Running App - Training

Hello,
Lap-Notification is only few second at the beginning of Lap - it show 1/5 where 1 - actual Lap, 5 - all laps.
Resting - screen inform nothing only next activity no other information as pace, distance or important HR. is funny because I want to check information during rest more then during run. During rest is time to check all information.

Vivoactive 3 - are not good watch for training :( e.g. they support swim but not Personal record for swim what is really sad :(.

Today first training after FW 5.0 update:
Everything I was claiming about was fixed! Very, very nice :)

Still some space for little improvement, but all in all quite usable and everything which is needed is now shown.

• Notification "you have to run faster to reach your training goal" is tiny and unreadable during a workout
  
• Elapsed distance can be made bigger, when it is at least two or one digits.
  

After the training was done, the activity paused. That was irritating. I did not know what to do, to make it record the activity further on.
It shows "Ready" and that´s it. You just have to push the button, to go on. Not very intuitive and worse then in the last version. It just goes on recording, until you stop it manually.

Again I´m in a marathon preparation and started to create trainings and linked them with my calendar.
That´s a bit complicated to do, but if you open two tabs (one with the calendar, one with the page to create trainings) it works quite well.

This feature is really cool! You start the running-app on that very day and it selects the right training :cool:
If you won´t, just dismiss it.

Warmup - Cooldown
Displays minutes/seconds since start (not useful for me), kilometres/meters to go, description and heartrate.
If you have f.g. 3km to warmup and setup the running app to notify each km, this still works. You will also see the "laps" in connect mobile (Different/better to fenix, where you will see a single 3km lap).

Interval/Repeater
Displays overall pace for that interval (or heartrate, whatever you setup as goal), Description and iteration (CurrentInterval/OverallInterval).
I´d like to see the heartrate here as well, even on pace training.
If you reach a min or max value, you will see a confusing overlay. It shows the current pace, which differs from the pace, shown on the regular display. Current against average per interval.

Problem here: I still cannot see if I reached my goal. There is nothing which leads me to if I was successful or not.

Resting is fine, I can see the distance (and again the useless elapsed time since resting starts) and in which number of iteration I am. Still, heartreate would be nice to see.

End
The most annoying thing is, that the activity ends/pauses automatically.
No one in the world can plan their training in the exact distance, to get back home. Or GPS is a bit off and this happens 100 meter in front of your home:

• Activity pauses
  
• Instantly "Training done" appears
  
• After a while the pause-screen appears (with km, time "pause" and finish-button)
  
• Realizing the activity paused and push button
  

This takes at least 20 seconds which will be missing in the activity. And another lap in your overview.

Spontaneously I got 3 ideas to change that:

• Introduce a setup to de-/activate this behaviour
  
• Show the "Training done" notification with a "Press here to stop ->" and just go on
  
• Show a confirmation dialogue which asks if you´d go on or stop. This will at least just cost 1-2 seconds on recording
  

As you can see, some potential to improve several little things, still persists. It would be great it this would be optimized a bit. I guess it is not very much to do, but it would help any user a lot!

Another two trainings:

HRM 70% Run
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No alert or something!
Again, the elapsed time is displayed on the top, but at least you can see the heartrate (Which might disappear, if I would have added an iteration).
It would be nice to have a similar functionality like pace. Alert if HR is to high or low and show an overall gauge additionally to current HR.

7km in 35min Run
I did not used a repeater and just set the pace to 4:50-5:05 min/km.
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That´s a bit confusing, because you are getting alerted, if you reach the min/max. But you are still within the goal, overall. I´ll create a 7x repeater in the future, to see my pace per km.
The training again automatically stops. After 7.03km. No big deal, but 30 Meters after it should. I think this might be related to two design flaws:

• Lap notifications always come to 10 meters late (also during regular runs) since ever.
  
• The "Training ends" notification is displayed. But the activity stops at the screen afterwards (Time, KM, "Finish").
  

What´s really nice: Within a repeater, it will set the laps due to the iterations. Outside, it falls back to what you selected within the settings (1km or 1mile).

Running at night without gesture or constant illumination:
Not reccomended :confused:
I´ve been to fast at the very moment, the watch notifies me with the overall pace, which was to slow...
Sometimes a white screen with some text appears for the blink of an eye. I guess it says "You are exact in the range". But I really don´t know, unreadable!

It would be an easy thing to vibrate and illuminate 2-3 seconds before the transition between interval and resting. Then I can start (de-)accelerating and I might see what I reached in the previous iteration. Two birds with one stone :D

Translation
Sometimes, not every training, the watch says "Doppelt klicken um zu Schritten zu wechseln", which means "Double tap to change to steps", in the meaning of changing and walking-steps.
As an interested person, I tried that to see if I can get further information then elapsed time and overall distance (which never helps in any kind of a training phase).
But what it really is: "Double tap to skip the current step". Skip! Step (singular)!
Thank´s for this one, which jumped to cooldown, in the middle of an interval :mad:


I love the possibility to have trainings on my watch and I really created a lot, to reach a half marathon in below 1:35h.
But I cannot believe, that anyone at Garmin ever was outside with this watch and used the training functionality.
I do and I can give you several optimization opinions, but it seems that I talk to my self here...

After being ill for some days, today was my first training after 6.10 update.

