Garmin Edge 840 & 540 Released

Yeah, last night I did a workout

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using only the Garmin default workout screen:

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and to be honest I’m 100% ok with using it. A few notes:

  • the 530 default workout page was both better and worse, I like having more data on the 840
  • except for the occasional 10 mile Time Trial that I do, there is no reason for Step Distance to exist on that screen
  • that field is workout comparison + Step Distance
  • I simply ignored the Step Distance and I could easily use the 840 default workout screen for all my outside workouts.
  • apparently if the workout has a second target (cadence, heart rate, etc), that field (workout comparison + step distance gets replaced with secondary target

Also, wanted to toss this out to anyone wishing for TR to give you an compliance score…

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That was for a group ride from Sunday. My goal was to keep it easy endurance so even though it was a group ride I loaded a workout and here it is in TrainingPeaks:

TP allows you to define arbitrary zones, so I have one for Endurance 66-79% FTP which was the target for 100 minutes.

Ignoring the warmup, cooldown, and bonus minutes, I spent 37.5 minutes “in the zone” during a 128 minute workout. After reading the Garmin help for Execution Score, I applied overly simplistic math 37.5/128 = 29% and thats basically the 28% execution score I received.

However using common sense, look visually at that workout / group ride and I’d say it was mission accomplished. Kept it easy, kept it “endurance” paced, and no long departures going for a 2-minute KOM or anything like that.

Like any metric, sometimes its worth looking at, and sometimes its not.

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