SplitStation walks you through a Mega Hyatlon H6 the way you actually race it: six 1 km runs alternating with six stations, twelve segments, one press of START between each. The screen shows one number, big enough to read at full heart rate, and it changes meaning with the segment. On a run that number is the metres left, counted by GPS. On a station it is the target -- 1000 m ski-erg, 50 m sled push, 80 burpee box jumps, 1000 m row, 100 m lunges, 100 wallballs -- because a watch cannot see the erg's display or the sled on the floor. When a run goes long the number turns red and counts the metres over. There are no pages while you race and no labels. Six values are on that one screen at once -- heart rate, metres or reps left, split, total, lap pace and three-second pace -- and what each one is is said by a glyph and a colour instead of by a word, which is what bought the numbers the room to be big. UP and DOWN are +1 and -1 on the two rep stations and do nothing anywhere else, so there is no page to lose at 175 bpm. Two rings, and they say different things on purpose. The outer ring is the segment's progress. The inner ring is the target split time: solid when the distance is measured, dashed when the watch is only estimating, so you always know which of the two you are looking at. Every station draws its own exercise. Not a clipart icon -- an animated figure doing that movement, so a glance tells you where you are without reading. At the finish, press DOWN to walk through the race. Total time, calories and average heart rate; then all twelve splits at once, each coloured green or red against its target; then the totals -- time spent running against time spent at the stations, how the whole race came in against the plan, your fastest and slowest kilometre and how much you faded; then one page per segment with its split, its target, the race clock when it ended, its average and peak heart rate, and its rep count. BACK returns to the top from anywhere. WHAT IT MEASURES - Runs: distance and pace from GPS - Wallballs and burpee box jump-overs: reps counted from the wrist accelerometer. The count is a helper and not a judge -- UP and DOWN correct it mid-station, and the screen says BY HAND whenever the sensor is not the one counting - Other stations: target shown, split timed; you press START when you are done Records a normal FIT activity, saved to Garmin Connect on a single explicit press at the end. Press UP on the start screen for a fast demo lap of all twelve segments. YOUR PLAN The target for every segment is a setting, edited in Garmin Connect Mobile on the phone: your run pace in seconds per kilometre, a target time for each of the six stations, and the two rep counts. Those numbers are what the inner ring paces against and what the finish screen judges you by, so put your own splits in before race day. There is no settings menu on the watch, on purpose -- a menu you can open by accident mid-race is a way to lose one. Built for one athlete and one race, but the plan is yours and the segment list lives in one file. SplitStation is an independent app. It is not made by, endorsed by or affiliated with the organisers of Mega Hyatlon; it follows the H6 running order, which is all it claims to do.

You can now throw a race away after you have finished it. Crossing the line stops the recording and holds the activity for ninety seconds before writing it. For that minute and a half the finish screen counts down instead of saying SAVED: START keeps the race, holding UP offers DISCARD. After ninety seconds it saves itself, so a race still cannot be lost by walking away from the watch -- but a false start, a test lap or a day that went wrong no longer has to live in Garmin Connect for ever. The run target is now picked in minutes per kilometre. It used to ask for seconds, so a 4:15 plan had to be typed as 255. Two ways of getting stuck on the finish screen are gone. A watch that could not open a recording used to refuse to let you leave, protecting a file that did not exist; and a save that failed had no way out at all. Both let you out now, the second one through the same menu, as RETRY or DISCARD.