New! Garmin Forerunner 620/220 (Read 831 times)

The problem is you weren't doing it right on the 605 (but it kind of worked) and you aren't doing it right on the 220.

 

You need to setup a workout on Garmin Connect and download it to your watch.  You program all those steps and customize however you like.

 

Or, directly in the watch set it up as an interval with a warmup and cooldown that is triggered with the lap button.

 

Who wants to spend time setting up workouts? Or have to mess with computers for this? Or be enslaved to some junk entered ahead of time?

Can't you just program the workout into the watch so that all you need to do is hit the lap button to move on to the next segment? That's what I do. Like..the main portion of the workout would be X number of minutes or miles at tempo pace, and just say yes to the warmup and cooldown options.  No starting, stopping, resetting involved.

 

I'll have to program a workout to see what I get. I don't need the watch to tell me when to do what, but for a tempo run, i want to see my avg pace for each of the 3 segments separately, like on my calendar for today: 11/19/2013 http://www.runningahead.com/logs/8d3e7f3d441c43bda9540bb149d88cc5/calendar

I'll have to program a workout to see what I get. I don't need the watch to tell me when to do what, but for a tempo run, i want to see my avg pace for each of the 3 segments separately, like on my calendar for today: 11/19/2013 http://www.runningahead.com/logs/8d3e7f3d441c43bda9540bb149d88cc5/calendar

I've done this same kind of workout a billion times myself (see first 3 Fridays in August:  http://www.runningahead.com/logs/53500c0a1a3e436ba527852a171dac92/calendar/2013/8) and what works for me is simply to use the lap button as the marker between warmup, tempo and cooldown sections.  If you have the lap pace field visible it will give you the pace reasonably well during each of those sections.  Do you think this will do?  Or are you more/equally concerned with how the data looks afterwards in your training log here or Garmin Connect?  As you can see in my log I usually manually combine the warmup/cooldown pieces together and the have a separate entry for the hard part, but I confess I also split it out manually from the splits in Garmin Connect.  It only takes a few seconds to pull out the CSV file and highlight the desired splits and look at Excel's sum at the bottom, but I understand that's more of a pain in the neck than lots of people would like to do.  If you want all of this to be more automatic in post analysis, then I think you might be stuck with the stop/save/re-start scenario that you have mentioned you don't care for.  (I don't care for it, either, on any watch, which is why I do all the splitting apart times afterwards).

OK.  I was just trying to understand, and now I do.  Starting with the Forerunner 10 the idea was to make the saving (or discarding) action more intuitive as the press-and-hold action on the lap key (210, 405, 410, etc.) is almost undiscoverable for new users without reading the manual.  I'm glad you like the new product in general.

MTA:  When I said that I do not like stop/save/reset, I meant that I do not like to mess with this while running, on any watch UI, regardless of how it's implemented.   When I'm running these warmup-tempo-cooldown runs I generally don't stop at all; I just tap the lap button and step on the gas.  I prefer to take the pain after the fact to get my data right in my training log.  That's all I was trying to say.  I understand now with how you use the watch that a save-reset shortcut via lap key press-and-hold would be a desirable thing, simpler than what you have to do now on the 220.

MTA one more time.  :-)  I'm sorry I've pretty much been away from RA for a couple of months.  Life has been exceedingly busy, and simultaneously I've been getting through a minor injury/setback so I haven't even been keeping up with my own log until yesterday I started to catch it up.

Thanks!

I run in the dark much of the time. With the 405, I can easily find the buttons and hear the confirming 'beeps' when it has done what I asked (stop/save/reset/go). I don't want to access and select from a palette of menus to accomplish the same thing. That would require stopping, turning on a light, and squinting at the screen.

If asked for my opinion, I would not agree that your new approach to saving a workout is more intuitive. Hey, you have a press and hold function already on the 220, to turn it off (and I think to turn it on, too).

I like the new product a lot. I was very happy to see it and buy it (even with New York sales tax) at the NYC Marathon expo. I had a hunch that Garmin would do whatever they could to avoid missing the huge sales potential at that event.

OK.  I was just trying to understand, and now I do.  Starting with the Forerunner 10 the idea was to make the saving (or discarding) action more intuitive as the press-and-hold action on the lap key (210, 405, 410, etc.) is almost undiscoverable for new users without reading the manual.  I'm glad you like the new product in general.

 

MTA:  When I said that I do not like stop/save/reset, I meant that I do not like to mess with this while running, on any watch UI, regardless of how it's implemented.   When I'm running these warmup-tempo-cooldown runs I generally don't stop at all; I just tap the lap button and step on the gas.  I prefer to take the pain after the fact to get my data right in my training log.  That's all I was trying to say.  I understand now with how you use the watch that a save-reset shortcut via lap key press-and-hold would be a desirable thing, simpler than what you have to do now on the 220.

 

MTA one more time.  :-)  I'm sorry I've pretty much been away from RA for a couple of months.  Life has been exceedingly busy, and simultaneously I've been getting through a minor injury/setback so I haven't even been keeping up with my own log until yesterday I started to catch it up.

 I retract my comment (I won't delete it, because I did say it).  It's easy to forget the engineer is probably a real person ;-)

My apologies.

