#12 The Deep Dive Fix Files: Week Ending 21 August 2026

This is a weekly roundup of significant sports tech problems that the endurance community has encountered and, where possible, resolved. Each entry covers the issue, the affected hardware or software, and the current best fix or workaround known to the community.

Suunto Race 2 and Vertical 2 pool swim saving with 596 hour intervals and wrong distance after software 2.56.18

A pool swim can finish on the watch showing the correct distance and time, then save with a much shorter distance and no pace. After syncing, the Suunto app shows the first 25m interval correctly and every interval after it at 596:32. The same workout arrives in Strava with a total time of over 3500 hours and a pace of several hundred hours per 100m.

The watch records the swim correctly and writes corrupted interval records at the point of saving. One swimmer watched the display show a correct interval time and switch immediately to 596 hours on the same screen, with the lap timer showing dashes. Owners report it on both the Race 2 and the Vertical 2 running software 2.56.18.

Suunto has stated that the root cause cannot be corrected on the watch for recordings that have already been saved. The workaround for a broken Strava upload is to delete the activity in Strava, export the FIT file for that workout from the Suunto app, and upload the FIT file to Strava by hand. The FIT export handles the corrupted records well enough that no interval carries an impossible duration.

A second cause produces inflated distance without the corrupted timings. Setting a pool length longer than the actual pool inflates the total, because the watch counts lengths rather than measuring them, so 100 lengths of a 10m pool logged at the 15m minimum setting returns 1500m. Confirm the pool length setting before treating a distance error as the interval bug.

Wahoo ELEMNT Bolt and Roam map download stuck on queued or failing over Wi-Fi

ELEMNT owners report map downloads that sit on QUEUED for hours, crawl at a few hundred kilobytes a minute, then report FAILED. The reports cover the Bolt v1, the Roam v1 and the Roam 3, and run from 2022 through to August 2026. Wahoo support has repeatedly attributed the problem to the rider’s home network even where every other download on that network runs at full speed.

The head units connect on 2.4GHz and behave badly on dual band routers that publish a single SSID for both bands. Setting a guest network to 2.4GHz only and joining the ELEMNT to that network is the single change that most often turns a stalled download into a completed one. Where the router cannot be split, a phone hotspot is the fallback, and several owners who failed on home Wi-Fi, hotel Wi-Fi and their own phone completed the download from a second phone’s hotspot.

Storage headroom matters more than the free space figure suggests. The unit needs room to unpack a region, so deleting an existing continent before adding a country lets a download finish that otherwise stops partway. The status display is also unreliable, and units have marked a region as FAILED while that map was present and rendering on screen.

When the app shows Delete requested against a region and will not clear it, unpairing the head unit from the phone and pairing it again releases the state. A factory reset from System Info on the device, followed by a map download over a hotspot, is the step that has worked for owners who exhausted the network changes.

Garmin Fenix 8 Cannot Unlock Maps error after an interrupted map update

A Fenix 8 that loses power or connection partway through a map update can start with a Cannot Unlock Maps message naming a file such as D2419530A.img. The message appears at boot and repeats, and the watch gives no indication of which region the file belongs to.

Deleting the named file from the GARMIN directory does not clear it. One owner deleted D2419530A.img and the watch then reported the same error against D2471570A.img, because every map file left without valid unlock information produces the message in turn. Removing files one at a time strips maps off the watch without reaching the end of the list.

Garmin’s answer is to reinstall the maps rather than delete them. Connect the watch to a computer, open Garmin Express, select the device, open Map Details, choose Options under the map and select Reinstall. That rewrites the map files and the unlock information together, and the error does not return on the next boot.

Ejecting the watch through the operating system rather than pulling the cable, and leaving the update to run to completion before disconnecting, prevents the partial write that produces the error.

Garmin Edge 840 and 1040 daily suggested workout not updating until a full power off and on

The daily suggested workout on an Edge 840 can stay on the previous day’s session even after the head unit has synced with the phone. Owners who also carry a Forerunner 265 or a Forerunner 965 see the watch update correctly on the same account on the same morning, so the plan itself is right and only the Edge is showing stale data.

