Apologies in advance for the long post, but I'm having an annoying frustration that I need to ask your advice about!!
I'm a very happy owner of an Epix Pro (Gen 2) Sapphire 51mm. Well, happy except for one rather annoying issue I'm having: whenever I've tried to use the watch to run a course that I've either created or uploaded from a .gpx file, there have been problems...
The first time I ran a course, I manually created a circuitous route with 2 points on the route: a Start position (my home) and a Stop position (also my home). The watch's Routing option was set to 'Use Map' and so if I strayed off the route, I wanted the watch to recalculate the route ahead and get me back on track. So, I set off from the Start position (home) and immediately hit the first issue - the watch appeared to lock up and spent the first 5+ minutes of the run with 'Calculating' on the screen. Now, I'd manually drawn the route myself previously, so I knew the route that I was intending to run, but the lock-up meant that I was unable to use the watch at all - time, distance, pace, route, etc. - until it had finished 'Calculating'. I'm not even sure why or what it was 'Calculating - I'd already told it the route I wanted to follow, so it's not like there was anything to calculate and certainly not so early in the run or before I'd deviated from the course! 10 minutes into the run, and with the watch now displaying data again, one part of the planned route was inaccessible, and so I detoured myself around it - only for the watch to recalculate the route to head straight home 10 minutes into an anticipated 1 hour run. I believe now that this is because I had chosen 'Use Map' option under Routing and it was recalculating the route to the next waypoint on the map - which was the only other waypoint on the map, the final 'Stop' position at home! So I then spent the next 10 mins of the run with the watch repeatedly recalculating to get me home (i.e. the next/last waypoint), before I eventually cancelled the activity and just enjoyed the run.
Anticipating this behaviour the next time I used the 'Use Map' routing option, I then added more waypoints to the next route, so that if I went off course, the watch would at least recalculate to the next waypoint on the map - hopefully, not too far ahead! - and not just redirect me to the end point on the course. However, this time the watch spent approx 10 minutes on the 'Calculating' screen, before then rebooting itself and losing all of the activity I'd logged during the reboot. Needless to say, I didn't try to restart the course again in case of a further lock-up and just cancelled the recording (again!).
Armed now with these experiences, I then downloaded a .gpx file that someone else had provided for a half marathon event that I was entering. I preloaded it to the watch ahead of the event, made sure I had a locked 'green' GPS signal - several minutes before starting the race - and then, as the race began, hit 'Start'. The watch immediately went into the 'Calculating' screen again and - with this being a race - I couldn't afford to have the watch lock-up, reboot, or lose my stats. So I immediately stopped running, managed to break out of the 'Calculating' screen this time, and then just recorded the remaining distance as a normal run - not using the .gpx course that I'd downloaded and therefore relying purely on marshalls and signs to navigate the course.
So, all of my experiences with using the watch to navigate a course loaded onto the watch have been really disappointing. For a watch that is apparently Garmin's flagship model and that cost me 1000 GBP, I feel really dismayed by this feature that I was hoping to use frequently. Maybe it's user error and I'm doing something wrong (please tell me!), or maybe it's my expectations of what I'm hoping the watch to achieve, but so far, it's frankly been unusable for navigating a course whilst running. And it's proving completely unreliable to use a pre-loaded course when doing an race event, as I'm really reluctant to risk the watch either freezing on the 'Calculating' screen or - worse still - rebooting and losing all of my stats for the race.
I was really hoping this feature would allow me to load up a course to the watch and then navigate the route using the watch almost as a wearable sat-nav, alerting me when to turn left or right and correcting any deviations from the route accordingly. Especially as I'm now doing more events where a .gpx file is available upfront from the organisers and so I'd like to know how far ahead to the next turn, which direction to take, etc.
Am I expecting too much for a £1000 flagship model to be able to do this? Should one of their newest and best-specced models - I assume with one of Garmin's latest-and-greatest CPUs built into it? - be locking up or 'Calculating' for the first 5 minutes of a pre-loaded route when you start the timer...?! I mean, if you have a course where there are several turns to make in the first kilometre, for example, and the watch is stuck 'Calculating' for 5 minutes, how are you supposed to know where to go...? And what about other less-expensive models in the Garmin range that have this feature - if the top-of-the-range Epix Pro Gen2 can't cope, then what is the performance or experience like on the older and/or less expensive models?
Thanks in advance for any advice, all!
