UP AHEAD BUG: Fenix 7X complains about exceeding 200 course points but I've added only 10 course points to a course!

The turn by turn points that are invisible count against the limit. It’s basically impossible to have an ultra distance trail course with turn by turn. What happens is that after the 100th turn indicator it stops telling you turn left and right. At that point you just get off course notifications but the breadcrumb track on the map screen always works.  

I agree that it is a bizarre limit like the 2 CIQ data field limit that shouldn’t exist. The reality is that it is almost never a problem on a road course but it is a problem on long trail or even not so long ones that have a lot of technical weaving about.

I tend to use courses (actually “tracks” in the GPX lingo) that have no turn by turn points at all for trail so that I don’t get used to them existing for a while. 

The other option is to create shorter courses that are within the limit on turn by turn points that you load sequentially during the event. You can load a course without interrupting the activity recording. I think this is too fiddley in the context of a race for me. 

I'm on the same boat.

I'll run a 50 miler in October and I've got the same issue as you.

I'd be ok if the up ahead would still be shown even though the course points are surpassed but I doubt it is the case.

I think if one of the "custom course points" are after those first 200, those won't be accounted for.

For now, I'm thinking on splitting the course like brian.reiter mentioned.

Good luck on your race!

brian.reiter said:

The turn by turn points that are invisible count against the limit. It’s basically impossible to have an ultra distance trail course with turn by turn.

Yes, I know about that. The reason I bring that up is that now UP AHEAD feature is also broken because of that. As I mentioned above, I could care less about turn-by-turn directions in an organized race, but UP AHEAD is a very helpful feature that I need and want to use very much.

There is one workaround that I used before and that seems to work now with Fenix 7X. Basically, the course should be created in PlotARoute.com, which supports adding course points and saving a course as a FIT file. Then the FIT file needs to be copied directly to NewFiles folder on the watch via USB cable. That allows skipping generation of all the turn-by-turn course points. With that UP AHEAD feature should work correctly. The only downsides of that approach is that the process of transferring a course to the watch is more complicated and all the new recently introduced types of course points (e.g. Aid Station) are not supported. Instead the watch displays them as generic waypoints. I've just tried loading a course created that way and here is how it looks - note that distances are parts of the course point names, but it should display the actual remaining distances during the activity:

The other downside is PlotARoute requires a paid subscription to unlock many of its more powerful features. The free version has a limitation of 2500 trackpoints, which isn't quite sufficient for anything longer than about 25-30 miles on trails. Because of that the course has to be simplified before saving. Basically, because Garmin hasn't bothered to make UP AHEAD actual usable for ultra-marathon distances, that pushes me to pay money for a 3rd party tool that actually works.

Garmin - Chris for bringing attention to this issue.

Also, there is another bug that I've just noticed by looking at the image above. The watch fails to display all 15 characters of course point name. The "Bridge Vie 18." course point is actually named "Bridge Vie 18.6". There is enough free space so I don't see a good reason for cutting that last character.

@D_Estes, you know if the premium PAR supports sync to watch without making Garmin Connect inject TBT directions?
If that was supported I think I'd upgrade to the premium account. The course editor itself is leagues ahead of any other course editor that I know about, even the free version.

silentvoyager said:

premium PAR supports sync to watch without making Garmin Connect inject TBT directions?

I don't think so.  I'm a premium member only for the 'auto" syncing to watch from PAR.  The workflow does run through Connect which inserts TBT.  The Up Ahead feature still works.  You can always turn the Turn Notifications off.

The example above I used the "standard" method of saving a .fit to computer then dumping into NewFiles folder via USB.

Can't we also export courses from Garmin Connect as fit files? I have never tried to be honest, but I remember reading that by exporting the course from Garmin Connect and moving it to the watch via USB, you also get a course without the nasty turn by turn course points. At least it would solve your issue with the icons. 

#Matthias# said:

Can't we also export courses from Garmin Connect as fit files

Yes, this works also.  I've done this in the past and the TBT are not included in the Course file.

Did you try to set the watch that it doesn’t generate turn by turn points?

It’s a activity based setting. If you have an activity for ultr running, go into its settings, there you will finde a setting called „Routing“. Change it from „use map“ to „route“. 
if you send a route to the watch without turn by turn guidance, it will not generate new ones. Don’t know if that works with Routes you send via Garmin Connect.