Lap Button usage

1

Hi

I was on a run this morning, and pressed the lap button as I past the point where I am usually warmed up. This caused the workout to complete prematurely which is undesired.

I did NOT have the “press lap button” tick box selected on the workout.

The point is I have NO FLAT GROUND to run on. (I emphasise this point as flat-landers rarely pick up on it, but it’s pivotal)

I want to pick out the particular point as it’s the same altitude as my starting point, thus it makes runs back to the start point (by any route) comparable for pace and average heart rate comparison, and it’s the right distance to have me warmed up by the time I reach it. If I try and set a run distance within the workout the vagaries of GPS and foot pods (I do have a stryd), end up with more variation.

The bottom line to all this, I want to press the lap button as many times as I like on these runs and for the “workout” NOT to move onto the next step.

How do I do that?

2

I don’t think there is a solution for this unless this is a run WITHOUT a workout plan.
If you simply start an activity and press lap whenever you need an indicator of the start or stop of a new section/intensity change/warmup/cooldown etc, the activity will have intervals corresponding to those lap events.
I can’t see any other way of doing what you’re asking for, because if the lap button is not advancing in the workout, you will never ever reach the cooldown part :wink: .

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3

This is for easy runs where I’m running to heart rate, I want to plan them in “so many minutes at so much heart rate” so that I can gauge and control the overall load, then I get an alert when I’ve done the time.

With easy runs there is no cooldown part

4

You could create a workout with:

  • Warmup until Press lap
  • repeated blocks with the same HR target equally until Press lap. Create as many as you think you could need.
  • consider the last one as cooldown no matter which one it is (but HR target would not be considered)
  • end the activity when you consider it’s enough
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5

Thanks

The more I think about this the more I realise this is simply impossible in invervals.icu.

If I do as you say the predictive value of intervals.icu goes out the window.. If a segment takes less time than is set because I press the lap button then the load (based on HR) will be low, if I create multiple long segments then the predicted load will be much too high. If I create multiple short segements they’ll end based on time before I want to hit a lap button.

Basically the “end when lap button pressed” tick box is a waste of pixels as it ends when you hit the lap button anyway regardless of what’s been set.

6

I’m affraid that what you’re trying to do isn’t really supported.

The core issue is that most GPS devices use the lap button both to mark laps and to advance workout steps, so intervals.icu can’t distinguish between “I want to mark a lap” and “I want to move on the next workout step”.

The “end when lap button pressed” option is useful to dissociate step duration from time (I use it a lot with athletes outdoors), but it’s not a “free lap marker inside a workout”. For HR-based easy runs like yours, there’s no clean workaround without breaking either prediction or control.

Ps: edited for better clarity.

2 Likes
7

Do you know any other platform capable of doing this kind of thing? I’d be curious to see how they’re achieving what you’re asking for.

8

That’s not how it works!
You need to set a duration just to allow some kind of load estimation. But the step will never advance based on time. It continues until you press the lap button, no matter if you pass the set duration or not.

9

Previously I had some activities stored as workouts on my watch, with 99+ miles set, I could hit the lap button as much as a I liked, I then compiled all the data in excel, where I made my plans for future runs, but it all needed me to know what I was supposed to be doing on any one run. I was trying intervals.icu as a way of simplifying all this. oh well.

10

Not sure if this is related , but is it possible to display for an activity either manual laps or auto laps (distance based) in separate tabs? I’m new to the platform and from the few times I’ve taken a ‘manual lap’ I see these in the activity report but can’t find the auto laps. Does taking a manual lap ‘override/disable’ (?) the auto laps being reported? Or am I just doing something wrong?

11

For my long slow runs I just set it up in intervals as say 2 hours z1-z2 on the calendar. Then on the watch I just skip the workout all together. I have 3s power, in your case if you are running to HR then have that figure and also average LAP power (HR). Then set auto lap to a period not too big and not too small say around 3 -5 k. That way the lap value smooths out any ups and downs so you can see if you are on track overall.

12

That’s precisely what I did on my run on Monday, thankfully I can also set a time alert, so it tells me when I’ve finished too. I just wanted to have the workout automatically get the length of time, I can program that manually for each run, but it’s a faff and I can see myself not doing that one day and having it go off early/late or not at all.