Garmin GPS outage leaves runners rudderless

Garmin fitness watch enthusiasts are among the most passionate folks in the world when it comes to their trusty tech.

So today’s mysterious outage affecting users of multiple popular Garmin models, when they attempted to begin a GPS activity, is likely to have caused significant angst among the community.

Users on the Garmin subreddit are reporting they’re seeing a mysterious and persistent blue triangle appear on the display when attempting to start a run or another activity where they’d usually connect to the satellites to track live location. As well as the blue triangle, which usually appears when users power on the phone, some users have also experienced their watches rebooting.

“We are researching reports of devices displaying a blue triangle when starting a GPS activity,” a message on the System Status portion of the Garmin site reads. “Holding the power button until the unit powers off, then turning it back on may restore functionality temporarily. We will provide more information on a permanent fix when available.”

Garmin is not yet offering a reason for the issues which has affected Fenix, Forerunner, Fenix, Vivoactive and Venu models among others. However, the sports tech site expert DC Rainmaker, speculates it may be an issue with the satellite pre-cache files.

“That file gets updated on your watch every few days, and generally goes stale within a week,” writes Ray Maker. “However, if a bad version of the file gets delivered, then chaos can ensue.”

Whether that is what happened remains to be seen, but the situation seems to be on the mend given I had very little issue in attempting to start a GPS-based run workout without issue this afternoon. Various reports around the web have suggested other devices are slowly returning to full functionality.

Pure Garmin angst

For Garmin power users, today’s outage would have put a real crimp in their plans. For those training for marathons and half marathons, training plans are absolutely precise and don’t offer that much in the way of flexibility. I can imagine this situation has caused plenty of angst for those who plan their week around a long run.

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