Triathlon events / workouts on the Fenix 5

Hi,

I'm about to do my first sprint triathlon and will be using a Fenix 5 to record it, so I've been playing around with the pre-configured triathlon workout that comes with the watch. Two things I've noticed though are that:

(a) you can't lock the screen during the transitions, and it doesn't automatically lock after 5 seconds unlike during the each section. I'm not planning on busting my balls in this race so won't be through T1 and T2 before the watch has a chance to lock but I imagine that there is a bit of a risk that pulling off the wetsuit could accidently knock it into the bike section too early, and likewise after the bike.

and, (b) you can't specify the distances, ie the swim leg is 750m's and it will be done in a pool. I'm not sure if the watch will assume it's an open water swim, and hence try and record distance via GPS, in which case I imagine it will fail miserably.

I've noticed that you can't create your own custom tri workout, unless you create three different ones (one for swim, one for bike, etc)

Does anyone use the preconfigured triathlon workout or have any guidance on this?

cheers
MB

0 Ocean5 over 6 years ago

Hi MB,

a) just tried Tri app on my watch and I see no problems locking buttons on any screen including in transition by holding power button and selecting "Lock Keys",
b) just create your own multisport profile with Pool Swim - Bike - Run. If concerned about distance in the Pool just put the Alert for distance.
Here is some help - https://www8.garmin.com/manuals/webhelp/fenix5/EN-US/GUID-89CDBACD-34A6-40E4-BE62-50BE269E9A64.html

Cheers

0 MB-Deus over 6 years ago

Thanks Den - that's helpful, still not ideal though

a) I know you can manually lock them but I don't really want to be faffing around with functions on the watch during the race - I appreciate its pretty minor but it's just another distraction that you don't need in a race. The keys lock automatically on the swim, run, bike legs just not on the Transitions.
b) That's useful but I can see you still can't set the distance for any of the legs.

I'm keen to hear how others record their triathlons. I would imagine over a full ironman distance, the recorded (Garmin) distance could end up varying reasonably from the official distance, based on my experience of the GPS accuracy.

0 workshybum over 6 years ago

Does the Hotkey feature to lock screen not work in this instance? I’ve never used triathlon mode but it works for me during open swim (and pool swim) activities. Not ideal I know, but minimal faffing around - just a quick button press (hold) and it’s done.