I’ve had my Garmin Forerunner 45 since late last year and am very pleased with it.
When it’s running it shows distance and time which are easily understandable , but I don’t understand the pace at the bottom of the dial. Sometimes when I know I’m struggling it shows a good pace, but equally it can show a slow pace when I’m sailing along.
Over what distance does it judge pace? Over 10m, 100m or since the last km ding?
I have forerunner 35 so can’t advise directly but I’ve done some searches on garmin forums and it seems the pace shown on the front screen is can be inaccurate although on secondary screens it is accurate but you’d need to move off your main screen to view this more accurate data. I do this on my 35 when I want to run to HR when it just shows that data and nothing else. Hopefully someone else can give more informed advice.
Thank you, Gh. I’ll look on the forums myself. I think the final analysis of the run is accurate but iffy whilst running. I daren’t switch whilst on a run - I’m already wary of deleting by mistake.
Running to HR is interesting though. I seem to improve my VO2Max just by keeping out of Zone 4.
Me too, the slower I go, the lower my HR and the higher my VO2MAX although I must admit to having more consistent low (for me) HR running in shorts through the winter storms.
I have a Garmin watch and there are 2 different settings that you can show on your watch for pace. One is the average pace and one is the actual pace.
I’ve found that to show the average pace, which is calculated while you are running, isn’t that helpful as it fluctuates wildly. My watch buzzes at the end of every km anyway to show what my average pace was for that km and this is unaffected by any change you make to how pace is displayed on your watch.
The actual pace is much more useful as it allows me to adjust how I’m running, particularly if I think I’m going too fast, at the start of a run for example. It takes a few seconds, as you would expect, to reflect any changes in your pace, though.
I learned how to customise what I want displayed on my watch, with help on here and looking at YouTube videos and the manual; it’s well worth spending the time.
Thank you J2020. I think I’ll go back to the manual (how unmanly!!) and watch those videos.
Haha, yes! I was initially afraid to tamper with the settings, but in the end I didn’t change much. I have 4 data fields showing. Distance at the top, then current pace, heart rate zone (shown as a decimal) and duration of the run at the bottom. This is everything I need to see while running.
I experimented with showing the heart rate zones on screen 2, as a circular dial with different colours for the zones. I had to swipe up to see this screen 2. It was very pretty, but in practice it seemed to swipe up by itself while I was running, so I was constantly swiping to get back to screen 1. So now I have it showing as a decimal and I don’t have screen 2 activated at all.
You might have average pace on Easter than current pace. You can change what your screen shows. You can change how many pieces of data it shows. On road runs I have 4 data fields so it shows current pace, duration, distance and heart rate. On a trail run I have it set to 3 data fields so it shows pace, distance and time of day. You can also choose where you want each data field on the screen - add in at the top of the screen, bottom or on the left or right. I have the least important data field at the top as when I get message notifications on a run, that area temporarily gets covered by the notification and if I’m doing speed or distance work it’s annoying when you can’t see it at the required moment!
Thanks T99. I didn’t realise there were so many display options- mine must be default. However I did learn to disconnect from the phone to stop annoying texts and emails appearing onscreen.
Also Bluetooth uses the phone battery. I reconnect afterwards to download all the data.
week3run1 ✅. 3 x 17 mins with 1 min walks. 
How did your parkrun or (not)parkrun go?
