Question about POIs

Francesco Pagano

Hi everyone,

I have my first ultra run coming up this Saturday, it’s 47 km with a lot (9 I think) of aid stations so I’m planning to take just one soft flask to refill at each station and drink in-between.
I had a very basic thought of writing on my hand at which distance each station is. After seeing the latest updates to Climb Guidance I thought I could have POIs on the watch. Assuming the FW update comes to S9PP in the next days, would you recommend using this option? I want to keep it extremely simple and not use any App or Guide.

Thanks!

Tieutieu

@Francesco-Pagano hi ! For your needs, even if you don’t have the new fw, you can simply personnalize a sport mode where you can add the field “distance to next poi”.
I use it this way for my longer races : I plan the POIs on my route, and I have a screen with this field. From point to point it’s pretty cool to see countdown distance to next POI.

jw cou

@Francesco-Pagano Take a look (and test) the S+ app called « Race companion », it’s been a great help for me during similar races.

timecode

@Tieutieu said in Question about POIs:

@Francesco-Pagano hi ! For your needs, even if you don’t have the new fw, you can personnalize a sport mode where you can add the field “distance to next poi”.
I use it this way for my longer races : I plan the POIs on my route, and I have a screen with this field. From point to point it’s pretty cool to see countdown distance to next POI

I am using this too, I have a dedicated screen with ETA to next waypoint and distance to next waypoint. Works well for me.

MKPotts

To add to what others have said:

Since the update about 18 months ago that added “distance to next waypoint” to bottom of the route/breadcrumb screen, I just use that in all of my longer races. This works because I leave the watch at that screen almost exclusively during races.

But if I wanted to look at other data as well, I’d go back to using custom data fields like everyone else has suggested.

An aid station every 5km is a lot! Is this a road race?

sky-runner

@Tieutieu said in Question about POIs:

or your needs, even if you don’t have the new fw, you can simply personnalize a sport mode where you can add the field “distance to next poi”.

A custom sport mode “with distance to next POI” field isn’t really needed because remaining distance to next waypoint is already shown at the bottom of the map screen. I use this in races all the time to track distances to aid stations.

With the new climb guidance feature, it is also possible to see remaining distance to next waypoint at the bottom of the elevation profile. Or, depending on the elevation zoom level, you can see distance remaining to either next waypoint, or second waypoint (the one after the next), or third or fourth waypoints. In a way, this works as a poor but usable substitute to Garmin’s Up Ahead feature.

But keep in mind that if there are any aid stations that are visited more than once, this might not work reliably.

Tieutieu

@sky-runner right but map screen consumes more battery than data field screen, and I want to see my metrics when racing. Map screen used very occasionally when racing, if I may have loose track mainly.

Audaxjoe

@Tieutieu I have the map screen on all the time, I normally use the Vertical on a bike. I really don’t notice any additional use of the battery. It probably does use more battery but it is minimal.

I used to have custom fields with distance to next waypoint, but with the last SW update my custom sports modes were wiped. I haven’t bother adding custom fields for next waypoint just distance to end.

Map page also shows waypoint icon which I find really helpful.

Mff73

@Audaxjoe
Lucky you, but in theory, the map screen is consuming more battery, at least because the watch needs to read map tiles to update, more computations, etc…

maszop

@Mff73 Battery life is now so long that it doesn’t matter to most people, to the point where manufacturers are switching from MIPS screens to AMOLED, and there’s still enough battery life left after the change.

Francesco Pagano

@sky-runner said in Question about POIs:

With the new climb guidance feature, it is also possible to see remaining distance to next waypoint at the bottom of the elevation profile

I tested this today for the first time and I am quite sure that the remaining distance displayed was not to the next waypoint. I found it quite confusing overall, though helpful at some point. I very much preferred seeing remaining distance to POI at the bottom of the map screen. Anyway, the race wasn’t hard and with so many aid stations I was never looking forward to the next one.

surfboomerang

@Francesco-Pagano it does work if you create a route of your race, add waypoints for each station and add the “distance to next waypoint” as a datafield in your custom sport mode.

Distance to POIs is only given when used as navigation endpoint.

Francesco Pagano

@surfboomerang I agree, my message referred specifically to Climb Guidance, where the various zoom levels don’t seem related to the POIs. That’s what it looked to me, I need to experiment more, overall I find it useful.