 

I do stand by my statement that the color is unnecessary and gimmicky.  And I still want one but am still trying to decide if the 6 or the 2 is the right series for me.

No worries at all, sir!  And it is legit to question the value of the color screen on the product.  I totally respect and understand that point of view.

Since it's Christmas time (I can tell because store displays tell me so), I figured I'd iterate through my GarminFR functionality wish list.  I currently own a 610 and love it, but my dream watch looks a bit more like this (some of these are in the 620):

Improvements (in order of desirability)

1) Better recharge connector -- the connection on the 610 isn't very secure.  Often I can't get a good connection which leads to battery-drain.  The terminals don't make good contact and get corroded after salty workouts.  The 620 did look like a better design, but might still suffer the corrosion issues.  Recharging through inductive coupling would be nice.

2) General over-all durability -- on my second 610 in two years and sometimes it just freaks out, or the battery issue above

3) greater battery life - 28hrs would be nice to support Ultras, enough for a 2week vacation w/o recharge

4) Quicker Satellite acquisition -- the 620 memory feature would be great, but I understand it requires a computer sync to "store" the satellite

5) An on-the-run friendly way to easily turn off Auto-Lap for track workouts (since my 610 shorts the mile)

6)  Water proofing - my 610 freaked out at the Richmond Marathon due to rain

7) A "race-mode": it would re-calibrate its mileage based off of when you hit the lap-button close to a mile marker.  So, Garmin thinks you're at 0.92 miles and you hit the lap-button, it will re-calibrate to be "1.0" mile.  If you missed the next mile marker on mile 2, you could hit the lap-button at 3mi and Garmin would be smart enough to know it should re-calibrate 2.89 to 3.0 (rather than thinking it's the second mile).  This would give you the best of measured courses with GPS to fill in the gaps between markers.

7a) This would be coupled with your "race-plan", which would tell you the pace for the next mile (like a pace-band).  It would also tell you how many seconds off your plan you are at certain points and your projected finish time.  Example: you planned to have a 3 minute deficit at 13.1miles, your watch would tell you if you are on-plan.  It might even suggest new paces from the pace-band.  At mile 25 it might tell you that it projects you'll be 10secs short of your goal.  [Now, I'm not sure if I'd listen to this during a race, but I certainly would buy a watch for this feature.]

8) Wireless upload (bluetooth -- preferably an open protocol so I could upload to RA through an Arduino)

9) More accurate GPS signal -- the 610 is fine, but better would be better

10) Tap for light (instead of scrolling the screen on the first tap -- or using the power button)

11) A small icon indicating the watch is started: large enough to see on the run, small enough to ignore

12) Fartlek mode - randomly gives you a relative effort to hit: "5K effort, GO!", "HMP, GO!", "Jog!".  It would be rather simple and fun.

13) SMS time/pace/mileage/GPS location to Significant Other on the run: with a hidden menu option that displays "this feature broken"

14) Sassy woman's voice that calls out: "18 miles, bitches!"

Standards

1) Timer, Lap time, Last lap time

2) Total mileage, Lap mileage

3) Auto-lap

4) Lap-pace, Total avg pace, Last lap-pace

5) Clock

6) Beep and Vibrate

7) Large clock-face (610 is a good size)

8) Touchscreen (I do like my 610's screen)

Things I don't use, but might

1) Heart Rate Monitoring -- used to use this religiously for a year, but never did anything with the data so stopped

2) Footpod -- again, used it for a year and never looked at the data. . . then lost it.

3) Bike/speed wattage

4) Simple Swimming GPS

4a) # of laps (indoor)

5) if the battery was long enough, it would be nice to wear as a normal watch (if not bulky)

6) elevation

7) Sunrise / Sunset

8) Maps

Things I don't care about

1) Color displays - I actively dislike this.  I'd rather have high-contrast B&W

2) Instantaneous pace (unless it stops being laughably inaccurate)

3) Virtual training partner / Virtual Racer

4) Downloadable workouts - I used this for three months but found it cumbersome and inflexible (on the run).

5) Garmin Connect (as long as I have RA)

6) Pace/Speed/HR Zone

7) Calories

8) Heart-rate monitor integrated into the watch (wrist pulse)

9) most of the other features I haven't mentioned because I've long forgotten the watch could do that

Anyway, if anyone at the North Pole in the Garmin Innovation Lab happens to read this: I'd love to see the above watch under my Christmas tree in 2014.

Number 7 is a great idea.

That would help me very often.

Number 14 is an awesome idea.

Especially if you could set it to call that out whenever you wanted to, regardless of your actual mileage ;-)

 

7) A "race-mode": it would re-calibrate its mileage based off of when you hit the lap-button close to a mile marker.  So, Garmin thinks you're at 0.92 miles and you hit the lap-button, it will re-calibrate to be "1.0" mile.  If you missed the next mile marker on mile 2, you could hit the lap-button at 3mi and Garmin would be smart enough to know it should re-calibrate 2.89 to 3.0 (rather than thinking it's the second mile).  This would give you the best of measured courses with GPS to fill in the gaps between markers.

 

14) Sassy woman's voice that calls out: "18 miles, bitches!"