The fault sits in the wake path rather than the sync. Waking the unit from sleep or suspend leaves several screens rendering whatever they held when the unit went to sleep, and the training days widget shows the same behaviour, with the marker bar staying under the day the unit was last used. Scrolling to the very bottom of that screen and back forces a redraw and the widget corrects itself.

Powering the unit fully down rather than short-pressing to sleep is the reliable workaround. A short press puts the Edge into standby, which is the state that produces the stale workout, and a long press through the power off prompt clears it. Not every owner gets a result from this, and one rider on an 840 with a synced phone and a 965 reports the workout does not change after a full power cycle either.

Garmin has an open investigation and has added affected riders to it by name on the thread. The same behaviour has now been reported on an Edge 1040 paired with an Epix Gen 2, where the two devices showed matching workouts until roughly a week ago and have since drifted apart.

Suunto 9 Peak Pro optical heart rate sensor stopping overnight and ending sleep tracking early

The optical heart rate sensor on the Suunto 9 Peak Pro stops mid-night on a recurring basis. The green LEDs go dark, the heart rate screen sits on Measuring indefinitely, and the sleep record ends at the moment the sensor stopped, so a full night is logged as one or two hours. Recovery and HRV figures for that day are built on the truncated record. Owners have tracked it across software 2.48.16, 2.50.26 and 2.50.28.

Toggling Power Saving mode on and then off again brings the sensor back without a reboot. One owner reported the same result from switching energy saving mode on and off. A soft reset also restores the sensor, but sync the watch first if it is not permanently connected to the phone, because any unsynced data on it is worth protecting before rebooting.

The fault has a long history of appearing to be fixed and returning. One owner ran firmware 2.40.44 for an extended period specifically because every release between 2.40.44 and 2.48.16 reintroduced it. A moderator tested a 9 Peak Pro over roughly a week without a recurrence, then an owner recorded a stop after a month of clean nights. Turning SpO2 off has been suggested and has not produced a difference for the owners who tried it. The same stop has been reported on the Race S.

The frequency has risen through August 2026. One owner who had seen it once a month, always between the 17th and the 19th, logged two stops in the first week of August and another on the night of 14 August.

Garmin Fenix 8 AMOLED returning to the watch face from false palm gesture detection on software 22.41

Pressing the upper right button to open the activity list returns the watch to the watch face and dims the screen roughly three times in ten. The same thing happens while scrolling through glances, sometimes mid-scroll. The behaviour matches the palm gesture, which is the deliberate screen-off action, being triggered when the palm is nowhere near the watch.

Disabling touch entirely stops it. That is the diagnostic rather than a fix, since it confirms the touchscreen is registering a palm cover, but it also tells anyone who needs a working watch this week that button-only operation is stable.

Turning always-on display off, returning to the watch face with the lower right button, and turning always-on display back on clears the fault. It holds until the next restart, at which point it returns. Toggling always-on display without first returning to the watch face does not clear it, so the order of those steps matters.

Restoring settings from a backup makes it substantially worse. A full reset with data, set up without a phone and without restoring, produced no occurrences at first and around one percent after a restart. Completing the transfer wizard from a backup taken on an Epix Pro Gen 2 brought the rate straight back to between twenty and thirty percent. Two soft resets before that had no effect at all.

Garmin Edge 850 crashing when calculating a route on firmware 31.33

A 280km course uploaded from Garmin Connect to a new Edge 850 on software 31.33 starts calculating and the unit crashes at 23 percent. Restarting does not help and the same course fails again at the same point. Shorter courses of around 50km calculate normally on the same unit. A second owner on 31.33 reports the crash on courses well under 50km, and after the first crash the unit began restarting on its own while idle on the home screen.

The originating owner resolved it after a week in contact with Garmin and traced it to a corrupt TopoActive Europe 2026.11 map installation. Connect the Edge over USB, open the Garmin folder, and rename the Maps folder to Maps_old. Disconnect the cable and the unit restarts with no map loaded. Then go to Menu, System, Map Manager, press the plus sign and select the map you want. Download it, install it, and route calculation works again.

