Garmin Estimated Finish Time
Michele Firmasyah
I've been testing the best Garmin watches for years, and I'm currently running a little experiment by wearing the Garmin Enduro 2 and the Coros Apex 2 Pro simultaneously to see which is more accurate. Both of these multisport watches are amazing, providing you with spot-on GPS performance, long battery life, and a number of advanced health and safety features.
One of these features is the Race Predictor, which gives you an estimate of how fast you can potentially run a 5k/10k/half-marathon/marathon distance based on your training, sleep, recovery, VO2 max, etc. Of course, these times are hypothetical; the watch can also sense so much and can't tell you how well recovered you feel, what's going on with your stomach on the day of the race and so on.
Worse still, the watches can only tell you how quickly you can finish the distance; predicted times don't consider wind speed, terrain, elevation or what running shoes you're wearing. As you can tell, Race Time Predictions are rough estimates at best but given a large enough data pool and ideal race conditions, they can help you pace yourself better on the big day.
I've been wearing both the Coros and the Garmin 24/7 for a month now so that they can provide me with the best estimations. As I keep telling people, you must wear your running watch all day long to help them better understand your training and body. Wearing them only for running will prevent the watch from gauging how fast you recover from exercise and how well your sleep, which helps recovery and performance.
Despite wearing both watches simultaneously, the Coros gave me more generous predictions, saying I could run a 10k race in 37:42 (3'46" per kilometre pace). I knew this was way too generous. Based on my experience, it's probably based on the Coros thinking I'm running faster than I actually am (wearing the Coros Pod 2 on your foot does skew pace readings, interestingly). On the other hand, Garmin predicted my 10k time as 40:24 (around 4'03" per kilometre pace).
The day of the London Winter 10K (links to the race's website) came, and I felt ready to go. I reduced my training load before the race to ensure my legs were fully recovered and ready to race, and I tried to sleep as well as possible. My only reservation was the shoes I wore; although the new Hoka Clifton 9s (links to Hoka, although the Clifton 9 is not yet available to buy) are surprisingly springy, they aren't for racing. Nevertheless, Hoka kindly asked me to wear them, and since they invited me to the race, I thought it was best I wore the shoes.
My official time was 40:34 (top 5% for my age group, woohoo!), which isn't terrible considering I didn't wear racing shoes. I hoped it was closer to 40 minutes (maybe even under a little bit), but there is always next time. Looking at the finish time and the predictions, it's clear as day that my Garmin's estimate was not only closer to the actual time but very close in general, which, I'm not going to lie, surprised me a bit.
Of all the watch ecosystems, I think Garmin is the strictest with its estimates, whether VO2 max or race time predictions. It seems to be on point, though, and in the future, I'll pay more attention to what it's got to say. I'm getting ready for the London Marathon 2023 in April and have a 100-mile running challenge coming up in the next few weeks so that I can check predictions over different distances. For now, it's time to recover and carry on with my training, following my watches' recommendations.
Matt Kollat is a journalist and content creator who works for T3.com and its magazine counterpart as an Active Editor. His areas of expertise include wearables, drones, fitness equipment, nutrition and outdoor gear. He joined T3 in 2019. His byline appears in several publications, including Techradar and Fit&Well, and more. Matt also collaborated with other content creators (e.g. Garage Gym Reviews) and judged many awards, such as the European Specialist Sports Nutrition Alliance's ESSNawards. When he isn't working out, running or cycling, you'll find him roaming the countryside and trying out new podcasting and content creation equipment."}), " -0-10/js/authorBio.js"); } else console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); Matt KollatSocial Links NavigationSection Editor ActiveMatt Kollat is a journalist and content creator who works for T3.com and its magazine counterpart as an Active Editor. His areas of expertise include wearables, drones, fitness equipment, nutrition and outdoor gear. He joined T3 in 2019. His byline appears in several publications, including Techradar and Fit&Well, and more. Matt also collaborated with other content creators (e.g. Garage Gym Reviews) and judged many awards, such as the European Specialist Sports Nutrition Alliance's ESSNawards. When he isn't working out, running or cycling, you'll find him roaming the countryside and trying out new podcasting and content creation equipment.
