Category: Kayaking

A tale in three screen shots.

I went out for a paddle today, and had both my Forerunner 920XT and my Fenix 6X on my foot strap, and both set up to “Race an Activity” with the same 10km activity selected. The course I was racing had 57:08.3 as the base time. I had my GoPro so I could grab some shots of both screens. I am doing this because I can’t for the life of me figure out what some of the fields are on the Fenix. I know what fields I need on the 920XT, but the equivalent fields on the Fenix are either in different places, or they show utterly insane values.

This picture is quite early on in the paddle. The 920XT is showing a Estimated Finish Time of 55:21, and Time Ahead of 0:11. So it thinks I’m going 11 seconds faster than the activity I’m racing. Since the difference between the target time of 57:08.3 and the estimated finish time of 55:31 is more than 11 seconds, I assume it means I’m 11 seconds ahead right now, but if I keep it up I’ll finish in 55:21. On the Fenix side, the Estimated Finish Time is 1:01:23. I have no idea why it thinks I’m 6 minutes slower than the 920XT. But here’s the insane part: The Time Behind is showing 42:07:48. WHERE THE FUCK IS THAT 42 HOURS COMING FROM!!! Even if the 42 represents something other than hours, if the time behind is 7:42, I’m trying to figure out what that mathematically relates to, because the estimated finish time is only 4:14 behind the goal time, not 7:42.

Another screen shot around the same time. The top one is labelled “ETE”, I think that’s time remaining. The middle one is distance remaining (9.49 km, so about 500 meters into the “race”). I’m not sure, but I think the bottom one is actually an estimate of the clock time when I’m expected to finish.

This is further along. I assume the prominent number in the middle is the estimated total time? The top one is distance remaining (5.47 km). That syncs up nicely with the 920XT saying I’ve completed 4.53 km.

This is seconds after the previous one. The Fenix is showing an utterly useless map. If there’s a way to zoom this in so it would be more useful, I haven’t discovered it.

And a few seconds later. The Fenix is showing the same distance remaining, although this time in the prominent middle position. The top field is, as I mentioned in the second screen shot, apparently the estimated time to completion. The bottom one is the estimated clock time at completion. No idea why I’d want to know that.

Here’s that baffling “Time Behind” again, still with the strange “42”. The estimated finish time at the bottom of 59:20 lines up OK with the 58:12 earlier in this second set of pictures because I had to stop paddling to take these so I’m getting slower with each shot. But again, even ignoring the “42” in the top field doesn’t make sense, because again, 59:20 is 2:11 slower than the goal time, not 6:39.

I wish there was some documentation on what these fields were, and I wish there was a way to customize them.

When last I spoke about the 6X, I mentioned that they’d updated the firmware which vaulted the GPS performance from “utterly crap, I’d rather use a sextant” to “acceptable, but not as good as the 920XT”. Nothing has changed on that front. But I want to mention a few other things:

1. I tried to use the “Race a previous activity” feature. On the 920Xt, this works pretty well. It shows your expected finish time, as well as how many minutes and seconds before or after that is compared to the activity you’re racing. Very useful for virtually racing yourself. I’ve tried it twice now on the Fenix, and I can’t make head nor tails on it. I’m a little handicapped that I don’t have my reading glasses in the boat, so I can’t read the field labels, but I thought I’d be able to logic them out. The field that I think should be should show the minutes and seconds faster or slower than the target starts off showing a time just a bit more than 2 hours (on a 1:33 activity). It still shows a time a bit more than 2 hours when it suddenly changes from white (meaning you’re that far ahead of the activity) to black (meaning you’re that far behind the activity). It also shows another field that shows your estimated time to completion and another showing distance remaining (which is handy). But without a usable time ahead/behind, I don’t really get information on whether I’m pacing it well, which is what I really want. So today when I did my regular “COVID Bassett” virtual Armond Bassett race, I had my Fenix showing the usual time/distance/heart rate/speed fields, and my 920XT showing the virtual race fields. I’m going to try using both and capturing it on video so maybe I can figure out what’s going wrong, and maybe show it to Garmin.

2. Garmin VIRB Edit, the software than I use for putting overlays on my videos doesn’t automatically pick up activities from my Fenix when it’s plugged into the computer the way it did with all my previous Forerunners (actually, I’m not sure if it did with the Forerunner 305, but definitely with the 310XT, the 910Xt and the 920XT). Instead I have to download the FIT file from Garmin Connect and upload it manually to Garmin VIRB Edit, which is annoying.

3. The Fenix 6 is utterly, 100% completely crap at reconnecting to the phone after they’ve been apart for any length of time. I charge my phone overnight in my office, but don’t take off the watch. In the morning, the 920XT would reconnect 99.9% of the time without any sort of intervention on my part. Just about every day, I will suddenly realize I’m not getting any notifications on my watch and go into the bluetooth menu on the phone to reconnect the Fenix. Today it disconnected while both the watch and the phone were on my surfski, less than 2 feet apart. My activity uploaded to Garmin Connect when I manually reconnected them afterwards, but for some reason it didn’t go to Strava. With the 920Xt, I was used to getting three notifications while I’m carrying my boat back to the car from the water – first one telling me the activity is on Garmin Connect, second one telling me it is on Strava, and third one telling me it is on Relive. I get that with the Fenix 6 more often than not, but certainly not with the certainty I would get it when using the 920XT. I may have to record a video to demonstrate how bad this is, since as I was writing this I realized my phone was in the other room, and when I went to pick it up it didn’t automatically reconnect to my Fenix.