my new garmin rounds the pace to every 5 seconds, is this just laziness?

You're worrying about less than 3 seconds per mile, maximum. GPS isn't precise enough for it to matter.

If yer running 800s at 5:40 rounding down is the least of your concerns.

Mr E wrote:

You're worrying about less than 3 seconds per mile, maximum. GPS isn't precise enough for it to matter.

Exactly

Area Man wrote:

Mr E wrote:

You're worrying about less than 3 seconds per mile, maximum. GPS isn't precise enough for it to matter.

Exactly

That might be the case, but rounding to the nearest 5 second would drive me crazy as well.

Which Garmin does this? I am looking to upgrade pretty soon.

Your old watch did not, in fact, tell you your exact pace because a GPS watch is not accurate enough to measure your exact pace. It simply displayed a number that was within a few seconds of your actual pace.

The rounded readout is probably no further from your actual pace than a to-the-second readout. You're really just asking the machine to report data at a level of precision that exceeds its own measuring capabilities, which is kind of dumb. It could tell you that your pace is 5:43 instead of reporting it as 5:45, but most likely neither of those numbers is the exact correct pace. So what does it matter?

I believe that the "current pace" displayed on many gps units is a short term rolling average. Average pace of the last ~30s, for instance.

If a small period is used, then the displayed pace will be noisy.

If a longer time period is used, then displayed pace will be slow to respond.

I'm actually really glad my Garmin does this. At least they're owning up to the margin of error on current pace measurements.

WhitePony wrote:

Which Garmin does this? I am looking to upgrade pretty soon.

The 620 (maybe 220 as well?)... one reason among many that keep me from "upgrading" to this watch from the 610.

Yea its the 220 and i upgraded from the 110. Its just a bit frustrating when i'm trying to hit paces on mile repeats and the lap time shows 5:47 and my pace shows 5:45.

#firstworldproblems

Lol yea you're right. I guess it isn't a big deal, i just wanted to know if there was a setting to take it off.

juzkeeprunnin wrote:

I got a new garmin. My old watch told me the exact pace but this new "better" watch will only give me my pace for every 5 seconds. An example would be like 5:45, 5:50, 5:40. Is there a setting to take this out?

You my friend have a lazy watch...it must be part of the millennial generation. Get yourself an older watch that had to earn every second by running uphill (both ways) in the snow.

Do you really need a gps watch to do mile repeats around a standardized track.

The day wrote:

Do you really need a gps watch to do mile repeats around a standardized track.

Yes because you need it to automatically sync to your mobile app which will post it to Facebook and prove that you are healthier than your friends.

I don't ever post my runs, i believe that brings bad mojo. I need it because i do all my runs on a golf course so its hard getting even splits.

Suunto Ambit 2S does the same thing, but only for the "Live Pace", the average pace shows to the second. It's not an issue to me.