Pause and resume

What to expect

A timer tile on the live monitor with a single button on it. Press it to stop the clock, press it again to carry on.

One control, not two. It shows what pressing it will do, so there is no reading a label mid-session and no way to hit stop when you meant pause.

You probably don't need it

ZonePoints already times your training without being told to. Your zone time and your points accrue from what your heart is actually doing, so a break stops counting the moment your rate drops out of a training zone. Nothing to press, and nothing to forget to press.

We still think that is the better way round, because it measures the training you did rather than the wall time you were present for. Ten minutes standing at a water fountain was never scored, whether or not you remembered to pause.

This is for the other thing: controlling the length of the activity rather than the time in zone. If you want a session to be the forty minutes you spent at the gym, minus the interruption, that is a decision only you can make, and until now the app gave you no way to make it.

What pausing actually does

The session keeps going. It does not end and restart, so a break in the middle leaves you with one session in your history rather than two halves you have to read side by side.

While you are paused, the clock stops. That is the part automatic timing cannot do for you: elapsed time is wall time, so without pausing a ten minute break stretches the session it sits in the middle of.

Your heart rate stays on screen throughout. It is worth watching while you stand still, it just isn't scored.

It arrives with the configurable monitor

This one waits on Build your own monitor.

The monitor screen has no room for another control today, and adding a permanent pause button to a screen you are meant to read at arm's length is the wrong trade. Once the monitor is built from tiles you place yourself, a timer tile with its own button costs nothing to anyone who doesn't want it, and sits exactly where you want it if you do.

So a vote for the configurable monitor is also a vote for this.

Why we're building it

Your points are safe either way, but the session's length is not. Leave it running through a break and the session claims minutes you spent queueing for a machine. Stop it and you get two sessions where you did one, and a history you have to read in pairs.

Neither is what happened. You went to get water, or waited for a set to free up, or took the phone call. The training either side of that is one session, of one honest length, and it should be recorded as one.

When it's ready

No date yet, and it follows the configurable monitor. Use Vote for this feature at the top of this page and you'll get one email the day it ships.