Beware, 5.20 completely breaks Pace.

I suspect you'll find that instant pace is not the best information to track on any GPS enabled device. Some devices are better than others, but none will give you your true 'instant' pace. And yes, I am aware that sometimes software updates change things, or we perceive there to be a change.

You will often find it far better to run to a pace averaged over either a period of time or distance. At the same time throughout any training run, evaluate your perceived effort at your intended pace over a flat distance and use that as your first reference. Maintain that intensity (not the pace) when going up or down hills). Run to a perceived effort and see how that correlates to the pace you want. With practice, you get better and find less need to constantly check your pace on the watch. Bear in mind that you will always feel good at the start of a long run so you have to learn how to control your pace eat the beginning. Following numbers is all well and good, but what happens when the numbers don't work?

Take the time to read through the many posts in this forum that track back over a number of years and on virtually all the Garmin devices and you will find some good workarounds that you can employ.

I suspect you'll find that instant pace is not the best information to track on any GPS enabled device. Some devices are better than others, but none will give you your true 'instant' pace. And yes, I am aware that sometimes software updates change things, or we perceive there to be a change.

You will often find it far better to run to a pace averaged over either a period of time or distance. At the same time throughout any training run, evaluate your perceived effort at your intended pace over a flat distance and use that as your first reference. Maintain that intensity (not the pace) when going up or down hills). Run to a perceived effort and see how that correlates to the pace you want. With practice, you get better and find less need to constantly check your pace on the watch. Bear in mind that you will always feel good at the start of a long run so you have to learn how to control your pace eat the beginning. Following numbers is all well and good, but what happens when the numbers don't work?

Take the time to read through the many posts in this forum that track back over a number of years and on virtually all the Garmin devices and you will find some good workarounds that you can employ.

You make a great point and I would love to get to the point where I can maintain that constant level of effort naturally, however the first paragraph sounds to be slightly dismissive of the fault at hand. This is certainly not a "perceived" change.

Previously I could rely on instant pace to provide me with the reliability of +- a few seconds per km over a 20min 5k. I updated on Friday night and had volunteered to pace a nice 22:30 5k at parkrun on Saturday morning. I started out at what felt like a 4:15min/km pace (faster than intended), checked my watch to confirm and it's telling me I'm at 3:50min/km. I take it down a notch to what feels like a proper 4:30min/km, check again, I'm up to 5:45min/km. At this point I'm running along looking at the watch constantly, it fluctuates between 3:30min/km up to 6:50min/km over the next few hundred metres. At this point I give up and just run to what I feel is right, checking at each km interval. Ended up about 15 seconds ahead of 22:30 but wound up incredibly frustrated at the experience.

Thought it might have been a one-off glitch, went for a 10k this morning and the same issue again, a 2-3 minute fluctuation in instant pace with the slightest changes in actual pace. Figure it must be due to the update, head on here and see these posts.

It's mind-boggling how something that worked so well in the past has gone completely off the rails due to an update, which looking at the release notes, had no intention of causing any changes to the feature.

We've been discussing this in the "Firmware v5.20 user discussion / feedback" thread on here. It's definitely a problem for those of us who rely on instant pace, especially doing speed work where we need a little help locking in on a pace.

I've reverted back to 5.07 beta for now. It's the first time in all my years where I've had to downgrade firmware because of a bug. Hopefully they fix it quickly.

We've been discussing this in the "Firmware v5.20 user discussion / feedback" thread on here. It's definitely a problem for those of us who rely on instant pace, especially doing speed work where we need a little help locking in on a pace.

I've reverted back to 5.07 beta for now. It's the first time in all my years where I've had to downgrade firmware because of a bug. Hopefully they fix it quickly.

So with 5.07b the instant pace is actually usable? To be honest I always considered the instant pace to be more of a gimmick then anything else as it always varied a bit too much anyway. But might downgrade as well and give it another shot as it sometimes would be handy (with my interval training for example).

So with 5.07b the instant pace is actually usable? To be honest I always considered the instant pace to be more of a gimmick then anything else as it always varied a bit too much anyway. But might downgrade as well and give it another shot as it sometimes would be handy (with my interval training for example).

Right, I don't think anyone is expecting pinpoint precision out of this feature. However it was "close enough" for my needs, and I suspect it was fine for most people who aren't running competitively.

As my half marathon this weekend is a trail race and GPS tends to flake out in the forest anyway it's not worth it to me to downgrade, but this needs to be fixed ASAP considering how many of us are into the "meat" of our training runs for this fall's slate of marathons. For intervals, especially, average pace doesn't cut it, you need to know what you're doing *right now*.

I did send an e-mail to Garmin support last night, and will call them midweek if I haven't heard anything. This is really shoddy of them, and it's downright bizarre for this bug to slip in considering how long 5.xx has been in public beta.

Agreed, I know instant pace isn't perfect, but it's always been good enough to keep me where I need to be. If I'm doing strides or a tempo run, it keeps me in the pace range that I need to be in relatively well.

FlipStone - 5.07b was much smoother last night when I took it for a long run. I'll keep my eye on it this week, but it does appear the bug slipped in after 5.07b.

We appreciate the discussion regarding pace fluctuations. This is an issue that has been escalated to the device team for further investigation and resolution.

1221

Can anyone give me the link that explains how to revert back to the previous version? This field is rather important to me and the watch was rock solid for me last week. Can't seem to locate instructs.

Refer to the other thread for detailed instructions

https://forums.garmin.com/showthread.php?358457-Firmware-v5-20-user-discussion-feedback/page10