And it seems that my (or others) criticism was heard :eek:
It worked great and during a 70% heartrate run, everything requested was there! The gauge for current heartrate, the kilometers to go, the description of the interval! Very nice :D
And even the "You are in the exact heartrate range" was displayed long enough to read, after it´s notification.

I´m really looking forward to my other trainings with pace, timer and stuff!
Well made, thank´s Garmin :cool:

Hot phase on my marathon training

Screenblackout:

Did two simple 30k trainings. The watch stops displaying anything after exact 20k. Both times!
The running app is black. Touching, scrolling, nothing will make the display work again.
Except the autolap or pace warning, which appears correctly. Afterwards, the screen remains black.

The battery was full right from the start and remained with more then 60% after ~2:45h.

Pace-Warning:

It took me dozens of different trainings to understand the pace warning...
You have the gauge, which shows your pace like a rev counter. This refers on the interval, you set up:

• 3x 1km between 4:00 - 4:30 min/km. Each of this intervals (1km) count separately. Fine!
• 30km between 5:30 - 6:00 min/km shows the needle/pointer according to the whole 30km. Also fine!

The warning has two informations. The color and the pace.

The color refers on the overall pace of that interval. It´s slightly blue if you are too slow and messing up that interval.
If you are in a great mood and faster then desired, you are warned in red.

Pace is the current pace. I guess measured within the last 1-2 seconds. Which leads to jumping values, if you enter woods or have a sharp corner.
And there is no correlation to the color! Because overall and current is mixed up!
Very confusing!
I´d wish to have a simple thumbs up or down (Or Rabbit and Snail, whatever) as a warning if you might reach the upper or lower border in the current interval. If the current pace reaches one of both values, display the current pace. But with red if you are too slow and blue if you are too fast. Entering the perfect zone, remove the "You are in the zone"-message (which is a total design-breaker) and just make the color green. Or add the thumbs to it, for the color blind people.
Additionally the current pace should be measured a bit longer to prevent it to show 6:00 min/km when you are overall at 5:00, but you just passing a high house or turn to get back.

Resting:

It is important to see the heartrate. Everywhere, the elapsed time is shown, it could be replaced!
F.e. resting 7 minutes shows the elapsing time and the time expiring. That´s superfluous!
And I personally do not know any case, where elapsing time is an important value to a runner.

Off course you can swipe up or down, to get back to your regular running-screens. But during tough or short intervals, it´s quite impractical.

Passing an interval:

I still cannot see if I passed an interval sucessfully. I must constantly keep an eye on my watch, to see if I made my pace.
It would be an easy and effective enhancement to show a tiny icon (thumb?) on the instruction for the next interval/resting.

Vivoactive 3 Music only?!?

Is this feature only not working for me personally?

The column "Abschnittstyp" is displayed depending whether I did a training or not.
But I´ve never seen a value there!

Rounds:

It is a Garmin Connect Web-thing but also fits here.

You have the possibility to onclick/select multiple lines. It would be amazing, if the totals below would change to the sum of the selected!
Due to the missing notification if I succeed or missed an interval, I´d be able to "filter" or sum up my rounds.

Please, never ever reach your step-goal during a training
Aka "The Notification massacre"

Reached the step goal. One of it. Since garmin removed the displayed multiplier, the second of the day, I guess.

The firework started. I obviously reached a threshold, the watch vibrates to notify me, that I´m too fast.
A second later, the watch is remindful of notifying me about my step goal, again.
The firework started fresh.
I got back to the desired pace, about 2-3-4 seconds later and was notified about that.
A second later, the firework decided to start again from zero!
I´ve reached a lap (1km in my case) and got my lapcounter and last lap-pace displayed.
A second later, you know what happens now, I was annoyed by a firework, starting from scratch!
My interval was done and showed me what´s next (resting).
Off course the firework overlayd the message instantly!

This went about 1 - 2 minutes. I was not able to see which pace I got, neither I could read if I was too fast or to slow.
It seems, that the stepgoal is a more important overlay then the training and lap notifications.

I know, I can deactivate the step goal notification. But I´m very fine with it, if it would just be shown once!
Also it´s possible to tap on the step-notification (if you haven´t locked your screen) to see the days in a row, you have not reached (because they are wrong!), then tap again, get annoyed and swipe, which sets the whole running app into the background.
Getting in rage and run faster then you should. Get notified about your over-pace. See the Firework start from scratch...

Update!
The Black-Screen managed it to get to the regular running-app without participating a training.

This might be helpful to solve this issue.
The important thing seems to be, that the watch was locked! Returning to my startingpoint, I wanted to stop the today´s activity. The screen was black.
Pressed the button to unlock, first showed the closed lock, then the opened, on a blank black ground.

Then I (thought I) stopped the activity by pressing the button again. Now the fireworks begun to start. I guess I reached the step goal shortly before I wanted to end the run.
I tapped on it to made it end, and it showed me the "9 days in a row"-message, which was just one day off, from the reality (Connect Web & Mobile). (The Stepgoal in a row-problem persists since the VA3 was released...)

After that, it remained with the running activity (which obviously has not paused).
The run was much shorter then the 20km, mentioned in the previous post. About 9km with a 10.000 step goal.

So after all I guess it´s the combination of:

• Running App
• Stepgoal
• Locked screen

which leads to a black screen during an activity.

This is not happening quite often to me, because I only lock my watch during an activity, when it is raining and my jacked might get in touch with the watch. But when, I have a huge hit rate.