I got an Edge 1030 to replace a dying Edge 800 as a holiday gift. Haven't used the courses much. But now with the summertime season for organized rides, I will end up using the feature more.
One thing that drove me crazy when doing this on the Edge 800 was the wild inaccuracy of time-to-destination and time-to-turn. From files downloaded from Ride with GPS, which seems to be the standard platform for centuries, double centuries, Fondos, etc., the Edge would always assume that my average speed was going to be something between 3 and 4 mph. I remember doing a lot of web research on this without a definitive answer. There is an app up on the web that supposedly could fix it by correcting all the times embedded in the file. It looks many years out of date and doesn't seem to run as promised on a modern Mac. I remember seeing a post that suggested that one could fix the problem by editing the TCX file with a text editor. There is a variable at the beginning of the file called "TotalTimeSeconds" that one can use to replace whatever time the route creator input to something that would approximate your target time. But it doesn't seem to work to correct the Edge calculations of time-to-destination or time to the next turn. At least the Edge 1030 seems to calculate time to destination based on your average speed of the current ride. But the nice screen with all the turns lays out continues to believe you are moving at 3.67 mph.
If anyone wanted to see what this looks like, one could download the TCX for the Terrible Two Double Century here. The TotalTimeSeconds variable is set to 19610, which is 5:26:50. Which is kind of fast for a 200 mile ride. But if one imports the file to the Garmin unedited, the Garmin calculates a 54:38:40 "Time" based on an average speed of 3.67 mph. If one edits the TotalTimeSeconds to a more reasonable time, it doesn't seem to affect the Garmin's calculation of turn times whatsoever. Is this just a flaw in the way that Ride with GPS creates these files? If so, is it fixable? I don't want to have to create manually course files for every organized ride that I do.
I also am puzzled by why the Edge 1030 seems much more restrictive about how the data is presented. In the Edge 800, when one began to use a course an additional data screen would show up with data relevant to the course (time to turn, time to destination, time at destination) etc. In the 1030, you seem to get one additional screen with the coming turns and that's it. Do I need to create my own additional data screen? Also kind of frustrated that the turn-by-turn text listing page can't be customized. Unless I'm missing something.
Thanks in advance for any help you might be able to offer.