Does the rest period in an interval set count as moving time?

The short answer

In TrailCam, a rest period counts as moving time, in full. Moving time only ever subtracts a stretch that was explicitly paused, and starting a rest inside an interval set is not the same action as pausing the recording — the route keeps recording through the rest exactly the way it does through the sprint. Nothing about labeling a stretch "rest" tells the app to stop counting it.

What actually decides whether a stretch gets subtracted

A stop only leaves moving time through one of two mechanisms: an app watching your GPS speed and deciding on its own that anything below some threshold counts as stationary, or you tapping pause yourself. Those are the only two doors. An interval set does not open a third one. Calling a stretch "rest" is a label for the person doing the workout — it does not send any instruction to the recording layer underneath, which has no idea an interval set is even running unless a pause was actually pressed.

That means the question is not really about intervals at all. It is the same question as whether any slow or stationary stretch of a hike gets subtracted, and the answer is the same: only if something paused the recording, and a scheduled rest inside a workout is not a pause.

Why a rest is not the same thing as a pause

Pausing is a deliberate signal that the activity itself has stopped for a while — you have sat down for lunch, you are tying a shoe, you are waiting at a road crossing. A rest period inside an interval set is a different thing entirely: the activity is still going. You are still outside, still moving or standing with intent, still partway through a session you plan to finish. The recording has no reason to treat that any differently than it treats the sprint that comes right after it — both are part of the same continuous activity, just at different speeds.

Where a different app could land on a different answer

• An app that auto-detects stops by watching GPS speed could classify a slow, standing rest as a stop if it drops below that app's threshold, subtracting real time from moving time without you asking it to.
• The same app could just as easily fail to catch a rest spent walking slowly rather than standing still, if the pace stays above the threshold — the same inconsistency that shows up around any auto-detected stop, interval or not.
• An app that relies on a manual pause, the way TrailCam does, will never subtract a rest period unless you actually press pause during it, regardless of how slowly you moved or how long the rest ran.

None of this is specific to interval training. It is the ordinary auto-detection-versus-manual-pause split that decides any stop on any hike, showing up again inside a workout that happens to contain a lot of slow stretches in a row.

Why this matters for pace

Because a rest period stays inside moving time, it also stays inside any pace figure worked out across the whole session. A set built from short, fast sprints and slower rests will show an average pace somewhere between the two, pulled down by however much of the total time was spent resting. That is not an error to correct — it is an honest description of how the time was actually spent. A pace that ignored the rest entirely would describe a workout that did not happen, one made only of sprinting with the recovery edited out.

Things that trip people up

• Expecting a rest period to disappear from the finished session's duration the way a lunch stop does — it only disappears if it was paused, and a scheduled rest inside a workout usually is not.
• Assuming the word "rest" itself changes what gets recorded — it is a cue spoken aloud for the person doing the workout, not an instruction that reaches the recording underneath.
• Reading a slower overall pace after an interval session as something gone wrong — it reflects the rest periods being counted honestly alongside the sprints, not a tracking mistake.
• Confusing this with why a single rest period's own pace reading looks unstable — that is a separate, GPS-noise problem, not a question of whether the time itself is being counted.

Where TrailCam fits in

TrailCam can run interval sets with spoken cues — set a sprint and a rest, and it calls each one out aloud so the phone can stay in your pocket. The GPS track keeps recording the same way through every sprint and every rest, with no automatic stop-detection guessing at your speed. The only thing that ever removes a stretch from moving time is tapping pause yourself, so a rest period is treated exactly like the rest of the route: recorded in full, and counted in full. TrailCam is free to download.