An amazing run today. Various things went wrong...

So, I did not dare to update my watch firmware from 18.xx to the actual one (20.26) until last week. The opinions on this forum were the reason for that. At last I hit the update button, and today I had my first long run (28km), using:

- watch fw 20.26,
- Garmin Connect app v5.5,
- Jabra ELite Active 65T bluetooth earbuds,
- Spotify app 8.9.76.538 and
- HR strap Garmin HRM Dual

I have a training plan for Marathon, based on HRzones. I plug in the earbuds, start playing spotify podcast, start the running profile, select the training run for today, select the course I want to run, and hit the tart button. HRM-DUAL is confirmed to be connected, also LiveTrack has started. I do this for many many times in the past! Neveer had a problem with it.

During the run I normally get directions to run, and audio notifications for tempo of last round, average tempo and heartbeat. The poscast is temporaraly paused when a notification is given, and continue when the audio prompt is done. Beautyfull features.

What happened today:

- My heartbeat went wild a few times in the first hour of my run (should be around 140-145, but rises to 170+). My tempo does not explain that.
- I got audio prompts for the directions (used to be only on the watch). I read that is a new feature;
- The audio prompts get stuck in a loop. Like "Soo...soo.soon you...soo...soon." Or "your ave...your aver...you....your ave...". The audio prompt is only the start of a sentence over and over again. The only way to stop that is to kill the spotify app on the phone. So no podcast during my run today :-(
- when I look at the statistics after the run, my training load has dropped quite a bit, although I have run 1.5h in zone 2 and 1h in zone 3 (28km). Unexpected behaviour looking at runs in the past.

I can use your help with explaining this. in 4 weeks I run my marathon, and I am not happy the way my device is acting now. Heck, I do not even know what causes this. Is it Connect app, the firmware of the watch, my HR strap, something changed in BT-codec? Or all?

Here some pics:

HR vs Tempo (flat terrain)

Training load, last bullet is today.

  • So nobody is responding, but I read a lot of similar issues. The above were my findings yesterday, today I see no sleep tracking last night, no HRV-measurement, No recovery time after my 2.5h run, my training status shows Peak instead of Productive (probably because it says my recovery is 0 h and my training load has dropped big time (despite my 2.5 h run yesterday).

    I think a serious problem occured in the Garmin Environment somewhere. All my metrics are false at this moment. A big disappointment because I have a marathon upcoming October 13th.

    something to investigate further?

  • Updates to 20.29 today. Hope it will help (but I think not)

  • If, on an activity, I get no audio prompts through the Android phone, often on the next activity all the audio prompts that should have played on the previous activity get played one after another, until they're all played out. This can continue for quite some time!

    Then the prompts for the current activity will be played as normal.

    I'm not sure if it's the watch firmware version (20.29) or the app version (5.5).

  • I'm still on 15.19 and haven't noticed any issues. It's my 3rd Garmin watch and I've learnt one thing: If all the features you actually need work fine, NEVER update the firmware. 

  • yes, I regret updating...If sticking to an old FW which works instead of updating is the best way to go, than that is pretty sad don't you think? I have been naïve, and now I am cursed...