The second owner cleared the route calculation crashes by deleting every saved course from the device and re-uploading only the ones needed. Garmin has asked that owner for the dates of the crashes and the idle restarts, and the thread remains open.

Garmin Fenix 8 heart rate dropping to zero when an HRM-Pro on ANT+ and Bluetooth headphones are connected together

An HRM-Pro paired to a Fenix 8 over ANT+ drops out intermittently during runs. Adding Bluetooth earphones for music makes both connections fail at the same moment. The activity keeps recording and the heart rate field falls to zero while the strap and the earphones are both gone.

Garmin’s first suggestion is to pair the strap over Bluetooth rather than ANT+. The HRM-Pro broadcasts on both, and the change is made in the sensor settings on the watch. The owner has confirmed the strap is currently running on ANT+ and has not yet reported back on the Bluetooth result.

Garmin also recommends a battery polarity reset on the strap. Open the module, insert the old battery upside down, leave it that way for fifteen seconds, then remove it and fit a new battery. Garmin repeated this after the owner said the battery was already a week old, so the point of the step is the polarity reversal and not the age of the cell. If neither helps, Garmin advises removing and unpairing the strap completely and pairing it again from scratch.

This issue remains unresolved — if you have encountered it and found a fix, the discussion is open on r/the5krunner.

Garmin Edge 1050 showing no charge indicator when put to sleep instead of powered off

Plugging an Edge 1050 into a charger turns the unit on. Switching it off again leaves a screen with no state of charge and no indication that charging is happening at all. The only way to check progress is to power the unit on, navigate to the screen that carries the battery indicator, and power it off again.

Other Edge 1050 owners see the expected behaviour. One posted a photograph of the charge indicator displayed on the switched-off unit while it was plugged in.

The difference comes down to which off state the unit is in. A long press through the power off prompt gives the charging screen. A short press, which puts the Edge into standby, gives a blank display. The same distinction has been reported on the Edge 1030.

Garmin’s response is to update the unit through Garmin Express first, then to try a different cable and charging block before treating it as a hardware fault.

Garmin Fenix 8 stuck on Downloading Stored HR Data after a swim with HRM-Swim or HRM-Pro Plus

After a swim the Fenix 8 shows Searching for Stored HR Data, then Downloading Stored HR Data, and the second message never clears. Pressing back offers Save without external HR. Declining returns to the download screen. Accepting and then choosing Download HR from the saved activity produces the same stall. The owner reports it with an HRM-SWIM in the pool and an HRM-PRO PLUS worn under a wetsuit in open water, both of which had worked on the same watch for months.

New strap batteries did not help, and removing both straps from stored sensors and pairing them again did not help either. The owner already follows the correct procedure of holding the watch against the chest strap before starting and after stopping, and confirms the pairing before entering the water.

A structured test sequence isolated nothing. Live transfer was checked with an HRM-600 on a run with the watch present, then on a run with the watch left out of range, then the same two tests with the HRM-PRO PLUS. All four downloaded correctly. Dry-land pool swim activities were then recorded with the HRM-PRO PLUS and the HRM-SWIM, both with the watch present and with the watch out of range. All eight tests downloaded without fault. The owner suspects that connecting the HRM-600 reset something in the watch sensor list.

The HRM-SWIM does not support standalone activity tracking in the way the HRM-PRO does, so the store and forward test has to be run with an HRM-PRO or HRM-600 to be meaningful. An Enduro 3 owner on an HRM Pro Plus reports the same symptoms, and Garmin has asked for that report to be raised separately on the Enduro 3 board.

This issue remains unresolved — if you have encountered it and found a fix, the discussion is open on r/the5krunner.

Garmin Fenix 8 Solar not recognised by Garmin Express after software 22.41

A Fenix 8 Solar stopped being found by Garmin Express 7.29.1 immediately after 22.41 was installed. The watch had connected without difficulty on the previous software.

