I did a bit more testing. Strava Live Segments do work but in a limited way and not the same way they used to work in the past.
Start of the tracking of a segment on the watch seems to be less reliable
When a tracked segment ends, there is no longer a summary that tells me my time. There is simply a popup that says “Off Segment” as if I didn’t finish the segment successfully.
I suspect the code that tracks the segments internally is now different and perhaps overlaps more with route tracking. When I try to use live segments at the same time with following a route I get strange notifications, like telling me I am back on route when a segment ends even though I’ve never left the route - that’s not how it worked before. I wonder if this perhaps is the the reason segment tracking didn’t work in the case I described in my original post - in that case route starts at the same point as the segment so perhaps the the watch picks the route rather than the segment and the segment tracking doesn’t start.
Furthermore, I wanted to mention quite a disappointing experience with trying and failing to use Strava live segments. I am registered for a popular local race called “Tiger Claw”. It consists of three different loops going up the mountain and returning back. Runners can choose an order in which they run these 3 loops, so there is a bit of strategy involved. The local community created three Strava segments that match the race loops, and local trail runners often use these segments for training and assessing their performance on these loops. The problem is that with a Suunto watch there is absolutely no way to tell which of the 3 segments the watch is going to start. All 3 segments naturally start at the same place at the trailhead. As you approach the point where these 3 segments start, it simply tells you that a segment is close but it doesn’t tell you which segment and, obviously, there is no way to choose. The only way to use this feature is to go to Strava and make that only one of the segments is starred at a time before you sink with the watch. But then it makes it very difficult to find these segments on Strava again - it is not like you can go and unstar one segment and star another. And if you want to hit more than one segment (that starts at the same place) in the same run by returning back and running a different way - bad luck because that isn’t supported. On other platforms like Garmin and Coros you can dismiss a segment that you don’t want when you approach it, and that makes the watch to switch to another matching segment if there is one nearby. But the Suunto implementation is super simplistic and there is no choice, which makes the feature unusable in some cases as I explained above.
