I was doing speed repeats and stopped my Garmin watch repeatedly when resting. My moving time was close to my 5K PB, but this wouldn’t have been possible on one continuous run and consequently my Strava activity looks deceiving as the elapsed time was a few minutes longer. Is this acceptable or should I delete the activity?
Personally, if I’m doing intervals, I don’t stop my watch in between. Mostly this is so my Garmin-recorded PB doesn’t automatically update. I don’t want it telling me I beat my 5k PB because I did 12×400 m in 90 sec, ignoring the 60 sec rest between each.
But it’s also so the overall activity pace doesn’t look deceptively fast to friends on Strava. And it’s also so that I can use the “lap time” of my rest “lap” (I hit the lap button manually, when doing intervals, rather than using the automatic 1 km laps) to time how long my rest should be.
Delete the activity already recorded? No, I wouldn’t. If you’ve broken any PBs, I’d go in and manually revert those, and maybe add a description to the activity explaining that it was intervals.
I do pause my watch, without shame, on my longer runs, when I’m stopping for water, or to cross the road at lights.