Discrepancy in Total Duration Calculation of Anaerobic Workout

The workout plan indicates a total duration of 54 minutes. It includes a 15-minute warm-up, followed by 8 repetitions of 1 minute running and 3 minutes recovery, and finishes with a 10-minute cool-down. Adding these segments results in a total of 57 minutes. Therefore, there is a difference of 3 minutes between the stated total time and the sum of the individual segments.

  • Current Garmin watches, like FR955, support a fairly new Connect workout feature to skip the final recovery/rest interval of a repeat.

    It's a checkbox on each repeat called "Skip Last Recover/Rest", and for new workouts, it's on by default for the *final* repeat which has either recovery or reset intervals. Basically the idea is that Garmin thinks most runners will skip the very last recover/rest interval of their workout (which is normally true).

    Interestingly enough, I don't see the checkbox at all in your screenshot. But if it's actually enabled for that workout, it would explain the 3 minute difference.

    It seems that this is a workout that was automatically created by Garmin Coach, right? You can't edit it, right? In that case I bet the problem is that the checkbox is hidden for Garmin Coach workouts, which causes confusion like this. I think somebody has mentioned that before in the forums.

    Here's an example from an old workout of mine. I created it manually a few years ago, before the feature existed, which is probably why it's turned off here.

    If I manually create a new workout today, this feature will be on by default as described above.

    Another issue is that the UI on the device does not make any reference to this feature. So if you sync a workout to your watch, the only way to know if it's gonna skip the last rest/recover interval is to try it out yourself.

    But I'm fairly sure it does work for FR955 - I've tried it out in the past. Additionally, I know it doesn't work for older watches (like FR935). If you enable "Skip Last Recover/Rest" in a workout in the Connect website, and you select Send to Device in the Connect, any older devices which don't support the feature will be grouped under the heading "Partially Compatible", and they'll have a help icon next to them. If you hover over the help icon, Connect tells you that skipping the last rest/recover step is not supported by the old device. But at least for my FR955, there is no such note; the device is listed under the heading "Fully Compatible", and the feature does work.

    What if you open the workout in the Connect app (on your phone). Do you see the "skip last recover/rest" option in that case? If so, is it enabled?

    What if you try the workout irl?

  • I have checked what you said happens when you create a new workout with repetitions on the Forerunner 955, and indeed there is the option to skip the last repetition.

    So this is actually an error in the programming of Garmin Race Coach.

  • So this is actually an error in the programming of Garmin Race Coach.

    Yeah like I mentioned I think other users mentioned exactly what you've seen before.

    I think maybe it's Garmin Coach that actually first introduced this feature (even before it was available for manually configured workouts), but the user experience obviously isn't great.

    Tbh it's not surprising to me. 

    You could always submit an idea here:

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