u/RaveDigger

I'm spending a few months in the Tricities area with my wife and our dual sport motorcycles and I'm looking for some forest roads and trails to explore in the area. Does anyone have any recommendations?

I checked out r/TriCityTNDualsport/ but it seems pretty dead there.

My wife is into exploration instead of challenging terrain so we usually stick to forest service roads when we ride together. It looks like the Holston Mountain area might have some roads to explore but I haven't gone to check it out yet.

My wife and I are going to be in the Bristol area for a few months this fall during which we'll be celebrating our 10 year anniversary. I've never spent any time there so I'm looking for romantic and fun events or activities in the area. Any suggestions?

We like rave music and those kind of events give us a good excuse to wear very little together but I'm not sure how much of an electronic music scene exists in the home of country music.

Dinner and drinks at a winery/brewery are always fun to us but it's something we do frequently so it wouldn't be particularly special and it wouldn't necessarily give us a reason to get dressed up.

We'll be traveling in our RV but I'm planning to grab a hotel for a night or two so if there's stuff within walking/uber distance of a hotel that's even better.

I was wandering around Boston and I wanted to use my Ultra 2 to get to North Station so I could walk through the city without pulling my phone out constantly but I could not find any good way to do so.

It seemed that my only options were to open the map and use explore nearby and scroll through the list of nearby POI (North Station wasn't even listed so this didn't even work), or to pan across the map to where I know North Station is, then navigate to that specific point on the map. This did work, but it required me to know exactly where North Station was in order to select it from the map.

I tried searching for North Station in Google Maps on my phone, then sharing the location with the Zepp app, but all this does is show me a map of Manhattan for some reason? It does not give me any option to send the location to the watch.

Am I missing something obvious or is this type of navigation just not possible?

How do you set up your device for race day?

I've been using my Ultra 2 for running training and it's worked great. For running I've just been using Zepp Coach because I'm too lazy to build a training plan on my own.

I've got a 5k race coming up and it's the first race I'll be doing with a fitness watch and I'm wondering the best way to use it during the race. Are there any settings I should be enabling?

I like that the Zepp Coach workouts automatically get synced to the watch and the recommended pace alerts are configured to guide my training runs so I was thinking of creating a workout template with my desired race pace and enabling it for the 5k race.

I also saw a setting for the virtual pacer, maybe that would be a better option for maintaining my desired pace during the race? Does anyone else use this during races?

Edit: I just realized that Zepp Coach created an activity for the day of the race that already has the pace alerts configured so I'll probably just use that because it will probably behave similar to the training runs I've been doing.

3D data mode takes into account changes in elevation to determine your distance traveled. For instance, if you're looking at a standard map and measuring distance, you're only measuring it in 2D space, but if you take elevation changes into account, you're technically covering more distance in 3D space. It's like comparing the hypotenuse of a right triangle vs. the base leg. The hypotenuse of a right triangle will always be longer than the base.

I've tested out 3D data mode and there's definitely a difference in the measured distance but I'm not sure which measurement is "right." I'm sure there's an element of personal preference, but I am not sure which mode I prefer so I am wondering if others use it or not.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FHB35M5J

Just got this in the mail and it's way more comfortable than the stock silicone strap that comes on the Ultra 2. They also make it in a 22mm which should fit some of the other Amazfit watches. I like that it's velcro because it's quick to adjust the tightness as my wrist swells and contracts throughout the day.

I'm guessing it's not as durable as the included strap, but for $15ish it's not a big deal if it needs to be replaced.

Edit: I also just realized how much more comfortable it is to use my laptop without a metal buckle digging into my wrist.

I am giving the Lifeload function a try, and I'm confused about how I am supposed to be using it.

For instance, I had a coffee this morning, should I immediately go into Lifeload to add caffeine? Same question for booze, I am drinking a beer right now but I'm not sure if I'm supposed to log it right now or at the end of the day? If I ate clean all day, do I log one entry for clean eating or do I log clean eating for every meal I ate that was clean?

