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Best GPS Settings For Chicago (Lower Wacker, etc)

Former Member over 6 years ago

For anyone here that's done any races in Chicago, what have you found to be the most accurate GPS Settings? Especially while running or biking on Lower Wacker?

I had a run that had a portion on Lower Wacker and I used regular GPS with Smart Recording and it was all over the place.

I'm doing the Chicago Triathlon tomorrow and part of the bike is on Lower Wacker. I have my watch set for GPS+Glonass and 1 Sec Recording. Wondering if anyone has compared Glonass to Galileo yet.

0 zwillis over 6 years ago

How'd the new settings work for you? Trying to find ideal settings for Chicago next weekend as well. Thanks.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

The bike portion of the Chicago Triathlon was on Lower Wacker and the track was still messy. The Garmin recorded 29mi but the bike course should have only been 24.8mi.

This was also around the time where the GPS Firmware had some known issues, so if you have the newest stable 2.30 GPS firmware hopefully it'll be better. I've been using it but I haven't tried it downtown.

This should be a link to the bike portion. If you zoom in on the map you can look at the Lower Wacker section:
https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/2964614065/3

And if you scroll down on this page, you can see the actual course map:
https://www.chicagotriathlon.com/race/chicago-triathlon/course/

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

How'd the new settings work for you? Trying to find ideal settings for Chicago next weekend as well. Thanks.

Did you have any luck? My wife ran the Chicago Marathon with her Fenix 5S set to GPS Only and Smart Recording and it was horrible for the first half of the race. It showed her total distance was almost 31mi and there was a point near the 13.1 mile marker where it showed she ran 3 miles in about 5 blocks and the track was all over the place.

0 pmumbower over 6 years ago

Honestly, I do not think any GPS firmware(or any GPS only watch) will ever help in downtown areas with tall buildings. Best bet with the 935 will be a footpod (calibrated if not a Stryd) for both distance and pace. Leave the GPS on for the pretty maps. Since I switch my 935 to footpod for speed/distance, I have had zero issues with downtown buildings (Grand Rapids) and heavy tree cover in the paved trails.

0 OperationOne over 6 years ago

Honestly, I do not think any GPS firmware(or any GPS only watch) will ever help in downtown areas with tall buildings. Best bet with the 935 will be a footpod (calibrated if not a Stryd) for both distance and pace. Leave the GPS on for the pretty maps. Since I switch my 935 to footpod for speed/distance, I have had zero issues with downtown buildings (Grand Rapids) and heavy tree cover in the paved trails.

that's right. my experience with "urban canyon" at Tokyo Marathon 2015 was solved with a well calibrated (at planned race pace) Garmin Footpod + FR610 set to read pace from footpod. overall distance and tracks was really bad, pace was really useful and stable.

0 milkywaye over 6 years ago

Honestly, I do not think any GPS firmware(or any GPS only watch) will ever help in downtown areas with tall buildings. Best bet with the 935 will be a footpod (calibrated if not a Stryd) for both distance and pace. Leave the GPS on for the pretty maps. Since I switch my 935 to footpod for speed/distance, I have had zero issues with downtown buildings (Grand Rapids) and heavy tree cover in the paved trails.

... and the footpod is a blessing for fartlek, yassos etc where short distance speedwork is the order of the day.. I use my Stryd on a road section for speedwork that would be impossible for GPS due to trees

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

Honestly, I do not think any GPS firmware(or any GPS only watch) will ever help in downtown areas with tall buildings. Best bet with the 935 will be a footpod (calibrated if not a Stryd) for both distance and pace. Leave the GPS on for the pretty maps. Since I switch my 935 to footpod for speed/distance, I have had zero issues with downtown buildings (Grand Rapids) and heavy tree cover in the paved trails.

I'll have to look into the calibration of my wife's footpod. She has that and the Running Dynamics Pod and had both on her during the marathon and the distance was still off. Thanks for the suggestions.