Autolap

Vote up top, discuss pros and cons here. Or anything, really. I'm just curious to see what percentage of us use it.

Every mile. Long enough, as I used to use KM.

Yup, have it on for every mile but I turn it off for workouts at the track and just use the stopwatch. I don't like the GPS or Autolap at the track although I do leave the GPS on for just a rough estimate of pace.



For autolap, I have it beep but I do not have it do the vibrate feature that the 610 added. For the vast majority of my runs, I simply don't look at my mile splits until post-run, if then. In general, I'm not a big Garmin watcher, typically looking less than once a mile unless there's a very speicifc pace workout I'm doing. But I do like having the recorded data broken up into nice 1 mile chunks via auto lap.

In training I always have my autolap set to go off every mile. I even leave it on auto lap at the track if my repeats are shorter than a mile because I can just hit the lap button at the end of the repeat without the autolap interfering.
In small 5k races that do not have mile markers I like to set my autolap to .5 miles so that I get more feedback and have more opportunity to adjust my effort level. In large marathons with mile markers I turn off the autolap and manually hit the lap button at each mile marker.

Interesting insights. I'm curious as to who else clicked "No: fuck that." If I had to venture a guess, it'd be Mark... Which makes me think there might be somewhat of a schism between "trail runners" and "road runners."

Auto lap unless it is a specific speed session then it is programed accordingly. For races I shut it off and hit the lap each mile. I think road runners are more anal about this then trail blazers. I think?

I use the feature on my daily runs, especially the longer ones as I want to make sure my guestimate of the distance is/was correct. As for speed or track workouts, I use a regular watch and not my Garmin at all.

I use the autolap an all runs. I run a bunch of the same roads / trails so I know exactly when that thing is going to beep at me.

As others do, I turn it off for races and manually hit the lap button. Just don't do what I did at my first marathon: I hit the start / stop button at mile 1 by accident. Hit mile 2 and went to hit the lap button and saw the watch was still reading 9:00. Oops. Had to do math the rest of the way...

For the last several years, I've trained based on time rather than distance. My Garmin still dutifully tracks distance and I still record the distance from treadmill workouts. But it's not as important to me as time and effort.

I'm not sure I understand why anyone uses this. I don't want something to beep at me every mile. What's the point?

In a race, I hit the splits button at the mile marker. I want to know how long each mile in the race took. So if I did a poor job of cutting the tangents then I can fix it next year. That would be harder to determine if my watch recorded a split before the mile marker.

Stan

Mike MacLellan wrote:Interesting insights. I'm curious as to who else clicked "No: fuck that." If I had to venture a guess, it'd be Mark... Which makes me think there might be somewhat of a schism between "trail runners" and "road runners."

Not me. I am a serious runner.

I clicked No. If I want to run on a treadmill where I am getting constant feedback on every pace shift that I do, I'll run on a treadmill. I hate treadmills. The reason I love running is to be outside and just run. That's not to say that I don't have a goal pace that I plan on hitting on pretty much every run that I do. I certainly do and usually check my watch 3 or 4 times during each run to make sure I'm on that pace. However, if I autolap on, I tend to over-obsess about every split on every mile and it makes my runs much less enjoyable.

Plus, I like to do the math in my head. Gives me something to do on those twenty milers...

GregC wrote:I clicked No. If I want to run on a treadmill where I am getting constant feedback on every pace shift that I do, I'll run on a treadmill. I hate treadmills. The reason I love running is to be outside and just run. That's not to say that I don't have a goal pace that I plan on hitting on pretty much every run that I do. I certainly do and usually check my watch 3 or 4 times during each run to make sure I'm on that pace. However, if I autolap on, I tend to over-obsess about every split on every mile and it makes my runs much less enjoyable.

Plus, I like to do the math in my head. Gives me something to do on those twenty milers...

This is exactly why I turned mine off, too. Turned every run into a race and I would panic if my first few miles were "too slow."

Don't know what it is cause I haven't decided to garmin yet. I'm thinking of striping all gadgits for the upcoming marathon since they have pace groups and split clocks galor. Who needs it! This whole electronically anal running fad get's annoying anyway so...my answer NO, Fudge that, My mommy won't let me write that other word.

