Looking to jump into outside training and just received my power meter pedals.
I don’t have any unit to display power for workouts outside.
I have been thinking of getting a smartwatch for a while and it seems that workouts can be loaded on the garmin watches.
Does anyone have any experience with this? I do little riding outside at this time so I don’t really want to invest in a fancy head unit…but maybe I should just get the wahoo bolt.
Thanks.
A couple of options come to mind, depending on what you’re doing outside and what you want out of your workout.
The most obvious would be to load the workouts to your watch and go by RPE rather than power. If you don’t want to spend the money on a head unit, there are also a couple of smartphone apps which are able to display power (I think the wahoo app does, off the top of my head?). You’d have to program the workouts manually and the workouts wouldn’t integrate as nicely with the TR calendar, but it does the job and most smartphone mounts are pretty inexpensive.
If you’re doing mostly endurance/tempo riding outdoors, or max efforts where you’re not as focused on hitting a specific wattages, I think the watch is probably the simplest/best option. For workouts where your target range is a little more narrow, or if you just want a record of your performance, a smartphone is a workable solution, if a little clunky. (that being said, I think indoors is still the gold standard for those sorts of efforts anyway.)
You can definitely get by with a smartwatch if you only want or can afford one device. I just have a Garmin 935, but I’m a triathlete so I use it for everything. I haven’t used it for outdoor bike workouts (I’ve done run workouts with it), but the obvious major disadvantage compared to a dedicated cycling head unit is the screen size. When I ride my tri bike I keep it on my wrist since I can see it pretty easily riding in the aerobars, but on my road bike I just strap it to my handlebars since it’s hard to see on my wrist riding on the hoods or drops.
I’ve used my Garmin 935 and 945 for outdoor Training Peaks built workouts, but not TR workouts. Coach @jonathan uses a 945 for outdoor TR workouts and seems to love it.
One thing to keep in mind when shopping for smart watches: lots of the entry level ones (Garmin Vivoactive) don’t read power meters. They physically can since it’s a standard bluetooth or ANT+ connection but the manufacturer lock it out in the software to get people to buy higher models. So make sure it is compatible before buying. Their may be 3rd party apps to go around this. DCRainmaker’s website is a great resource for tech info on all bike gadgets.
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Unless you really need a training watch for running or something I’d get the cheapest Garmin or Wahoo that has the features you need.
Personally I’d miss the out front display of a headunit and turning your wrist to look at your watch while cycling sounds annoying.
I use a Garmin Vivoactive 3 outside. You can push outside workouts to it. It isn’t the best situation because you can’t see the intervals, but it tells you what to do in text. Most of the stuff I’m doing outside is longish intervals anyway, so it works for me.
I have the same watch and use it for all my outdoor rides/runs. I don’t have a power meter, though, is there an IQ app that allows the watch to measure power data?
I’m just training with RPE on my mountain bike outside so I never have looked.
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Like @SteveM said, I use my Forerunner 945 occasionally and it is great for workouts with less varied structure. It gets tricky with something like reduced amplitude billats where the intervals are 15-30 seconds long due to the pop-up description that shows the interval description. For those more variable workouts, a head unit is a better experience.
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You can mount your watch on your bike for easier reading using something like in the link below. I agree that a head unit definitely makes things easier but is not absolutely necessary if on a tight budget.
Not sure if this applies to any of Garmin’s more Triathlon-oriented watches, but I hit a small snag using my Garmin Forerunner 35 to track rides - namely that when the ride syncs from GC into TR, you don’t get the Elevation data (though as a workaround, you can export the .fit file from GC and manually import into TR). I spoke to the Support folks and it has something to do with elevation correction being enabled on the Forerunner (not that I can change that…).
Late to the party, I know. I use the Fenix 5 for outside workouts and it works just fine.
I have a Garmin 935 and just yesterday I tried using for outdoor workout. But I was a little confused as to how the target screen works. Are there any guides on the experience when using a watch? As in, it was showing me in the green zone but I felt like I was no where near producing the power required.
It would be great to have some help as my trainer has just packed in 
Thanks
Is anyone doing outside workouts on a Garmin 735? I’ve been doing outdoor workouts on my Wahoo head unit, but want to record on my Garmin watch concurrently so I can take advantage of the AT Beta.
Looking to see if there’s a way I can “pause” the workout on my Garmin while it keeps recording. That feature exists on the Wahoo and I use it frequently when an interval doesn’t align with the environment. However, this morning my Wahoo and Garmin got out of sync and the only way I could “pause” my Garmin was by hitting the start/stop button. I ended up letting the Garmin run and record the workout and focused on the input from the Wahoo, but the alerts from my Garmin are a bit of a distraction.
How do you get the Workout fields? I can’t see them in the field lists
I’ve a Fenix 5+ and you can’t get the workout fields without using third party ConnectIQ screens. The problem I found with the ones recommended to me by others here were that the screens pack so much data on it makes it difficult to see. I never investigated whether you can then amend the screens, I couldn’t be bothered to be honest and stick to using my Wahoo when doing anything other than recovery week workouts outside. I wanted to use the Fenix so I got more use from my Omata which just looks so elegant on bike but for me it never really worked out.
Check out this thread: Garmin Fenix 6 sapphire Outdoor Workouts - #7 by Seamonster
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While probably not the solution for some, when I first got my watch I started using my worn out 520 in “mirror mode”. The watch did the heavy work, but I could use my 520 to display the information so I didn’t have to look at my wrist.
I use a fenix 6x because triathlon and I wanted/liked the ruggedness of it. It works great to load up workouts and stuff. I don’t advise to get all the data on one screen. Use multiple screens you can scroll through to see what is necessary. For me it’s HR, power and speed and total time on my main screen and then more splits oriented on another one. A third one will show me a map and the forth is set up for climb-pro. When I do an uploaded workout, extra screens get added automatically with the prescribed power range and some basic explanation with the steps.
I find it easy enough.
I am usually in TT-position so I can see my numbers clearly. It is still visible on the hoods but on the drops it’s not an instant glance.
Hope it helps.