Intervalls with Race S: Very disappointing
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I use my Race S for 3 months now and its great for endurance training or navigation. Only the heartrate monitor is not very reliable.
But i´m very frustrated when using it for intervall trainng. There are missing all the importend fields you need for a structured unit. There is only one screen which you can´t edit. If you are not on this special screen, there is no signage when the intervall starts or ends, also the counter does not work. Also there is no posibility to see, how long the last intervall lasted. You can´t see how much intervalls you already did (if you do 15 x 400m, you need this). and, and, and.
Hoping for new firmware releases, that wil fix all this bugs. Using my old Fenix 3 for intervalls again, which allready had these esentiell features 5 years ago.
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I think it was mentioned quite few times in this forum, but there are two ways of setting intervals in Suunto watches. In my opinion using “Intervals” is quite good one for simple intervals (for example 15x400). Check it out:
https://www.suunto.com/Support/faq-articles/suunto-9/how-to-train-with-intervals-on-your-suunto-watch/Suunto Race S (Titanium Canary)
Suunto Vertical (Titanium Solar Forest) -
@tomclownfisch said in Intervalls with Race S: Very disappointing:
there is no posibility to see, how long the last intervall lasted. You can´t see how much intervalls you already did (if you do 15 x 400m, you need this).
If you make your interval workout using a third party like intervals.icu, counters are very much present - much better than with the internal tool.
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@aiv4r Does not work for running. You can´t define warm up, pyramids or everything else. It is made for HIIT.
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@tomclownfisch probably depends on how you prefer your running, but it works very well for me. I use it for almost all my interval training (except when I want to do ladder workout or more complex structure).
To the points you mentioned:
-you can do warm up (everything you do before starting an interval is a warm up)
-you can see counter of how many reps you completed vs in total
-you can see summary of last interval (pace, time and etc)for more complex structured workouts - intervals.icu screens are probably the best ones
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@tomclownfisch I also noticed these problems. you’d think interval displays would be a core part of a running watch, but not with the race s. there’s also no pace ahead/behind alerts, interval countdowns, next interval(s) details. it’s a much worse experience than the cheapest garmin from ~10 years ago, and i found it impossible to train with.
after seeing other complaints about this in suunto going back years, i returned the watch. i hope you have better luck!
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Hello, I use my Race S for almost one month, globally satisfied, but I am, like other people here, very disappointed by the interval training. It is really a shame that the “advanced” interval training (the one that you define in the app) does not benefit from the same display as the “classic” interval training available directly on the watch. I am a software developer so I can guess why they are different but from a user perspective, this makes no sense at all to have two ways to do interval trainings. I have not tried this latest mode since I like to prepare everything in advance and reuse previous sessions. On my Coros Pace 2 that was quite straightforward.
Removing auto-lap allows you to display at least the pace of the last interval in the second screen, and with some customisation, you can also get the current pace, HR, etc… since the interval is the current lap. But you still lack repetitions… At noon, I did a session I like a lot, 9x35/35, two times with a 2min pause in between, and it was cumbersome to know where I was since there were too many laps. I could count in my head, but if you buy a watch at 400€, the least it can do is to do it for you…
Also, one thing missing is the “advanced” interval training, maybe it is present in the classic one, is to emit a sound/buzz a few seconds or meter before the end of the interval. Exactly like the Gym timer in Suunto Plus. The Coros Pace 2 also had that and it was very convenient, especially during rest before a new interval. You can prepare for the next one without watching the screen. During the transition, it displays the objective of the last lap (pace or HR), which is very handy to know where you are during the training.
Well I really hope the “advanced” interval training will be improved in the near future. I don’t consider using the classic mode since it does not even allow you to set an objective (pace, HR). That would be great if Suunto could tell if there are any plans on that topic.
Thanks for reading.
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@flav.io said in Intervalls with Race S: Very disappointing:
At noon, I did a session I like a lot, 9x35/35, two times with a 2min pause in between, and it was cumbersome to know where I was since there were too many laps. I could count in my head, but if you buy a watch at 400€, the least it can do is to do it for you
For this at least if you build it in a third party site like intervals.icu the repetition counter, number of reps and so on are shown. Would be worth trying that until some day the Run interval display ports over to the older models.
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@The_77 thank you for your advice.
I gave a try at noon, and indeed this is much much better. I was a bit reluctant to use it in the first place because I thought it would not be for free, but it seems to be at least for now… The Suunto guide is almost perfect, you have the repetition number, current avg pace, objective, heartrate. I would just love to be able to navigate in the lap table, but at least I can read the stats of the two/three previous intervals.
This is a game changer, thank you so much for pointing this out.If Suunto would like to improve the guide of the “advanced” intervals, this should be the way to go. But now I’m wondering if this is why it is not in a better shape, maybe to not compete with Intervals.icu, as a business partner?
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I’m also still waiting for the interval counter a countdown before and after intervals to be available natively on the Suunto app.
I tried programming workouts on intervals.icu for a while, but it’s not practical to have yet another platform to use.
It’s a terrible experience with my training platform, Campus Coach.
I see two possible explanations: either Garmin is paying Suunto not to implement these features, or the developers simply aren’t capable of doing it.
Structured workout integration has been around for about three years, which should have been more than enough time to develop these basic and highly requested features.In the meantime, I’ve gone back to using a Garmin. My Suunto is up for sale, but of course, no one wants it.