Garmin pointed the owner at the standard My Device Is Not Found by Garmin Express support procedure. The owner worked through all of it, including uninstalling and reinstalling Garmin Express and performing a soft reset on the watch, with no change.

The failure is intermittent rather than absolute. On the attempts where the watch was recognised, only two of the four tabs appeared and the music tab was missing. After repeated attempts across two days the connection eventually completed for no identifiable reason.

Software 22.43 was released on 17 August. The owner installed it and reports that Garmin Express connected immediately with no further trouble.

Wahoo ELEMNT Roam v2 rebooting when the radar alert mode is changed mid-ride

Changing the audible radar alert between On, Mute and Off while a ride is recording restarts an ELEMNT Roam v2. The unit comes back showing that it is recovering the ride. Any route being followed is dropped at the same moment and has to be loaded again.

The reboot only occurs when a ride is already started. Changing the setting outside a recording session does not trigger it, which gives riders a usable workaround: set the alert state before pressing start and leave it alone for the duration of the ride.

Three owners have now confirmed the behaviour across four different radars. The original report covers a Magene L508 and a Coospo TR70. A second owner reproduces it with the Wahoo radar, and a third confirmed it with a Garmin Varia RCT715. The fault therefore sits in the Roam firmware rather than in any particular radar.

The problem is worst on routes that alternate between separated cycle path and open road, where riders want to mute and unmute alerts repeatedly. No Wahoo firmware release has addressed it since the first report on 18 May 2026.

Wahoo app ride maps missing from activities while all other ride data syncs

Ride map data stopped appearing in the Wahoo app while every other field from the same ride synced to the cloud without difficulty. The activity uploads to Strava with the map intact, and Live Track shows the map correctly during the ride, so the recording itself is complete.

The fault is not limited to new rides. One owner reports that maps on previously saved rides also went blank at the same time, so the app is failing to render map data it had already displayed.

Logging out of the Wahoo app, restarting the phone or tablet, and logging back in restored the maps for the original reporter, including the maps on older rides. A second owner found the maps returned on their own a few hours later with no action taken.

Three riders reported the same symptoms across 17 and 18 August, and one longstanding forum member attributes the outage to a backend problem that Wahoo resolved server side.

Suunto Climb Guidance first route segment shown grey and zoomed segment view empty

The first segment of a planned route appears grey in Climb Guidance instead of red for a climb or blue for a descent, and that segment cannot be zoomed into. Every later segment on the same route behaves correctly.

The reporter tested the conditions and found the first segment is always grey regardless of when the route was created, which sport mode is in use, whether the first segment climbs or descends, and whether it runs for a few metres or several kilometres. A second owner reproduced it by moving the start point of the same route onto a blue segment, which then also rendered grey. Reports cover the Race 1, Race S, Vertical 1 and Vertical 2, and a moderator has reported the fault as a Suunto app or backend problem.

The behaviour has since changed. On a run on 17 August the first climb segment showed red on the overall profile, but the zoomed single segment view was empty with no elevation profile at all, and it corrected itself only at the end of that first segment. Zooming by distance also stopped working on the same run. The latest firmware adds a Climb Guidance menu under Navigation settings with Waypoint, Climb and Distance zoom options, and the owner who saw the empty view had Waypoint selected on a route carrying no waypoints. Another owner confirmed on 18 August that the grey segment is still present.

This issue remains unresolved — if you have encountered it and found a fix, the discussion is open on r/the5krunner.

Forerunner 970 not sending the first ERG workout step target power to a Wahoo Kickr

Starting a structured workout in ERG mode on a Forerunner 970 paired to a Wahoo Kickr v2 over Bluetooth as a smart trainer leaves the trainer at baseline resistance. The configured target for the first step, 100 watts in the reported case, is never sent, so the rider pedals against almost nothing until the workout advances to the second step. From that point ERG control behaves normally for the rest of the session.

