I am not certain whether this is a bug or just me not fully understanding how to build workouts.
I noticed that my Garmin watch (FR945) doesn’t pick up the “recovery” steps in structured workouts as being rest/recovery steps. So when the step comes, it is not announced as a rest step.
Also, after syncing the run back to Intervals, the steps are all marked as “work” interval type.
Please show a screen shot of the workout.
Are you showing interval data for both work and recovery steps.if yes, try deleting the intervals showing rest and only show the intervals with work.
Here’s a run workout from a few years ago (when I was running). I created a running workout as a test to see how it pulls through to Garmin. I’ll check it later today when I have my device with me.
But there still remains the question how I have to build my workouts so that this is done automatically?
I expected that, with the structured workout built as shown above:
my Garmin watch would recognize “recovery” steps as such
Intervals would label "recovery"steps as such when syncing the run.
I think the issue starts with the sync of the structured workout from Intervals to Garmin.
That is the reason my watch doesn’t recognize the recovery steps as such, and labels them as run steps, which results in them being work steps when the activity is synced back from Garmin to Intervals.
This is the interval type info in the activity in Garmin Connect from that same activity:
If I compare the FIT files from the planned workout from Intervals and from TrainingPeaks for the same workout:
FIT file generated from TrainingPeaks, I see that there is a field named “Intensity” which for the Recovery Step has the value “rest”, while the same field has the value “active” for the work steps:
FIT file generated from Intervals, both steps have the value “interval” in that field
Being a recovery ride, I wasn’t too interested in following the plan, so the compliance to the intervals is not accurate.
However, the upload in Intervals shows “work” for all steps, if I use the “Use laps” function. Once I remove the recovery intervals
from the workout, it shows work/recovery in the Interval Data.
I have noticed this as well for my runs. The few FIT file workouts I looked at from Intervals show intensity as either “interval” or “rest”, and all laps then passed by Garmin back to Intervals from the activity are all “work” type as well for me.
Looking through Garmin’s SDK they have seven (7) possible value names for intensity:
0 active
1 rest
2 warmup
3 cooldown
4 recovery
5 interval
6 other
I reviewed the guide for Interval’s Workout Builder documentation and I don’t see anywhere within Intervals that we can define this intensity field, and I am unclear on how Intervals decides whether a step is either “interval” or “rest”. This also would be useful to figure out this as well because I think then Garmin Connect would be able to read the work vs rest/recover steps when I review the workout within Garmin Connect.
I do not have a paid subscription to TP, but I am going to try to pull off some test FIT workout files I push to my watch that I create from using Garmin Connect’s website to see if I can possibly provide any more clarity.
So today I created a duplicate of the workout from Intervals using Garmin Connect, the FIT files for the workouts were very similar but noticed the same differences as my previous post. The intensity from Intervals was either “interval” or “rest” and the same workout created in Garmin Connect had “warmup”, “active”, “recovery”, and “cooldown” values. I did notice that when creating the workout in GC, the dropdown for step type which correlates to this intensity parameter does not include “interval” nor “active” although I think that because the workout type is a run GC displays “run” rather than “active”.
Intervals did not do any better at distinguishing work laps from recovery laps, but created the splits according to the laps from the activity mostly accurate, but using the GC created workout I was able to see the correct warmup, work, recovery, and cooldown laps/steps within the GC app/website correctly where as previously I was unable to do so using the workouts pushed from Intervals. Basically no difference here on Intervals but better on GC. Here is what it looked like in the GC app today which usually isn’t there:
I don’t believe that this is bug, rather just a current limitation of how the workout builder functions with Garmin and how Intervals in turn reads the activity FIT file from Garmin. It appears that the workout builder here would have to be reworked a little bit to correctly utilize this intensity parameter. Then when reading the activity FIT file from Garmin after doing the workout, Intervals would need to only create “work” splits/laps from the splits/laps with intensity values not equal to “recover” or “rest”.
I hope this makes sense and clarifies the why from what is happening behind the scenes between Intervals and Garmin.
The only way I can found to set Recovery/Rest step on the workout at Garmin smartwatch is setting a low intensity in percentage; like this:
Warmup
- 4km Press lap
6x
- 1m30s 1-40% Pace press lap
- 1km Z6 Pace
Cooldown
- 2km Press lap
The only drawback of this method regarding planning workout in garming connect is that my smartwatch (Garming vivoactive 4) doesn’t show planned recovery time, and in rest step shows time in small letters (because big letters show planned pace :D)
Gonna follow this thread, as I don’t fully understand how to label recovery splits for running workouts. David said that setting a low intensity would show up as recovery in Garmin, but I haven’t been able to replicate it