Garmin makes some of the best GPS watches around, but there are a few features they're all missing. Smart alarms that wake you during light sleep are one example, along with the ability to track naps during the day.
However, there's another feature that could potentially be even more useful, and save clumsy runners like me a lot of frustration: an 'undo' function that lets you cancel any accidental presses of the lap button.
Maybe I'm exceptionally clumsy, but all too often I'm happily running along with my Garmin Fenix 7, decide I want to check my stats, and without thinking press the watch's back button. This doesn't cancel the run (that's almost impossible to do by accident), but it does record a new lap, which can be nearly as frustrating,
Don't get me wrong, the lap button on your Garmin watch is great, and the ability to record custom laps is extremely handy. As the name suggests, it lets you split your workout into different sections. For example, if you're running circuits of a park, you can hit the button as you complete your first loop and your watch will automatically log each subsequent lap so you can easily analyze your performance later.
Alternatively, if you're breaking your session into periods at different intensity levels, you can hit the lap button between each phase to divide them up.
It's super easy to use, but unfortunately that means it's also really easy to misuse if you're not careful. Hitting it at a random point in your run will mess up your splits when you come to view them in the Garmin Connect app later. One errant slip of the finger means your long run is no longer divided into neat miles, but awkward, random chunks.
Thankfully, it's possible to deactivate the lap button if you're a bit of a butterfingers. To do it, go into the running activity settings, and you should see an option to toggle 'lap key' on or off. It's such a useful tool though, I'm reluctant to take such a drastic measure. After all, I'm so clumsy I might forget to reactivate it, which would be a pain next time I'm lapping a park.
The ability to quickly press the lap button again to undo the last press would be a game-changer for people like me, letting us keep the benefits of the lap button while eliminating the problem of accidental pushes.
Will Garmin implement such a change – perhaps with the launch of the king-sized Garmin Instinct 2X on the horizon? I won't hold my breath, but it certainly seems more straightforward than adding nap tracking or smart wake-up alarms. Instead I'll keep my fingers crossed. If nothing else, it'll make it harder to hit the wrong watch button.
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