New Garmin Connect features - create courses and workouts

tuckerm

So in Garmin Connect you can now create courses and workouts.  Someone suggested on the Dashboard we should start a thread to discuss so here goes.

The course feature seems similar to any other mapping program.  The only upside to this to me is that I don't have to use multpile sites when creating courses.  I played with the course mapping but it just seemed clunky to me.  

What I like is the Workout creation feature.  Don't like Training Center so would rather use GC.  It took some getting used but eventually was able to figure out how to create intervals w/ recovery sets.  Exported to my 405 and it looks great.  Will test it on the road a little later today.

But what really appealled to me was creating bike workouts as I had never done that before.  I created a sample OS workout and it looked great.  Went to send it to my device and it told me it cannot send power zones to my device yet.  That is a big fail.  I'm hoping that function will be supported when thye eventually release the power metrics which is supposed to be any day now.  

What I have not been able to figure out is if you can share workouts.  I see this as a huge plus for us.  If we could create the workouts and share them, maybe we can somehow get it so at the least we could put the workoutssomewhere on the site where you can just download your workout.  In a dream world, the Garmin workout file would be right on the Dashboard where Today's workout is.  But I can already here Rich saying, "We're triathlon coaches, not programmers". 

Anyway, I thought I'd get the discussion going on this. Anyone have any thoughts?

Steven Ford

I will have to take a look as I would love to be able to create and download bike workouts.

mancona

I put some thoughts on this in the edge 800 thread but is a summary.

Courses - On the edge 800 I find the GC solution to be the fastest and easiest way to create a course and get it on the device. The downside is has least features and is not nearly as customizable as other offerings. My current favorite is still bikeroutetoaster.com as it has a feature where you enter the distance before the turn that you want a warner (i.e. 100 ft) and it automatically adds a pop up warning for every turn on the course. With a GC route you simply get the route on a map and no beep and pop up message than says turn in 100 ft (GC routes do have an alert if you miss a turn and go off the route though). My guess is they keep the first release of this very simple and will add more features in future releases. You can also save one of your actitivities or another users as a course as well, I have not tried this yet. I have not sent a course to my edge 500 yet.

Workouts - Thes work perfectly on GC and have synced to both my edge 500 and edge 800 with no issues at all. For once I actually have no complaints and like it just the way it is. Very easy to use and very quick to sync to the device. I haven't tried the calendar feature yet but it worked well in GTC so I assume it will work right on GC as well.

Jenn Edwards

HI! 

Love the gadget talk here.  I haven't been able to get this to work yet but I can bang my head against that wall myself if others have had success.  What I DON'T see is the ability to custom name your step as in TC.  I was using this to tell me whiat power zones to use, rather than the having the actual setting in the system.  I had had difficulty staying in a small range so someone (I think it was acytually you Matt?!?) suggested this functionality.

So my question(s) in EN-friendly bullet point: 

• Is there a way to custom name the step?  
• Or an alternative solution?

Gadget Geeks Unite! 

 

mancona

@Jean - I didn't notice that was missing. Now there is something on my wish list ;-)

I just know my numbers in my head these days and they don't change much at all. Therefore I set a range so it doesn't beep at me. For example, this morning I did FTP intervals at 285w and used a garmin workout. I set the interval goal as 270 to 300 watts ... it then shows that on the screen and i know it really means 285 to me. I was on the trainer so I never once was out side of the 270-300 range and it never beeped at me until the 5 second warmined for the end of the interval.

Jenn Edwards

Got it Matt, thanks. 

I'll give setting a range another shot.  I see you used a range 30w (indoor) and will try the same.  I don't see that DC Rainmaker picked up on it either, FWIW.

Any my range won't be 270-300.   Ha!

tuckerm

That's great to hear Matt. Maybe it was referring to my 405 with the problem with Power workouts. Looking forward to trying it with a bike workout.
Did use the workout function for my run today and it worked out just great.

mancona

@Tucker - i'm not possitive but I'm pretty sure the 405 does not support power. So I bet you are right. Just build a workout off of time only and no interval targets and you should be fine... however like Jean pointed out, not being able to custom name the step means you have to know what your target is for the interval. GC will let you pick it as a interval, recovery, wu, cd, etc so it does give you some guidence.

BTW, totally unrelated side note but I just decided to pass on pacing the NYC marathon this year as my season plans slightly changed recently.

Chris M.

This is pretty handy and it will be nice to have everything in one place instead of using mapmyride or whatever.  One thing though, I don't see elevation for the course I created.  Am I missing the "show elevation" button somewhere?  I know it's hard to read but at the bottom of those two boxes there is nothing for elevation gain or elevation loss.  

tuckerm

You are correct Matt, the 405 doesn't support power. I got that error message when trying to upload a running workout which seemed odd. I have a 500 so no worries on the power workouts. Haven't ridden in a couple weeks so will have to test it soon.

It doesn't look like you can combine a course and workout does it? That would be cool but maybe someday.

Sorry you won't make it to NYC but totally understand.

Chris haven't found the elevation gain button either. Will give it another look.

mancona

@Chris - the feature set for both course and workouts is pretty basic, and they did that on purpose is what I was told back in April when I talked my Garmin contact about this. The plan was to get the core and basic features right and retire garmin training center. FWIW, I saw this and more functionality working in April but they really wanted to test it and make sure it was solid before releasing it. They have a repuation for putting stuff out that isn't ready for prime time so they wanted to just have the core features working and then start to add more on top of it. Their intentions are to add a ton of other features to GC and get ride of all stand alone products, i.e basecamp and others that still exist.

@Tucker, nope, course and workout are separate. a course can have a virtual partner but that is one set speed for the entire time.

Chris M.

Posted By Matt Ancona on 23 Sep 2011 11:39 AM

@Chris - the feature set for both course and workouts is pretty basic, and they did that on purpose is what I was told back in April when I talked my Garmin contact about this. The plan was to get the core and basic features right and retire garmin training center. FWIW, I saw this and more functionality working in April but they really wanted to test it and make sure it was solid before releasing it. They have a repuation for putting stuff out that isn't ready for prime time so they wanted to just have the core features working and then start to add more on top of it. Their intentions are to add a ton of other features to GC and get ride of all stand alone products, i.e basecamp and others that still exist.

OK thanks for the info.  I googled it and saw a picture of the map with an elevation profile below so I thought maybe there was a box I didn't click somewhere.  

tuckerm

@Matt, any idea why my Garmin is only taking one workout at a time from GC, but was able to take almost 20 from GTC? Am I doing something wrong?

mancona

I created 4 workouts and sent them all to both my edge 500 and edge 800 without issue. I did have to send them one at a time though but it only takes a few seconds per work out. It was nice in GTC how you could sync them all at once, but it seemed to take 10x as long to actually sync.

tuckerm

Thanks Matt! I guess I should have been more clear.I am only able to load one running workout at a time onto my 405. Maybe it is just that watch, I don't know. But if I load up one workout, it overwrites the one that was sitting there. Sucks because I was able to add a ton through GTC.

Ann Sloan

this is just awesome. I have always been a run/walker and used the 'old' Training Center program to create my run 'workouts'. Worked fine but just one more program. I am excited to check out more of the features for the bike stuff.
this way you also don't have to remember your intervals for track workouts.