garmin records but isn’t available in Connect, like your recorded VO2 Max to two decimal places and the time / length of activity pauses, but it isn’t perfect. One thing I’ve noticed is that it averages cadence differently than Connect (or Strava), so the per-lap / per-activity cadence (and stride length) it shows is different than Connect. The biggest downside is there’s no app, and the website isn’t mobile friendly (it’s just barely usable on a phone, but it’s really designed for a computer or tablet.)

    It does calculate per-activity VO2 Max independently of Garmin, and it shows the actual per-activity number (as opposed to Garmin, which only seems to record some sort of rolling average which takes the last few weeks of activities into account.) It also has a cool race predictor (based on its own VO2 Max estimates) which actually adjusts its predictions based on your race results (you just have to tag your races within runalyze). It’s also pretty good at tabulating your stats by week / month / year with far more detail than strava or connect.

    And to me, the custom lap feature is kinda killer, as it allows you to chop up your runs by any distance / time you want. (So you can easily answer questions like “did I negative split?”, “how far did I go at the 30 minute mark?”, “how long did it take me to run the first 2k of a longer run?”, or “what were the 1k splits for part of this tempo interval run (with auto-lap disabled)?”) It also has “best efforts” for common distances like strava, but also for uncommon distances / times like 100 m, 10 seconds, etc. Ofc the value / accuracy of all that data is questionable, but it’s fun to look at sometimes.

    I wish everything was available in one place too, but I find myself using a combo of Strava, Connect and runalyze, depending on what data I’m interested in.

  • As FlowState has explained this is designed behavior.

    Think about each "workout step" as separate, isolated unit.

    If you would have workout like 5k @ 6:30, 5k @ 6:15, 5k @ 6:00 then I guess you would prefer to compare each 5k segments individually not as complete 15k run.

    One more thing. I guess your DSW is asking you to run for particular time, not distance. Correct?

    If Garmin would implement AutoLap by Time, you could have it set to each minute or 5 minutes, and have "exact" laps.

  • I can def see OP’s POV here. I think it's expected behavior if you know how it's implemented, but not desired behavior from the end user's pov.

    If you would have workout like 5k @ 6:30, 5k @ 6:15, 5k @ 6:00 then I guess you would prefer to compare each 5k segments individually not as complete 15k run.

    I would, but don’t think that’s the case here, as you also guessed.

    I think this is probably something with a single step like “Recovery 30 min” or “Base 45 min”, in which case most ppl don’t really think of that as a “workout”, but more like a type of run. If I had a plan given to me by.a human which said “30 minute recovery run”, I would go out and run *roughly* 30 minutes at a recovery pace, or maybe *at least* 30 minutes. In the absence of a programmed workout on my watch, I’d end up with an activity that just had the normal 1k autolaps that I have in my Run settings, without a lap at the 30 minute mark.

    Ofc I can also see why Garmin chose to do things this way (simplicity and consistency.) It would be pretty complex / confusing for the end user to have a special kind of workout step where the time/distance is a minimum value rather than exact value, where you still get a notification/countdown for the time/distance, but no extra lap. In this case the only way to move to the next step would be to press LAP (this would be necessary to support multiple steps, but ofc this would be primarily intended to support a DSW with one step.) If Garmin implemented this, you’d have runners complaining about not getting a new lap/interval when they accidentally set up their programmed workout with this step type.

    But that’s probably what ppl would want for this kind of “workout”. (Let’s face it, runners would never refer to a 30 min recovery run as a “workout”). The closest you could get with the current implementation would be a workout where the time/distance is just a note rather than being set on the step (which is something I sometimes manually do for group workouts, since you’re never going to run/rest for the exact time/distance when you’re running with other ppl.) But then you wouldn’t get a notification/countdown for the step time/distance.

    So ig the real problem is an imperfect mapping between a technical concept on the watch / Connect and a real world concept used by the end user. No real solution to that.

  • The same problem is with Coached plans. My example was exaggerated but Reverse split is something what even human trainer would be given.

    And I guess that would be improvement for us, if after run we could "edit" results and make splits like we want especially with that tail section of run.