Prepping for a 60k trail race and advice for an activity setup

Former Member over 7 years ago

Just upgraded from a Forerunner 210 to a Fenix 5x. Talk about worlds apart. I bought the watch specifically because I'm doing The Grand Traverse (60k trail race) this September. From what I can figure out the maximum time for the race is 12 or 13 hours. I should be well under that, but you never know.

I really like being able to track all different activities on one device. I have noticed that there about 1001 different ways to configure any given activity. I've done some Googling and really haven't found anything that talk about tracking options on battery life. I get that turning off the 'activity metric' will help from an every day stand point. I'm really focus on getting the most battery for my buck when in an activity.

I'm using my current Trial Run activity as a base line.

Data Screens - The stock ones plus two custom
Alerts - Distance 2.5mi / Time 45min
Metronome - off
Maps - didn't change / use sys setting - yes
Routing - didn't change
Auto Lab - 1mi
Auto Pause - off
Auto Climb - off
3D Speed/Distance - off
Lap Key - off
Auto Scroll - off
Segment Alerts - on - no clue what this does
GPS - Normal
Power Save Timeout - Normal
Background/Accent Color - didn't change

My in activity backlight settings are:

Keys - On
Alerts - On
Gesture - Off
Timeout - 8 seconds
Brightness - 50%

Here goes with the questions .....

Will copying an activity still allow Garmin Connect to track it correctly. For example: if I copy 'Trail Run' to 'Trail Race' will it show up correctly in the Garmin ecosystem?

I don't really train to my heart rate, but its nice to know what it is. I do you the daily heart rate and heart rate during my activities. I was thinking of turning off for the race. How much does turning off the HR really buy you?

I've been putzing with the Courses function and its pretty nice. I can see the elevations profile and progress. This is really nice on hill repeats where I would normally loose count. The ETA is normally pretty close. The turn notification is nice when I'm not 100% with a new route. Overall its pretty darn cool. If I'm already using the GPS tracking, how much of a battery penalty does adding course navigation have?

I'm planning to leave my GPS setting set to Normal for the race because I got a GPS for ... well ... the GPS. I don't think GLONAS would really help that much on a trail race going over high alpine terrain. The manual doesn't explain what UltraTrac is, but I assume its a lower sampling rate and there for less accurate. Does this sound reasonable?

What other settings can I look at that may impact battery life?

0 M.ZIELINSKI over 7 years ago

For measuring how much Battery a setup consumes i iuse : battery Up Down which shows the actual battery and how long it will still last but it also write the battery % to the fit-file for later analysis.
One thing i found which made a big diference is when the map is set to "always north" instead of "in direction". that kinda doubles the battery life also whren the map is not always shown !

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

For measuring how much Battery a setup consumes i iuse : battery Up Down which shows the actual battery and how long it will still last but it also write the battery % to the fit-file for later analysis.
One thing i found which made a big diference is when the map is set to "always north" instead of "in direction". that kinda doubles the battery life also whren the map is not always shown !

Very interesting Data field. While the field itself is very simple, its interesting that it writes dat to a FIT file and Garmin Connect can pick it up. I ended up removing all the IQ data fields that I had. They introduced a lag in bringing up the activities screen and burned more battery life. Those fields were highly complex and displayed multiple different data sets. This field seems to be very simple and has a little backend function. Did you notice any change in battery or lag when running this field?

I wouldn't have thought the map orientation would impact anything when the map is not on the screen. It looks like I can set this option per activity and not impact my global Map setting. I'll have to mess around with it and see if it changes things for me.

Thanks for sharing your experience.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

One last update before The Grand Traverse.

I've settled on firmware 10.52 and I've have had very good luck with it. With a third party watch face and 24hr monitoring I'm averaging about .28% per hour and no GPS use. My last easy city run with the Normal GPS setting averaged 5-7% per hour.

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/2964558332

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

Giving a final update here. My 60k went great and I finished. I didn't have my best day, but the watch worked great. Battery Up Down put my total battery life between 22 and 24 hours. Thankfully I only needed 11:54 :D The race was done with firmware 10.52. Since then I've updated to FW10.55, but haven't done a single work out ..... I'm kind of liking this recovery thing .. haha. From a daily use stand point I'm seeing an average usage of .271% per hour with the GearMin 3rd party watch face and full monitoring.

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/2980877640