Two buttons do almost everything
The button you need is the top-right one, the one your watch starts and stops an activity with, and the button below it. Different Garmin watches print different words next to them. Some say START, some say nothing at all. So this manual points at where they are rather than what yours calls them. The positions are the same on all of them.
Open the app
PB-Runner is in the same list your watch keeps its activities in. Open it and it checks for today’s session. If there is one it shows its name and how many steps it has. If your phone is not in range it offers whatever it loaded earlier in the day, which plays without a phone.
Press START
The session loads and the watch waits on a screen that says Press START to begin. The line under it tells you whether GPS has a fix yet. It is there to tell you, not to hold you up: START behaves the same either way. Press it again and the run begins.
The three screens
While you run, UP and DOWN move between three screens, and they wrap round, so either direction reaches any of them. On a touchscreen watch, swipe. STEP is the one you want mid-rep: the step you are on, how much is left of it, your target if the session sets one, and your pace and heart rate side by side. DATA is the whole run: elapsed time, distance, average pace and average heart rate. SESSION is where you are in the workout, which step of how many, and what comes next.
What the buzzes mean
One buzz at every step change, with three short taps counting down the last three seconds of a timed step. Two long buzzes when you start the last hard rep, one long one when the cool-down begins, and two again when the plan is over. If a step sets a pace target the watch buzzes when you drift off it, a low tone if you are slow and a high one if you are fast. A heart-rate target is shown on the screen and is never cued. Nothing buzzes while the run is paused, and a cue whose moment passes while you are stopped is dropped rather than saved up.
Ending the run
When the last step ends the watch buzzes twice and the heading changes to DONE. It keeps recording. That is deliberate, so a warm-down or a walk home is part of the same run, and it is how Garmin’s own workouts behave.
- Press the top-right button. The run pauses.
- Press the button below it. The watch asks End run & save.
- Choose Confirm.
The order matters. During a run that button is your lap key, so it only offers to end the run after you have paused it yourself. If the watch paused itself at a junction, pressing it marks a lap instead.
Getting the run back to PB-Runner
The watch sends the run the moment you stop, if your phone is nearby. If it was not, nothing is lost: the run is on the watch and the app says so.
- Open PB-Runner on the watch again with your phone nearby. It sends anything waiting every time it opens, and this is the step that actually brings the run across.
- Garmin Connect has to be running on your phone, because your watch reaches us through it. If the run is still missing, or it is taking a while, open Garmin Connect and hit Sync with the phone next to the watch, then open PB-Runner on the watch again.
- Still waiting? On the PB-Runner home screen, hold UP on a Forerunner or a fenix, or hold the lower button on a Venu or a vivoactive. If a run is still queued there is a Sync row with a count on it. Press that.
The app only sends while it is open, so waking the watch or opening something else does nothing on its own.
Your run in Garmin Connect and Strava
The run is a normal Garmin activity as well, so it syncs to Garmin Connect the way every run on that watch does, and on to Strava if you have them linked. It carries the session’s name and a lap at every step. That happens on Garmin's own schedule, so the run can reach Garmin Connect and PB-Runner at different times.
Why the map can stop early
The watch stores its second-by-second data in blocks as it goes, and the part-filled block at the moment you stop is not kept. So the last few minutes of a run can arrive without a trace or heart rate, the map ends a little short and the final split reads as limited. Your distance, time, splits and reps are exact, because those come from the finish itself. It is not a failed sync and there is nothing to retry.
When something is wrong
- Not linked: the watch has no code yet. Generate one in Settings, then Garmin, and enter it in the Connect IQ app under this watch, then My Watch Apps, then PB-Runner, then Settings.
- Nothing planned, or Rest day: there is no session for today. Anything your AI schedules shows up the next time you open the app.
- Link rejected: the code was used, or expired, or belongs to another watch. Generate a fresh one and save it again.
- No connection, or Phone not connected: the watch could not reach us. START still plays a session loaded earlier in the day.
- Nothing recorded: the run was stopped before it had any running time in it, so nothing was kept.
- GPS: acquiring: the watch has not got a fix yet. It is a note, not a gate. START starts the run either way, and outdoors the fix usually lands in the first minute.
- If support asks: the same menu as Sync has an Events row, which lists what the watch recorded on its last runs. A line reading seg.lowmem means it ran short of memory during a run and some of the second-by-second data was not kept.
Not connected yet? The setup guide walks you through installing the app and pairing your watch.
Anything else is on the support page.