Also for the impact, what determines the level of impact? If I choose "Calm and Grounded" am I supposed to choose low if I am a little bit calm and grounded or do I choose high if I think being calm and grounded has a high impact on my well being?

Do I log "Trouble Falling Asleep" when I wake up in the morning? Why am I prevented from also logging "Hard to Wake Up" as well? If I had trouble falling asleep last night, I likely also had a hard time waking up so it's not clear why choosing both are mutually exclusive.

I have no idea what my zones actually are so I'm just following what the watch recommends but I'm curious to hear other experiences about Heart Rate Reserve zones vs. Lactate Threshold zones.

I'm currently using heart rate reserve but it doesn't seem to update when my device reports a new resting heart rate. I need to manually go into device settings to update it. The lactate threshold method seems to update the zones whenever a new lactate threshold is measured by the watch which seems more convenient but I don't know if one is more accurate or reliable than the other.

Edit: I am also thinking of adding an arm band heart rate monitor because the watch measures my running cadence as my heart rate. Are they all pretty much compatible with Amazfit or do I need to buy the Helios? I was thinking of just buying a cheapo Bluetooth armband on Amazon but none of them list compatibility with Amazfit, only Garmin, Wahoo, etc.

There's no real point to this post except to put my thoughts out there in case they might help someone else or if the Amazfit developers read these posts to know what works and what could be improved.

My intent when purchasing the Ultra 2 was to replace a 20 year old Garmin eTrex Vista standalone GPS device as my primary navigation tool when hiking and backpacking. I've never used any other smartwatch except occasionally messing around with my wife's Garmin Venu 3s. My standalone Garmin GPS works just as well as the day I bought it, but being limited to only 2GB of storage and having to transfer map files at USB 1 speeds was getting on my nerves.

I use OSMand to create GPX files or I download premade GPX files from AllTrails. The fact that I could transfer the GPX files from my phone to the watch in a matter of seconds with a few clicks prior to starting the trip was incredible. The fact that I was able to modify the GPX file using OSMand on my phone and send the updated GPX to the watch during the trip is something I've never been able to do. Updating the route on the fly is a game changer for backpacking.

Things I liked:

• Having navigation on my wrist is a huge upgrade. I never liked having to pull out my handheld GPS device or my phone while hiking down the trail. Keeping my hands free means I can climb over logs and still check that I'm on the trail every so often. I only took my phone out of my pack once on the entire trip in order to update the GPX file and send the update to the watch.

• The slope analysis is very useful. You feed the GPX file to the watch and it analyzes the climbs and descents so that when you're going up or downhill, you know how far into the climb you are. I used it to plan snack breaks at the top of the climb so I could enjoy the views.

• The route departure warnings were more helpful than I expected. There were a few miles of trail that were hard to follow and when the watch beeped at me to warn me that I was not on the planned route, I was able to make my way back to the trail.

• The battery life. This was a 50 mile hike over 4 days. I had most of the battery hungry settings enabled the entire trip and I still had 20% battery when I got back to my car. I paused the hiking workout each night when I got to camp, but I used it frequently during the day with the screen set to wake on wrist raise and the GPS set to high accuracy. I did turn off bluetooth because my phone was on airplane mode anyway.

• The flashlight. I used this frequently at camp and in my tent. I don't like to keep my headlamp on my head all the time so having a flashlight on my wrist was super convenient, though it's hard to do anything that requires two hands and a light because it's not possible to perform a task with two hands and keep the light pointed in the right direction. Overall it's a great convenience feature but it doesn't replace a proper headlamp.

Things that could use improvement:

• I started the workout as I left my car, but I forgot to program in my pack weight. This option seems to only be available prior to starting the workout. I realized a few miles in that I had not set my pack weight, but I could not find a way to modify that setting while the workout was running or even when it was paused. It would be nice to be able to add this information while the workout is in progress. As a bonus, it would be even better if this could be adjusted during the workout as my pack weight changed (for example, hiking with full water bottles after filling up at a stream or having eaten all my food on the 4th day).

