Why did my workout go back to the start when I paused?

UPDATE: from asensei version 1.3.0 the 'pause' behaviour has been changed.  Now if you touch the screen during a workout you can choose to do any of the following:

• Pause, and restart the current workout segment from the beginning. So, if you are doing a workout that is 5 intervals rowing for 3 minutes, and you pause in the middle of the 3rd interval, when you choose to resume, you'll go back to the beginning of that 3rd interval.
• Resume your workout by hitting the X in the top right of the screen (or tapping an empty part of the screen).
• Stop your workout completely.

The change in behaviour is that when you choose the pause option asensei now pops up a message to warn you that you will go back to the start of your rowing segment if you continue, and offers you the chance to change your mind and resume the workout from where you left off (by hitting cancel, then X). 

Because of the way asensei works, it is still not possible to pause midway through a workout segment.

FURTHER EXPLANATION

asensei is watching your every stroke, and analyzing your performance in context.

For instance, if you're being asked to perform a 1000m piece, asensei will be tracking your time for the piece. In your next workout, you may be asked to perform 4 x 500m piece (row 4 times at 500m) and the spilt time targets that asensei will set you for each 500m piece could be calculated from that previous 1000m piece. So -- if in the middle of that 1000m piece you hit pause, went and grabbed a drink of water, came back fresh, and then knocked out what seems like a world record time for your age group, then the targets asensei sets you going forward are going to be frustrating and unachievable for you.

It's much more nuanced than that however; asensei is able to ask questions like "the last time we did a 500m sprint for time, how well did the athlete hold a consistent stroke rate" or "when we did two 1000m pieces at 2k race pace, how well did the athlete maintain power in the stroke on the second 1000m ?".

All of these queries about your performance allow asensei to push you to your potential - finding the right balance of challenge and skill (which is one of the conditions we create to increase your chances of finding a flow state in practice).

We don't approach the asensei experience as "what would happen if you were watching a video and hit pause", but instead approach the experience as "what would happen if you were in a private training session with a coach".

But continuous improvement is in our DNA, so here's how we're thinking about this.

IN THE FUTURE

• We will better track where you paused/resumed as well as for how long, and use this to decide whether we should discard any observations we made during this piece.
• We will offer you a skip functionality so you can skip past a part of the workout that you've previously performed.

We welcome other suggestions as to how we can best implement a pause behavior.