On raceday I use a data field from the Connect IQ Store called ''Race Screen'' by dp0750 which gives me my predicted finish time over a set distance. You have to fill in your race distance in advance and when you start running the data field shows your predicted finish time based on your current pace (or optional your average pace). As far as I know PacePro does not give you this feature.
So the Race Pace app takes the guess-work out of things. It allows you to re-align to the posted race signage on the course. Meaning, if you see a 5K marker, you can actually tell the watch you just passed that marker. That then updates the distance and pacing information, as well as estimated finish times. Simple as that.
Hi, I coded this data field. Thanks to Ray for the post and to everyone for the feedback. I will try to add support for the 920XT. The issue is not just the different screen shape but the fact that dealing with it requires using more of the very limited memory made available to a data field. But I will work on it.
One very useful thing to have is to be able configure the data screen in different metrics than those in the other bar in screens. E.g many of us use miles for everything but when racing in most European at least races you see signs in km. Thus we could use the lap correction for the apps data screen while having the other data screens showing us the pace in min/mile even if the correction is not done in these screens.
V cool. I guess one potential case is when the marker sign is put on the nearest available post rather than the actual distance.
Ive seen it in road and park races, signs stuck on light posts etc.
Will use it though as marathons can have road markers.
By the way, the battery usage issue is pretty big here too. Just like on laptops, processing power takes a lot of battery. So if you are doing a lot of drawing or calculations in your CIQ field, the battery will drain significantly quicker. You can see that even without CIQ if you leave the device on the map page, especially a complex one like the Edge. Battery will drain significantly quicker.
When you press the lap button, Race Screen rounds the distance it is currently displaying, not the distance measured so far by the device. In your example, you would normally have pressed the lap button before the difference built up to 0.6 miles. Then on mile 26, using those earlier adjustments, Race Screen would not be showing 26.6 miles (even if that was the total distance measured by the device at that point) but more likely something like 26.1 miles and pressing the lap button again would round to 26 miles. You do need to press the lap button every marker but you should not let the difference build up to 0.5 kilometers or miles before you press it.
The challenge with GPS and pacing is that even the best marathoners (aside from race leaders) will usually end up running .20-.3 miles extra on a course (or basically 2-3 minutes). So this at least accounts for that.
The field will use the distance units (miles or kilometres) that the user has set for the device. Thus this is handled through the standard device settings not through the app settings. If the device is set to display distance in kilometers, pressing the lap button will round the distance to the nearest kilometer. If instead the device is set to display distance in miles, pressing the lap button will round the distance to the nearest mile. On devices where distance and pace units can be set separately, it is the distance units that are used for the adjustment. This means an American user running a race in continental Europe could set the pace units to minutes per mile to maintain what she is most comfortable with and the distance units to kilometers to match the course markers and make the adjustment easy.
the HR and Cadence will change color based on your zones, or can be set to just black/white (easier to read). And, you can also set the background to change from black to white, if your predicted time is behind or ahead of your intended pace. As I was on a hilly run, it kept flipping on me depending on my current pace.
hi Morey,
you have hurt my pride. actually i developed the app :-P
gasteps was in touch with me , and somehow suunto removed my name from the previous app,
link to movescount.com
you and others helped me a lot to fine tune the app in a watchuseek thread.
anyway, i am now into ConnectIQ. actually i have a half baked version of the running power app for garmin. but right now i am more focused on my pool swim app
link to apps.garmin.com
besides, my FR235 does not have a barometric altimeter (same problem my suunto 2s had). and therefore the altitude estimation is rather poor, and so the power estimation. i should have gone for a fenix 3 but i dont have budget for that.
but i will eventually finish the app. stay tuned.
I would love to have Lap by Position back on my 735. As a speedskater I loved this option on my old Garmin as I was able to see every lap time automatically. I am really disappointed Garmin omitted this on their newest watches.
Bring it back!!!