Thursday, March 8, 2012

Garmin Connect and Forerunner 110 Problems

In other words, "Arrrrggggghhhhhh!!"

Garmin, in their infinite wisdom, has decided to slouch down to the lowest common denominator and make some changes to "time data fields." In their words, "more accurate and meaningful (and less confusing)" by removing the "moving time" field completely.

And not just remove it from this point forward, but remove the "moving time" data from all past runs stored in Garmin Connect as well! What?!?

Let me try to explain why this is a horrible idea. "Moving time" is a pace average that shows how fast you've run a particular mile with the benefit of removing the time where you were not running (at a stoplight or bathroom or collapsed on the side of the road perhaps). In other words, it's the only pace number that you care about. Why would anyone want to know the pace they ran with the 90 seconds added in where you were standing at the stop light? Nobody needs to know that!

Here's a snapshot that I had of an old run with "moving time" included: the only one I have anywhere since Garmin erased it from every run in the Garmin Connect database!
Note the "moving pace" and "average pace" were the same here because this was a race, and I didn't have to stop anywhere.

And here's a capture of the new data.
Note the slow Mile Two (stoplight) and the slow Mile Five (stoplight) - I'll admit the slow Mile Six was due to the elevation on that mile. But without the "moving pace" designation, how can you tell you were stopped at some point during the mile? It just looks like you were dragging ass!

Ah, but Garmin says, don't worry. Just set your "Auto Pause" feature on your watch. That will do the same thing automatically.

Yeah, I would, you bunch of geniuses, but the Forerunner 110 doesn't have the Auto Pause feature!

So instead of having three columns of data, and letting everyone choose which column is most useful, Garmin eliminates one column from the entire history of runs that anyone with a Forerunner 110 has ever done...and gives you no way to get the information back.

Here's Garmin's explanation about how they got rid of the "moving pace" because it was too confusing for the masses. Of course, they don't mention that Forerunner 110 owners are just screwed.

Well, you could go buy a new $200 Forerunner 405, I guess. Gee, I wonder if they thought we might have to do that?

5 comments:

  1. I am in the same boat. Forerunner 210 owner! (no auto pause)

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  2. As a Garmin Forerunner 210 owner, I completely agree with everything you've said here. Removing a feature (and consequently all our performance history) because a minority doesn't understand it is infuriating.

    There are a few people complaining on the Garmin Forum here... https://forums.garmin.com/showthread.php?t=26132&page=3

    ... and a suggestion that as many of us as possible use Garmin's idea suggestion form to ask for the data field back.

    I think we should also be asking Garmin to provide us 110/210 owners with a firmware update that makes the Auto Pause feature available.

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  3. Thought I was going barmy as I liked the moving time feature, couldn't understand what had happened to it - it was good to be able to exclude the time when I have to wait for my lazy dog to catch up!!

    At least I now know it's nothing I've done. A real shame that Garmin thought the users so incapable they got 'confused'.

    Jo

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  4. Interesting comments so far...still waiting to hear from a "confused" Garmin owner. I really hate to think this was merely a money grab by Garmin, hoping people would upgrade to a new watch, but I just don't see any good reason why they would have removed the "moving time."

    It's very disappointing.

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  5. Well, if you don't like it? Go back to using your stupid Timex watch and enjoy not having any data.

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