Garmin Forerunner Experts

[C0ffin D0dger]

A question if I may:

I have a Forerunner 235 and I thought I'd try the pace alert last night as I'm trying to pace myself for longer distances (running if you hadn't guessed). Now I might have set the "Too fast" and "Too slow" values a bit too close together but I thought it might average things out a bit. The alerts were going off near to constantly, fluctuating between slow and fast even though my pace wasn't really changing much excepting a few small hills. Does it normally behave like this? The pace on my "lap" times set at mile intervals was pretty much where I wanted it to be as this was averaged out.

I guess if the pace alert is a bit twitchy the better answer would be to shorten the laps so I get an update say every 1/4 mile.

Anyone use the pace feature successfully?

Thanks.

[Crasher242]

I have the 735 and use the virtual partner for pacing without the issues you have reported.
SWMBO has the same watch as you - i know she gets issues with the GPS not enabling - and i am guessing that it is probably relying on the GPS to track your pace more accurately than (say) it's inbuilt calculation of your stride length and cadence.

Stupid question - but i assume you have checked the GPS is getting a lock okay?

[Scabutz]

Have you set it on the avg lap/overall pace or your current pace? Its almost impossible to hold steady pace and if its using instantaneous pace the alarms will be going bat-st as you describe.

If you use the lap avg pace as the indicator and set you high lows based of that. You will get a lot of alerts as you start but it will settle down.

The other thing to look at is how you react to the alerts, the temptation is when it says you are going too slow to up the tempo a lot and then you get alerts for too fast.

[cslwannabe]

I don’t use alerts but have my Garmin set to km and average pace for current lap. When it clicks into a new lap (km) I know to ignore it for 30s or so as it can be erratic initially. I find km rather than miles and current lap pace allows me to keep a closer eye on things.

[C0ffin D0dger]

Thanks folks, few things to try, don't think I'll use the pace alert anyway as it was pretty annoying. Plan is to set average lap pace on the screen and then set a lap to probably be about 1/2 a mile. Should be good enough for what I need. Luckily with the lengthening evenings most of my runs will now be in daylight so I won't have to keep turning the screen on.