I have a goal pace in mind for most runs, but I don't obsess over it by any means. I like to hit my paces on long runs in particular, but for recovery runs, who cares as long as the miles get done. I like knowing that my effort level is consistent with the pace I'm running. On a 10 miler earlier this week, the first half felt like a lot more effort that it should have and the second half I was cruising at what felt like a pretty relaxed pace even though it was ~10 seconds a mile faster than the 1st half. I just like to know where I'm at, whether I'm analyzing during or after the run.

mul21 wrote:I have a goal pace in mind for most runs, but I don't obsess over it by any means.

Mike MacLellan wrote:

GregC wrote:I clicked No. If I want to run on a treadmill where I am getting constant feedback on every pace shift that I do, I'll run on a treadmill. I hate treadmills. The reason I love running is to be outside and just run. That's not to say that I don't have a goal pace that I plan on hitting on pretty much every run that I do. I certainly do and usually check my watch 3 or 4 times during each run to make sure I'm on that pace. However, if I autolap on, I tend to over-obsess about every split on every mile and it makes my runs much less enjoyable.

Plus, I like to do the math in my head. Gives me something to do on those twenty milers...

This is exactly why I turned mine off, too. Turned every run into a race and I would panic if my first few miles were "too slow."

I like to know what my pace is as I run, as well as the distance traveled. My main Garmin screen shows instantaneous pace (highly inaccurate), average pace this interval (one mile auto-lap), average pace this run, and distance traveled.

I too will become obsessed with hitting my desired pace if I feel I am not putting out the appropriate effort. I have also found that on occasion I will be running far better that anticipated and will turn what started out as a moderate to long run at an easy pace into an LT, threshold, or long interval run banging out miles at a much higher pace than anticipated.

I also wonder if being overly obsessed with where I am pace-wise actually causes me to have less than optimal runs, as sometimes, when I am doing urban runs around downtown Chicago and I have no satellite reception, I find after comparing the distance run (mapmyride.com) with my duration of run from the garmin that I actually have some of my best runs pace-wise, effort-wise, and satisfaction-wise.

I clicked every mile, with the caveat that I hardly ever wear my Garmin anymore.

Jerry wrote:

Mike MacLellan wrote:Interesting insights. I'm curious as to who else clicked "No: fuck that." If I had to venture a guess, it'd be Mark... Which makes me think there might be somewhat of a schism between "trail runners" and "road runners."

Not me. I am a serious runner.

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

I am an every mile guy...Just set it and go. I do not use auto lap for sprints/repeats...

Mike MacLellan wrote:Interesting insights. I'm curious as to who else clicked "No: fuck that." If I had to venture a guess, it'd be Mark... Which makes me think there might be somewhat of a schism between "trail runners" and "road runners."

No, Mike. I didn't click that option. (Though I have to admit, I might have considered it... )

When I do wear my Garmin, I have it set for auto-lap. When I wore it regularly, I only turned the auto lap off during races, because it would drive me CrAzY when the device went out of sync with the mile markers, which was pretty much all the time.

Trail runners often eschew the measurement because the terrain often makes splits (instant or per mile) fairly useless, and the tree cover and switchbacks messes with the GPS track. It's not all about casting off bourgeois conventions of existential angst.

Like the others, I turn it off during races. I tend to only look at mile splits with running lots of hills so I can see how the hills impacted the workout.

...Maybe I'm the only one who keeps it on during (road) races. Fuck those mile-markers; they've never been accurate for me yet. I'll take the Garmin splits.

Mike MacLellan wrote:...Maybe I'm the only one who keeps it on during (road) races. Fuck those mile-markers; they've never been accurate for me yet. I'll take the Garmin splits.

I leave mine on during races. It gets kinda funky and I have to readjust the laps when running Chicago (tall buildings), but I still use the function.

Nick Morris wrote:

Mike MacLellan wrote:...Maybe I'm the only one who keeps it on during (road) races. Fuck those mile-markers; they've never been accurate for me yet. I'll take the Garmin splits.

I leave mine on during races. It gets kinda funky and I have to readjust the laps when running Chicago (tall buildings), but I still use the function.

Me3. I don't care its accuracy and look at pace primarily.