Does anybody have any suggestions as to what I might be doing wrong with my Garmin 1030?
I tend to use Strava for my route planning as I find that Garmin often will send you down roads where you might have been able to drive several hundred years ago, but probably not recently... Strava at least sends you down roads that people do cycle down.
I find if Strava saves the route and then I upload it across to Garmin, If the route from my house is used on both the outward and return leg of the course, the Garmin will often get confused and tell me to turn around and then tell me that I'm about to finish the course.... If it's a circular route, it's very easy to end up going the wrong way around the route. There's nothing like having a cycle computer attempting to tell you to turn around for 100 miles....(It would be great if you could just tell the Garmin to do the route in reverse)
Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to fix the above? Should I just suck it up and use Garmin for route planning? Also, is there a way of turning off the virtual cyclist? I have no idea how they calculate the speed that the virtual cyclist is cycling at, but they certainly don't take account for road conditions, hills, junctions or road works.
Lastly and I can't believe this feature is missing, it doesn't seem to be a button that just says navigate me back to home... This is my second Garmin cycle computer and I'm just very surprised that they don't have navigation built into the head unit? If I want to navigate back home I have to then either draw or plot a route and then send it across to the garmin. Frustratingly when it's in the middle of a ride, it won't update new routes. Which means in this situation I have to stop the ride, and then start a brand new ride as it won't accept a synchronised course whilst it's still running.
Should I abandon Garmin and go for wahoo?
The Routing issues is likely because it has Auto Routing on and you've only got the start/end point defined. Once you have a few more Course Points, it will try to send you past them in order. This might be some sort of Strava/Garmin incompatibility (I don't use Strava so I can't test it).
is there a way of turning off the virtual cyclist?
I don't believe so.
I'm just very surprised that they don't have navigation built into the head unit?
It IS built into the 1030.
Page 31. Best thing to do is save your Home as a Location and then it's always available with just a couple of presses.
Thank you! I've put a note in my calendar that the next time I go out I need to mark the home location in the device. I'm surprised that you can't do this in the app, but anyway if I can do it in the device just before I set off the next time at least I've got somewhere where I can just navigate back to.
Thank you for this, really appreciate it
My 530 has the option for 'back to start' and when you select it, it offers either 'along the same route' (back the way you've already come)
or
'Quickest Route' which will plan you a new route based on your routing prefences. With mine set to MTB, it'll favor bridleways over roads. I've I ly had to use it a couple of times but it's been pretty good.
Obviously, that only works of you're following a route...
The 'Turning around at the start' thing is annoying. I've been close to throwing mine into a hedge when it's had me riding in circles around a town where I've parked.
I turn off the auto recalculate thing now and set it to 'promt' instead. It's still annoying so sometimes I turn it off altogether. Setting it to promt at least let's you look at the screen and decide if you're actually off the route. When you get back onto the route, it will eventually and excitedly let you know that it's found the course. It's like it wants to take all the credit for your navigational skill!
The virtual partner is even more annoying. You can go into the settings and adjust it's speed. I tried setting it 0.1mph thinking it would just barely love but it didn't seem to work. You could try setting it to a more realistic speed?
I've used the back to start option a few times and it's been solid.
AFAIK you are stuck with virtual partner. It doesn't take account of gradient so I guess you are supposed to gain ground lost climbing when you descend, mine always beats me though. I wouldn't mind it being there if it didn't have a bigger icon than my own location, it took me an embarrassingly long time of owning it to work out that the device didn't have my position 200m up the road the whole time
Can't say I've had the routing problem you describe and I do all my routes in Strava too.
I've used the back to start option a few times and it's been solid.
AFAIK you are stuck with virtual partner. It doesn't take account of gradient so I guess you are supposed to gain ground lost climbing when you descend, mine always beats me though. I wouldn't mind it being there if it didn't have a bigger icon than my own location, it took me an embarrassingly long time of owning it to work out that the device didn't have my position 200m up the road the whole time
Can't say I've had the routing problem you describe and I do all my routes in Strava too.
Hmmmm, i switched the virtual partner off on mine, sounds like a feature they've reactivated, that'll be annoying.
I have had my Garmin 1030 for 7yrs and it's been pretty faultless, bar the occasional "recalculating' and then occasionally getting stuck and it's habit of taking a while to realise I'm not 'Off Course'.
However, looking at the instructions posted above, I am only using a fraction of its capabilities.
I've never beaten the virtual partner yet 🤷♂️
I've not had those issues with my 1040, but I generally follow routes that others have created, occasionally it'll do some weirdness when I go off course but the simpler solution is just to zoom out on the map and check that the road I'm on actually makes sense and that Strava or komoot just bypassed it with some cycle path).
I always plot the start and end points away from the actual start/end, e.g. on the first climb or where the last descent finishes. That way you can just set it to "navigate to start" and it won't take you on a tour of the car park / town looking for the exact start, and makes sure it actually finishes the navigation so you're not leaving the pub with the garmin chiming away to turn around the whole way home.
Isn't 'virtual partner' baked into the .gpx file, i.e. it's the ghost of whoever recorded the GPX or Komoot's guestimated speed?
However, looking at the instructions posted above, I am only using a fraction of its capabilities.
This annoys me a bit with my 1040, and to a lesser extent my Epix. It does some really clever stuff but it really needs a setup tutorial where you just tell it that you're a cyclist with no interest in running / rowing / golf etc and then it deactivates all the menu's you'll never use and gives you a quick tutorial on how to use the clever stuff you actually want.