• The slope analysis criteria isn't clear to me. I am not sure how it determines the separation between slopes but occasionally I got to the top of a climb only for the next slope to be a climb as well so I wasn't actually at the top. It would be great if the user could tweak some of the criteria for their own purposes or join slopes together if they're consecutive climbs or consecutive descents.

• One thing I love about AllTrails (maybe the only thing because I hate the AllTrails app) is the ability to drag your finger along the elevation profile and see where on the route your finger was. You can mostly get the same information on the watch by going back and forth between the elevation profile page and the map page and looking at topo lines, but I did find myself planning to camp at the lowest elevation on my route and not being sure that it corresponded to the point on the map where there was flowing water.

• When you're using the map outside of a workout, the watch allows you to drop a pin and see the straight line distance to that pin. It seems while using the map during a workout, this is not possible. There were a few times where I wanted to get a rough estimate of distance to a landmark so I had to pause the workout, go into the map from the app list, and drop a pin for straight line distance. I don't see why this isn't possible from within the workout, maybe I'm missing something?

• One cool feature that I've never seen on any navigation device that I think would be really cool to have is similar to the slope analysis feature. When the device analyzes a GPX file, it would be super cool if it would build a list of potential water sources along the route and tell you a distance to the next potential water source. You can see the possible water sources on the map but it's not possible to measure the distance to them without pausing the workout and dropping a pin on the map from the app list to get a straight line estimate to the next water source. I know that I can hike about 4 miles on a liter of water so it would be cool to have a distance estimate to the next water source so I can plan my refills more easily and avoid filling up on heavy water when I might not need to.

• I only use the wake on wrist raise during a workout because I don't like the watch lighting up and distracting me when I'm just chilling at home or at camp. I have wake on wrist raise disabled in the settings for this reason. I like that the workout settings allow you to enable wake on wrist raise during a workout because when I'm active, it's convenient to flip the watch up and have the map or slope page immediately displayed. My complaint is that while I was at camp with the workout paused, the system still kept the wake on wrist raise active even though I had it disabled in the display settings. It seems that even with the workout paused, the wake on wrist raise function remains enabled.

• The wake up alarm time seemed to not allow me to change it while a workout was paused? I'm going to have to pay attention to this because I changed the wake up time so I could get on the trail earlier on the second day but the alarm went off at my usual wake up time instead of the adjusted wake up time. It could be user error but I think the watch might not respect changes to the wake up time while a workout is paused.

Overall I am super happy with the functionality of this watch. It did nearly everything I wanted and even some things I didn't know I wanted. It's going to be my primary navigation device on trail from now on and I'm going to gift my standalone Garmin to my 5 year old nephew so he can play around with it.

This thing is awesome but there are a few things I haven't been able to figure out. Maybe they don't exist?

Is there any way to configure workout settings and workout page data fields from the app instead of on the watch? It's a bit tedious to go though each workout mode that I use and configure each individually.

For navigation along a route/track during a workout, is it possible to keep the navigation reminder active without the voice announcement? I'd prefer if the watch only beeped to tell me to look at the screen instead of beeping and then saying "turn left".

I have a weird problem with my 2021 500 EXC-F. Very infrequently, the bike will just shut off while I'm riding almost like I've hit the kill switch. It's probably only happened maybe 10-15 times since I bought it new in 2021. It typically happens when I'm riding pavement between 70-80 mph on my way to or from the trails. Everything feels fine and then the engine shuts off and immediately the bike is engine braking. The check engine light illuminates as soon as this happens, but it does not flash to indicate what the problem is.

It's got a Vortex ECU, the intake reeds have been removed, and there's a PMB endcap on the exhaust but other than that there are no other power mods. The bike has about 18,000 miles, but this has happened even when the bike was much newer.

I suspect an electrical problem, but it doesn't make sense to me that it would happen primarily at a specific speed range on smooth ground. A loose connection seems like it would rear its head when bouncing over rocks, right?

How would you go about troubleshooting this? It happens so intermittently that I mostly ignore it. I just pull the clutch in, hit the starter, and the engine fires right back up like nothing ever happened. I don't even have to stop and pull over, just fire it right back up while I'm rolling down the road.