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Up Ahead failure in a second half of a 100k race

silentvoyager
9 months ago

This is an issue that I experienced a few months ago during Canyons 100K ultramarathon. I think I mentioned it once in one of the comments, but I wanted to make a separate post. I am also going to report it to support, so having this post will help to describe my issue.

I was using navigation with custom course points during the race. I've prepared the course in Garmin Connect by importing the course, then adding course points. 

You can see this course here: https://connect.garmin.com/modern/course/264149584. It has 11 course points - one for each aid station or checkpoint on the race course.

What happened during the race is that the watch failed to show the last two aid stations on the Up Ahead data screen. They are certainly there in the course FIT file, but the watch failed to render them. They aren't just missing but there is an empty space where the course points should be - see below. Normally this screen should should up to upcoming 4 course points, including the finish. After Drivers Flat there should be two more course points, plus the finish.

This is how Up Ahead had changed once I was past the Cal 2 aid station. As you can see it now clearly shows two empty slots where the two course points are supposed to be, and then there is Finish further below.

When I look inside the course FIT file, I see 295 course points there, including all my 11 custom course points. The remaining ones are turn directions. In particular, the Drivers Flat course point shown above is course point #216 in the list of all course points, so at least that doesn't seem to caused by the limit on the number of course points. And the old limit of 200 course points has supposedly been lifted.

I wonder if anyone else has experienced a similar issue? I'd really like this issue to be fixed because I rely on custom course points during ultramarathon races.

  • 0 9 months ago in reply to Mateusz

    Mateusz, please e-mail support and reference the above case (see earlier in this thread). The support person asked me to mention that to you. 

  • 0 8 months ago in reply to Mateusz

    I think I have steps to 100% reproduce this issue 

    1) Create a long course with a large number of turns, which can be achieved with any trail ultramarathon course that is 100 km or longer. In my repro I created a 80 mile long course, a large part of which was on trails. I think it should be long enough to have at least 200 turn notifications.

    2) Add a number of custom user course points on the course. In my repro I added 11 course points.

    3) Make sure that turn notifications are enabled in Garmin Connect before syncing the course to the watch. I believe this is necessary to reproduce the issue. When turn notifications are enabled, they are synced as special course points and are mixed with user custom course points in the course FIT file. The watch seems to be doing some sort of filtering to separate turn notification course points from the user course points and includes only the latter in the Up Ahead screen.

    4) You don't have to run through the entire course. To reproduce it is sufficient to start an activity on the course somewhere towards the end of the course. In my repro I started activity between course points #9 and #10 out of 11 course points.

    What I expected in my repro case is that if the feature worked correctly, Up Ahead would still show the two remaining course points followed by the Finish. What I actually saw was just the Finish.

  • 0 7 months ago

    Here is an evidence that this issue is specific to Up Ahead feature implementation rather than navigation of course points functionality.
    The following two photos were taken at the same point on a long (about 75 miles) navigation course, 5.9 miles from the end of the course. There are multiple course points on the course with two course points still between my position and the end of the course. This was reproduced with a test course where I tried to replicate the issue that I experienced above. What I found is that I don't necessarily need to run the entire course. I just need to start navigation on an arbitrary long course towards the end of. Also I found that the course has to have a lot of turn directions in order to reproduce this issue.

    As you can see the map screen shows the upcoming "Aid Station" course point at 0.59 miles. But the Up Ahead screen shows nothing until the finish at 5.9 miles. That means that the issue is somewhere in the code that populates the list of course points for the Up Ahead screen.

  • 0 6 months ago

    Still not fixed in the latest firmware.

    This issue can be reliably reproduced when there are both course points and turn alerts on the course and the number of turn alerts is large (several hundred). It would reproduce on any more or less complex ultramarathon course of 100k or longer.

    I can test it by starting navigation in the middle of the course, towards the end, so I don't have to run through the entire course to see if the issue is still present or not. Basically I have a test navigation course that goes by my home, so I can just go out of the door, start course navigation, and instantly see whether it shows remaining couple of course points on the Up Ahead screen or not.

  • 0 5 months ago in reply to silentvoyager

    I have had this same issue. The fix is annoying but simple. If all the third party points at least show up in garmin connect, all you have to do is edit each point and save it (i edit name or change the generic icon to checkpoint). If you do this, they will show up in the "up ahead" feature. I make the route and way points on gpx studio (leave icon field blank in gpx studio) then upload in garmin connect. All way points show up and I just individually edit/change each waypoint. Quick and easy.  If you spend time naming the waypoint in the 3rd party app, then it's super quick to just select the icon you actually want in garmin connect. 

  • 0 5 months ago in reply to 5558746

    No, this isn't a problem with course points not having the proper distance as you suggest in your comment. This is a completely different issue where all waypoints are correct but some of them towards the end simply don't show up on the Up Ahead screen. This happens even when the entire course with course points is made from scratch in Garmin course editor.

    Furthermore, this issue reproduces only when turn notifications are enabled at the same time with having custom course points and when there are a lot of (hundreds) turns on the course. 

    I suspect this issue has something to do with the limit of course points. It used to be 200, but Garmin has lifted the limit around the same time. Perhaps the change that lifted the limit was insufficient.

  • 0 4 months ago in reply to silentvoyager

    If you export the fit file and view it, do the missing course points show up in the FIT file? 

  • 0 4 months ago in reply to 5558746

    Yes, they do - with distances.

    Furthermore, the activity FIT file also shows arriving at each course point - there is an event for that that is saved in the activity FIT file. What is even more, the watch actually shows those "missing" course points on the map as I showed in one of the photos earlier in the tread. They are missing only on the Up Ahead screen, and only some of them towards the end of the course. And what is even more, this reproduces only when turn directions are used at the same same. This clearly has something to do with the total number of course points and with Up Ahead specific code.