SplitStation walks you through a hybrid race the way you actually race it: runs alternating with stations, one screen, one press of START between each. It holds two race formats and you choose one on the start screen before you begin -- press DOWN -- so the watch is running the race you turned up for. MEGA HYATLON H6 is six 1 km runs alternating with six stations: twelve segments, run outdoors. STRONG RACE is ten 500 m runs alternating with ten stations: twenty segments, raced indoors and in pairs. 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. On a station it is the target -- a ski-erg distance, a sled push, a count of burpees or wallballs, calories on an air bike -- because a watch cannot see the erg's display or the sled on the floor. When a measured 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 rep stations that count themselves 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 every split 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 - H6 runs: distance and pace from GPS - H6 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 - Strong Race: nothing is measured and nothing is counted. GPS is wrong under a roof and a race run in pairs cannot be counted from one wrist, so every segment is timed, the target is shown, and you press START when you are done - Every other station, in both formats: 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 -- and for ninety seconds after the line you can still throw it away, because a false start should not have to live in Connect for ever. Press UP on the start screen for a fast demo lap of the whole race. YOUR PLAN The target for every segment is a setting, edited in Garmin Connect Mobile on the phone: your run pace in minutes per kilometre, a target time for each station of both formats, and the H6 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. Which race is loaded is the one setting that is also on the watch, because it is not a number to tune but a fork in the road -- the wrong one selected is the other race's segments on your wrist. It is on the start screen only, where there is nothing to lose, and never during a race. Built for one athlete, but the plan is yours and the segment list lives in one file. SplitStation is an indep

A second race, and you pick it on the watch. SplitStation now holds two formats. Mega Hyatlon H6 is the one it has always run: six 1 km runs alternating with six stations, twelve segments, outdoors. Strong Race is new: ten 500 m runs alternating with ten stations -- lunges, air bike, step over, sit-ups, wallballs, ski-erg, farmer carry, row, dead ball, DB burpee -- twenty segments, indoors and in pairs. Six new animated figures came with it. Choosing between them does not mean going to your phone. Press DOWN on the start screen and the picker opens, with the race that is loaded already under the cursor, so opening it to check which one is in the watch and pressing BACK changes nothing. It writes the same setting your phone writes, so the two never disagree. The picker is on the start screen only -- never during a race. Strong Race measures nothing and counts nothing, and says so: GPS is wrong under a roof and a race run in pairs cannot be counted from one wrist. Every segment is timed, the target is on screen, and START ends it. Also in this release, held back from the last one: You can 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. 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.