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??
