Settings

Lap Delta Pro and Lap Delta Pro Edge support settings so that you can customize the behavior. These are available through the settings page of the ConnectIQ app or using Garmin Express on your computer. After they are changed they will be transferred to the device on the next sync.

Max Lap Time
The maximum lap time can be selected from 10 minutes up to 24 hours. Larger values require more device memory. Additionally, there is an auto setting that will select the lap time according to the available memory and other settings. If there is insufficient memory for the selected max lap time, the auto setting will be automatically used. If there is still not enough memory, the data field will display “Out of memory”.

Devices with 64KB memory per data field are quite limited in capability, though these devices are rare. Most devices support 128KB and will only be constrained with particular settings that multiply up the memory usage (such as Delta Mode and Multi-lap Mode).

Recommendation: the 1 hour setting should cover most use cases with reasonable memory usage. The “auto” setting can also be used, particularly when using features that multiply up the memory usage.

Data Size
The data size can be selected between 16 bits (default) and 32 bits. This is the amount of memory used to store each distance or energy sample, and there is a 2x memory cost for using the 32-bit setting.

The 32-bit setting has better data precision and essentially unlimited range for distance and energy values.

The 16-bit setting limits the per-lap distance to 65.5 km or 40.9 miles, and the per-lap energy to 6.5 MJ (this is equivalent to 6 hours at 300W!). These are still very generous limits for normal lap times. However, if they are exceeded a message will be displayed, and you should switch to 32-bit data for future activities (this would be very rare). The 16-bit setting does have a trade-off in the precision of distance and energy values.

Recommendation: use the 16-bit setting if memory constrained, or 32-bit setting for better data precision if memory is not a concern.

Reference Lap
The reference lap for the delta comparison can be selected from the first lap, the worst lap (slowest), the best lap (fastest) or the last lap (most recent).

Recommendation: this entirely depends on your use case. Use “first” if you are going to set a first reference lap, and then then try to maintain or beat that for following laps. “Worst” sets the lowest bar as a reference, which may help for negative split pacing. “Best” sets the highest bar as the reference, and is perfect for chasing PRs. “Last” is the default mode and compares against your last lap encouraging you to improve each time. However, note that setting a really fast lap (e.g. due to a double-push on the lap button) can set a spurious reference lap that is not useful for comparison – when using “best”, you will need to start over to clear that “best” lap.

Delta Mode
In typical use cases, time and distance are tracked. The delta can then be presented as a time or distance delta. Negative time is faster and positive time is slower. Positive distance is faster (more distance covered in the time) and negative distance is slower (less distance covered).

In more advanced use cases, energy can be tracked in addition to time and distance, and this doubles the memory storage requirement. Energy also requires power data, so this feature is cycling specific. Energy (in Joules or Kilojoules) is simply the accumulation of Power (in Watts) over time. For example, 1 hour at 200W requires an energy of 200W x 3600s which is 720,000 Joules or 720 KJ. For reference, 1KJ is approximately the same as 1 “calorie”. Energy expenditure increases over time, and Lap Delta Pro can calculate the energy delta between laps, or use energy as the normalizing metric when comparing time or distance between laps. Less energy expenditure (for a given time or distance) is considered better and more energy worse to encourage more efficient energy usage.

The prefix “iso-” is used as a short-hand for “at equal” or “at the same”. For example, “time iso-distance” means the time delta between the current lap and the reference lap measured at the same relative distance into the lap. The 6 supported modes are:

• Time (iso-distance): the time delta measured at the same relative distance.
• Distance (iso-time): the distance delta measured at the same relative time.
• Energy (iso-distance): the energy delta measured at the same relative distance.
• Energy (iso-time): the energy delta measured at the same relative time.
• Time (iso-energy): the time delta measured at the same relative energy.
• Distance (iso-energy): the distance delta measured at the same relative energy.

Recommendation: if this sounds too complicated, simply use “Time (iso-distance)” to get the time delta – this is the default. If you would rather have the delta presented in units of distance use “Distance (iso-time)”. The energy options are more esoteric and typically of interest if you are trying to optimize energy (power) efficiency in specific time-trial, race or endurance use cases.

Multi-lap Mode
Multi-lap mode is disabled by choosing the “single lap” option. Single lap means that the current lap will be compared against a reference lap as previously described.

Multi-lap mode is an advanced feature that is enabled by choosing the 2, 3 or 4 multi-lap option. This sets the number of consecutive reference mini-laps that will be recorded, and the number of subsequent consecutive mini-laps that will be compared against their corresponding reference. This is useful when a particular activity or circuit consists of a number of dissimilar sectors and the intent is to treat those sectors separately for the lap delta analysis.

For example, consider a circuit that consists of a flat sector, a climb, a rolling sector and a descent before repeating. This can be considered as a multi-lap consisting of 4 mini-laps which we will label 1/4, 2/4, 3/4 and 4/4. The multi-lap with 4 mini-laps option is selected, and a lap is triggered at the start of each of the 4 mini-laps. When used in this manner, a repeat of the flat sector is compared against the previous flat sector, a repeat of the climb against the previous climb, a repeat of the rollers against the previous rollers, and a repeat of the descent against the previous descent. The specific reference mini-laps are chosen according to the Reference setting (i.e. first, worst, best or last). This process is repeated for subsequent multi-laps by rotating through the 4 mini-laps over and over.

