The majority of Garmin’s data fields have a fixed layout with a single value displayed. “Power Tool” and “Power Based Workouts” offer further possibilities:

• The ability to display up to 3 data on the same screen
• A alternate view depending on the activity
• A progress bar representing the power or flat track apce zone

Differences between “Power Tool” and “Power Based Workouts”

“Power Based Workouts” is a feature-reduced version of “[Power Tool](../../ garmin-app/powertool/)”. Its main purpose is to provide the possibility of doing structured power-based workouts for watches with too few memory.

It therefore does not include the calculation and display of the equivalent pace on a track and the dedicated configuration for the trail. For the rest, the possibilities described here are similar.

As a reminder, the power and the pace on the track are identical: it is the power. The difference is at the unit used. Power is expressed in watts while the pace on the track is minute by km or miles (and represents the power that we have at this pace on an athletics track).

Power zones

The first thing to configure are either the power or pace zones using the Garmin IQ app or the Garmin Express PC app. It is essential to have the background colors that reflect these training areas.

The color of the zone is chosen according to the instantaneous power only.

Display of measurements

Four configurations are detected and have a dedicated view:

1. The trail race (only for “Power Tool”)
2. Structured training with the current step having a pace or power constraint. This configuration uses a predefined display with power or track pace in huge size and with the requested interval displayed just below.
3. Structured training with step without power constraints
4. Generic run activities

For 3 of these configurations (trail running, training and the general case), it is recommended to define the data to be displayed.

Application

It all sounds a bit complicated but offers some very practical possibilities. Taking my personal case, I tend to want to see other information during a free run or during training.

In the free run, I want display the instantaneous track pace and the 5-minute sliding average. This is more than enough for me to get an idea of my current and average effort.

On the other hand, during a interval training, the average over the last minutes is not really relevant. During the high intensive phase step, I want to see my instantaneous power and, by a simple color code, to see if I am too slow. This is what these two data fields do automatically.
But, once in recovery, I like to know what was the level of effort previously provided. For this reason, I configure the training screen to see the instantaneous track pace, the average pace of the current lap and of the previous lap.