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Repeated Reboots when starting an activity - Highly Frustrating

I have encountered a major issue when using the Garmin 945 apparently with the Stryd running power sensor (Summit version - i.e. the latest version before the newly announced one)

This past weekend I was in Portland Oregon on a vacation trip. Greatly looking forward to doing some running on trails around Mount Hood, I had prepared accordingly (researching trail routes, creating courses on Garmin, packing for super long runs, etc) but I encountered issues with my watch that dampened the entire experience.

I think I have narrowed down the culprit as the Stryd sensor connection.

Friday morning, I traveled up to about 2000’ altitude anticipating a 13m round trip to 6600’+ and back down again. I had connected to GPS a few times in the day prior to make sure my Garmin wasn’t going to have difficulty in locating my position since I was 2000 miles from my home area. Everything was working fine…until i got to the trail head trying to start my run.

That’s when my watch repeatedly rebooted every time I tried to enter an activity mode (running, trail running, etc). When I would just press the activity button, it would show the screen briefly and then reboot. This happened over and over again for 30min. It would sometimes give me hope and stay connected for 10 sec, only to reboot.

FINALLY, I managed to leverage one of those 10sec periods to change the activity profile to “walk” instead of run. This didn’t have all my data fields that I like to use, much less all my sensors (including Stryd) but it would at least record a GPS track for the run. This worked okay, allowing me to record the 3 hour 30min + activity. I changed it back to “run” in Garmin Connect post run, but again, no stryd metrics etc.

The next morning, in downtown Portland, I went for a run in Forest Park. Trail running activity worked fine, no issues whatsoever. Just an aberration I thought.

But then the next day I went back up to the Mt Hood area to attempt another long 3+ hour run. Same deal as before, I had made all the proper preparations. Again unfortunately the same deal. Catastrophic failures and reboots. I couldn’t even get to the Walk activity this time to change it. I finally just gave up and borrowed my wife’s low level Garmin so I could at least tell my time/distance. About a mile into the run, I managed to get my 945 to drop all sensors and remove the Stryd CIQ Power field from the display.

This did the trick, the Garmin worked fine after that.

Remembering back a month, this happened before, again when I was in the mountains and starting a long trail run. Stryd totally hosed the activity, the 945 only working after it “forced” the Stryd CIQ field to drop out of the activity I was using.  A few weeks later, back in the mountains, it managed one activity just fine but then a later activity that same day it did the same thing - rebooting and forcing the Stryd CIQ field to drop out (along with the "Dozen Run" CIQ field I use as well).

Now back home, all is good with the 945 and stryd…absolutely no issues connecting/displaying etc.

So something appears to be happening either when my device is a) far from home…and/or b) at a far different elevation/altitude than it is used to.

As you might imagine, this was BEYOND frustrating. I was on a tight time schedule and this cost me 30 minutes in both instances fiddling with devices that I finally wanted to run over with my car.

Any ideas/suggestions/thoughts on what is happening between the watch in these instances??

  • If you don't want to read that entire lengthy post above here is the summary:

    945 reboots when going into an activity in a location that is not it's usual "home" and when at a very different elevation.  The Stryd sensor and/or CIQ data field seems to be to blame.

  • Don't know if this is helpful but I had a similar issue with my Fenix 5 plus. It tended to reboot once my sensors, including Stryd, were connected. The reboot occurs once I selected the run activity and was waiting to start the activity. I noticed the reboot only happened if the watch still had a Bluetooth connection to my phone. I don't take my phone when I run but sometimes when I start the run I'm not far enough away from my phone to lose the connection yet. Anyway, I make sure to not have a connection to my phone prior to starting a run if I'm using Stryd. Haven't had the problem since. When I was initially trying to figure out the reason I was having the problem I read some people saying it can have something to do with too many connections to the watch at once. Which is why I shut my phone Bluetooth off. Sorry if this isn't helpful but it's all I can add.

  • I have this same issue.  I live at sea level, and have never had an issue.  I’m in CO at elevation and everything borks and reboots anytime I have an activity with the stryd.  No Bluetooth connection to my phone.  Just me and my stryd and my 945

  • Thank you!  At least i know it's not just me.  I don't know if it's the Stryd guys or the Garmin guys that can fix it though.

  • That is interesting as I had my phone with me in both instances (for general safety, I wasn't listening to music nor doing livetrack, etc).  Thanks for posting, I'll try disconnecting and see if that helps next time (though as the poster below says, I'm not hopeful).

  • Try posting on the Stryd Facebook group, several people at Stryd frequently answer questions and offer solutions there.

  • Thank you.  I'm not on Facebook but I did post the original thread to the Stryd feedback forum.

  • Hi,

    I don't think that it happen only to Stryd users. I had the same issue last week in the plane. I wanted to start RUN activity, I opened activity menu, choose RUN and the device restarted. It happened every time (10-15 times) when I was in the plane (so speed or altitude different as my at home). After plane landed issue disappeared. I don' use Stryd, only Garmin HRM-Run (red) paired but not used during restarts.

  • This happened to me too, I don't use stryd. Normally i run on 120-130mt altitude near home. I went for a trail run, same fields of run activity (altitude was 750-1350mt) and after some minutes 945 just rebooted. Very frustrating, as this is also my second unit for mushy/sticky buttons, and they are still not so good too.

  • That never happened to me and I use a Stryd all time (Stryd CIQ as well as another CIQ datafield), about 50% also a HRM-run. Sometimes with phone connected although I guess it's nearly always connected when I start because it should still be in range of me.

    I know how you feel, I had similar issues with the Fenix 5+ but they luckily fixed it.  Anyway you scared me enough to take a back-up watch with me on my vacation next week. ;-)