Multi-lap mode shows a mini-lap counter in the data field label to keep track of the mini-lap within the multi-lap (such as 1/4 or 3/4). It is critical to have exactly the right number of mini-lap triggers per multi-lap otherwise delta comparisons will be made between unrelated mini-laps. Some care is needed to execute this mode correctly. Ideally, you should enable positional lap triggers for the mini-laps, typically accomplished by pushing the lap button at the start of each mini-lap on the first time of passing. Multi-lap increases memory requirements by recording data for multiple reference mini-laps, but usually the mini-laps are shorter and the maximum lap time can be decreased.

This feature also works with other lap selection modes like “Start At Lap Number” and “Lap Filter” (see below).

Recommendation: use single lap unless you have an advanced use case that requires multi-lap.

Start At Lap Number
The starting lap number can be chosen so that the initial lap or laps can be ignored for Lap Delta comparison purposes. For example, this allows for a warm-up period, or for heading out to the start point. The data field will display “–” for ignored laps.

Recommendation: this depends on the use case. If the activity starts at the first lap use the default value of 1. If you have a warm-up then use 2 and trigger a lap at the start.

Lap Filter
Lap filtering can be selected between continuous and alternate mode. In continuous mode every lap is compared against the reference lap. In alternate mode, every other lap is completely ignored and an animated sequences of dashes is displayed instead to indicate that no data is being processed. This supports use cases such as on/off intervals and laps that are not in a circuit. For example, this is ideal for measuring performance on a hill climb or descent, and then skipping the next lap when you are heading back to the starting point for another repeat.

When alternate mode is used with multi-lap, the same on/off approach is used between the mini-laps. So, for a multi-lap with 4 mini-laps, the sequence is timed 1/4, skip, timed 2/4, skip, timed 3/4, skip, timed 4/4, skip, and repeat. This matches an Enduro racing format, for example, where different timed segments are separated with untimed segments.

Recommendation: use continuous when doing back-to-back laps, use alternate when alternating between timed laps and non-timed laps.

Ignore Laps Shorter Than … (seconds)
Laps can sometimes be triggered by mistake (e.g. a double button push). Short laps less than a specified duration (in seconds) can be ignored through this setting. Specifically, the most recent lap trigger is ignored and the previous lap is extended as if that second trigger never happened. A lap is ignored if it is shorter than than the value of this setting (which is in the range of 0 to 30 seconds). If set to 0 then the feature is disabled. The default is 10 seconds.

Recommendation: use the default value.

Enable Sub-second
If sub-second is enabled, the lap delta timing precision is 0.1 seconds otherwise it is 1 second. The rationale for sub-second is not simply to record your lap-time with 0.1 second precision. Even for human-powered activities like running and cycling, performance gains are often achieved in tenths of a second at a time, and it is the accumulation of all these tenths throughout an activity that leads to meaningful improvements. Tenths of a second occur due to variations in pace, braking, cornering, line choices, carrying speed over terrain or aerodynamic effects such as body positioning. Use of the sub-second mode reveals these phenomena to you in real-time and encourages incremental improvements in technique leading to better overall efficiency and improvements in lap times of many seconds.

Recommendation: always enable unless the 0.1 second display is distracting to you.

Color Options
There are color options to select between:
• Monochrome: this is black text on white background (light mode) and white text on black background (dark mode).
• Monochrome flip (default): when faster this is the same as monochrome, but when slower the text and background colors are flipped to give an easy-to-read indication that you are behind the reference lap.
• Red/green text: green is faster, while red is slower.
• Red/green background: green is faster, while red is slower.

Note that color may be more difficult to read on some devices depending on screen type, brightness and lighting conditions.

Recommendation: monochrome flip.

Behavior On Pause
There are 3 available for options for the behavior of Lap Delta Pro when pause/resume are used:
• Pause (default): this simply pauses the data field until resume is pressed.
• Reset: this resets the data field. When the activity is resumed, data tracking will restart as if this was the beginning of the activity. This can be used to start over using a new lap reference.
• Finish: this indicates that your use of Lap Delta Pro is finished for this activity. Even if you resume, Lap Delta Pro will not track any more data and will not display a delta metric. It is not necessary to do this in normal use. The main reason to use this is to prevent subsequent delta data from being written out into the activity file. For example, if you are done with lap comparisons and simply completing your activity (cool-down or heading home) there’s no reason to compare that data with reference lap data.

Recommendation: use pause (default) unless you have a reason to choose one of the other behaviors.

Write To Activity File
There are 3 available options:
• Disabled: do not write Lap Delta Pro data to the activity FIT file.
• Time/Distance Data (default): write time and distance data to the activity FIT file.
• Time/Distance/Energy Data: write time, distance and energy data to the activity FIT file. Note that energy recording will consume more device memory and requires power data to be available.

The Lap Delta Pro data recorded in activity FIT files can be viewed as charts in Garmin Connect. There are charts for the current lap number, the corresponding reference lap number, the time delta and the distance delta. These charts use time as the x-axis, but this can be toggled to distance if preferred in the ConnectIQ app. If energy data is enabled there will be 4 additional charts for energy data corresponding to the energy-related Delta Modes described earlier.

Recommendation: generally enable as “Time/Distance Data” if this recorded information is of interest to you. However, the number of additional data metrics that can be added to the activity FIT file is limited by Garmin and this limit is shared across all ConnectIQ data fields that are currently running on the device. There is no way to check this limit and we have no way to control what other ConnectIQ data fields you may be using. If the limit is exceeded the Lap Delta Pro data field will fail immediately with a generic ConnectIQ crash icon. If this occurs, either disable this feature or remove the competing ConnectIQ data field(s) to stay within the Garmin-imposed limit. We wish there was a better way to deal with this potential problem in the ConnectIQ system.