Help with my first ultramarathon

Morning to all,

I have been using in the past the CourseTCX2FIT app with my F3, created by McBadger, now I use a F5 and in about two weeks I am doing my first ultramarathon (100k).

I would like to ask if any you have any idea how can I introduce in the track (or course) that I will place on my watch, the check points of the ultra, and, very importantly, the watch to show me how long till the next one during the run. I have the check points GPS coordinates and I can place them on the map (Basecamp or any other app).

Many thanks,
Meste

0 mcbadger over 7 years ago

There are two basic navigation options, which Garmin at one stage called courses and routes. (And now they're both courses, even though they work quite differently). You can only use one at a time.

Courses are what you're familiar with, where you have a line on the map screen showing you exactly where to go. If you have this information for your ultra, then you could put it into one of the online course planners and add coursepoints for each check point. If those are the only coursepoints along the way (so you will have no turn warnings), then the watch can show you the distance along the route to the next check point.

Routes are a set of waypoints. You should be able to add waypoints from Basecamp and they'll show up in your saved locations on the watch. Once they're all in, on the watch you can create a new course Start>Navigate>Courses>Create New then select the waypoints from your Saved Locations in turn.

When you use this, you can see the crow-flies distance to the next waypoint, but not the distance along the path you'll actually follow, because the watch has no way to know that.

Either way, you'll want Next Waypoint and Distance to Next displayed in your navigation fields.

A warning - I've seen comments in the Fenix 5/s/x forums saying that Distance to Next freezes if you go too far away from the crow-flies path between one waypoint and the next. I have not tried this myself. I'm sure you've thought of this, but it's essential for you to test out whichever method you pick before the ultra itself.