Two manual paths work correctly. Setting an ERG target power by hand mid-ride applies immediately, and pressing Lap to advance from step one to step two applies the correct wattage straight away. Riders can therefore start the workout and press Lap once to bring the first target into effect.

The failure is confined to the automatic transition from workout start into step one. Step-to-step transitions and the general target power logic function as designed.

The owner reports the behaviour began after a recent Garmin software update, with no change made on the trainer side and the Kickr firmware current. Both the watch and the trainer are on the latest available software.

Garmin Edge 1050 radar data page missing with a Varia RTL515

The split radar page that draws approaching vehicles across the lane does not appear in the data screen list on an Edge 1050 paired to a Varia RTL515, even though the radar itself pairs correctly and the thin traffic bar down the side of the screen works normally. One owner checked the same radar against a riding partner’s Edge 1050 bought a week later, where the page was present, and concluded his own unit was faulty.

Garmin support suggested updating both devices through Garmin Express, removing the Varia from the Edge pairing history, and pairing again. That sequence does not bring the page back, because the page was never enabled on that unit in the first place.

The page is gated on radar hardware. Garmin restricts the full radar data page to the Varia RV820, which reports lateral position and target size, and uses the extra screen width to place vehicles in the correct part of the road. The RTL515 and earlier radars report every vehicle on the centre line, so Garmin serves them with the traffic bar instead.

A workaround exists and it survives the radar being removed. Pairing an RV820 to the Edge once populates the radar page. The page then remains available after the RV820 is deleted from the pairing history, and it works with the RTL515 as the only paired radar. Two riders confirmed this by borrowing each other’s units.

Suunto navigation jumping to a later part of the route on self-crossing loops

Suunto watches following a planned route can switch the light blue direction arrow to a later part of that route while the distance remaining still counts down against the original plan. An ultramarathon runner planned a 14 mile route returning to his car mid-run to refill water, and at the end of a short section shared between the two loops the watch pointed him away from the car and onto the second loop. He was almost out of water in warm weather at the time.

Suunto documents part of this behaviour. The Vertical 2 manual states that on a route which crosses itself the watch assumes a wrong turn at the crossing is deliberate and shows the next waypoint based on the new direction of travel. The same logic drives the auto-reverse feature, which decides whether you are running the route forwards or backwards and acts on that guess without asking.

Testers running two watches side by side on the same GPX have recorded different outcomes on each watch. One owner ran a Vertical and a 9 Peak Pro on the same route and the two disagreed on the direction at a loop entry while both showed the same distance to the end. The arrow, the remaining distance, and the off-route notification appear to update on independent timers, which is how the arrow can point the wrong way while the distance stays correct.

Stopping navigation and starting it again restores correct guidance. One runner reports doing this several times during a single workout on routes with repeated sections. Watching the breadcrumb trail at each crossing catches the fault before you act on the arrow, and carrying the route on a phone gives a check when the watch skips ahead. Reports continue on current software, with a Vertical 2 example posted on 18 August 2026 showing the watch skipping an entire small loop at a junction.

Garmin Edge 850 voice prompts continuing after muting the speaker on firmware 31.31

The Edge 850 continues to speak turn instructions after the speaker icon in the controls menu has been tapped off and shows as crossed out and greyed. Training audio behaves the same way and has to be switched off separately. The behaviour started on firmware 31.30.

Garmin asked owners to update to 31.31, which was released shortly after the first report. Two owners confirmed they were already on 31.31 and that the voice continued regardless.

The mute control only silences some categories of output. Navigation prompts and training audio each carry their own switch under the audio prompts menu, and the master speaker toggle does not reach them. Deselecting Navigation in that menu stops the turn instructions, and the training categories have to be deselected individually as well.

That menu is buried far enough that it cannot be reached safely while riding, so the categories have to be set before the ride starts. One rider on an organised event with frequent turns reported the unit talking continuously for the whole ride and drawing down the battery faster than usual.

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More from last week’s Fix Files roundup.

Browse every issue in the archive at the Deep Dive Fix Files hub.

Last Updated on 21 August 2026 by the5krunner