I upgraded from a Vivoactive 5 to a Fenix 8 two months ago to reward myself for making significant progress on reclaiming my health and fitness. At the time, I was just doing casual walks at whatever pace I felt like day by day, but after dropping 70lbs (halfway to my goal!) and regaining a lot of stamina and energy I found myself wanting to kick things up a notch. I grabbed the Fenix thinking I’d start running, but having ran 3 10ks/wk a decade ago and remembering how even after a year of doing that I never found any joy in it, I realized that I was enjoying walking WAY more and instead decided to start trying to maximize my walking performance. To that end, I’ve been working on learning speed walking, and as a step toward that I programmed an interval training workout to work on cadence and increase the intensity of my walks.

This interval workout has worked pretty well for me so far, but this left me curious — what other features might I be missing in the Fenix that could help me analyze and improve my walking performance? I’m very new to Garmin watches, so I’m guessing there could be either basic or advanced features that I’ve missed that could help me out. I’ll also be getting an HRM 600 soon, so I’m open to suggestions on how that could also be used to help me maximize my walking performance beyond tracking a more accurate heart rate.

As a side note, I’m fully aware that the Fenix is *way* overkill for my goals right now, but I like knowing I could use it for all different kinds of activities in the future if walking ever becomes stale or not enough for me.

Thanks in advance for your help!