I recently started playing around with planning courses in advance, loading them into the watch, and then using them to navigate new trail networks via mountain bike. Overall it's decent, but there are a few annoying things I've run into. I'm not sure if these are mistakes on my part or shortcomings of the watch. I'm hoping for the former, and advice to make it better.
I'm using BaseCamp to create and upload the courses. The first question I have is whether I should be using Routes or Tracks. So far I have been using Tracks, because I want to follow a specific, pre-determined path, and it seemed like this was the correct option.
I generally create my courses through a combination of existing trails on the map (I'm using Open Street Maps as the base) and uploaded GPX files taken from Strava. For existing trails, I create Routes because it's easy to click the start and end of the trail and have it fill in the rest. The GPX files come in as tracks, and I usually chop these up, removing the portions I don't want. I then convert any Routes to Tracks (with a fairly high point count), join them together, and upload the full track to the watch.
This seems to work pretty well, but is it the best way to do it?
When actually following a course, the watch seems to get confused on portions where multiple parts of the track overlap (like a main corridor that I may have to ride back and forth through several times to get to other trails). I get alternating "off-course"/"on-course" notifications, and the DTE mileage can jump around quite a bit. USUALLY once I get onto a single-pass trail it sorts itself out, but I had one instance where I decided to ride a loop in the opposite direction than the planned course, and everything after that was a mess. Is there any way to lessen this issue?
Related to the loop problem above, is there any way to have directional indicators show up on the planned track like they do in BaseCamp? Getting to a loop and having no idea which way you're supposed to ride it is super annoying. I'm not sure if there's a solution for the 5x, but the same question is already asked for the 5+ series here without resolution:
https://forums.garmin.com/outdoor-recreation/outdoor-recreation/f/fenix-5-plus-series/157544/how-to-show-direction-of-course-on-map-screen-during-activity
I checked, and I have the latest firmware on the watch already.
Thanks!