Use more than one trail at a time (Adventurer, Runner, Spark)

Antonio Tavanti

Hi all, this is my first post and a Web search yielded no results.

I would like to know if it's possible to use more than one trail at a time in an activity (applies to any of the third-generation watches). I guess not.
What I mean is that we are given the ability to choose more than a single trail when activating the Follow a trail feature. These chosen trails would have all their own starting and ending points in the map as usual.

The reason behind this: I don't want to create full routes every time, especially if I'm changing only some parts of them. And actually it's single, discrete segments that I'm more interested in, namely those climbs or tracks in the woods or roads that I still know less (or don't know at all).
I'd like to upload these segments in the watch (which I can already do), then choose among them which ones to "enable" for the current activity.
Then the watch would serve me very well.

I also feel things would be more manageable and reusable this way, as now I'm forced to compose a fresh gpx every time I'm planning a new run, even if I have already drawn the gpx of the segments I'm only interested in.
It's kind of like the concept of encapsulation in programming, if you get what I mean - composing routines from smaller routines. Here composing trails on-the-fly, possibly (and probably) ignoring many parts which I already know or are completely irrelevant (such as the track feom my house to the hills, or anything like that).
In time also those segments which I now know little would pass into the "already-known" group, and so I could do without them when firing a new activity (i.e. I would not choose them).

Thanks in advance. Read this as a feature suggestion (and a strongly-wished one) if it van't be done yet.

tfarabaugh

It can't be done. The intent is that you upload a trail for the full activity you are planning and it gives you guidance for that activity, not just for segments of it. It sounds like you are looking for something more akin to Strava segments, which is not what this does. You can put a large trail in with multiple routes on it and it will show you when you're back on it when you hit a section you want to follow, but there is no way to load a list of trail segments to follow consecutively. I also doubt we will see this in the future as your is the first request I have seen for it, so there is likely not enough demand for it, and I imagine it would take a material amount of effort to implement it as you envision it, so there is likely not enough return for the investment, but you never know. TomTom will not comment on planned or future updates publicly (here or elsewhere) so we will just have to wait and see.

I hope this helps, please let me know if this answered your question. If it did, please mark it as a solution so others can look for it if they have the same question.

Antonio Tavanti

tfarabaugh wrote:

I also doubt we will see this in the future as your is the first request I have seen for it, so there is likely not enough demand for it, and I imagine it would take a material amount of effort to implement it as you envision it

I honestly don't think so, as no new functionality is needed here. The other trails would be drawn on the map using the same algorithms which are used now for drawing the trail. It's just a matter of calling the same functions again for each of the selected trails (a loop, that is).

The feature I'm looking for may indeed look like Strava segments, but only superficially because it has a different purpose altogether. It's just what we've got now on the watch but not limited to one, so that I can have on the display only the parts I know less of some particular route, or in a free workout I can see which relevant trails of some unexplored zone I'm nearing (another use case I've come up with now).
I get what you mean when you talk about the follow-a-trail "intent". Well, a very nice feature of the device gets limited without a reason in my opinion, but I can't do much about it I guess.

Thank you for your feedback. I'm marking your reply as an answer because overally you got what I meant and you tried to come up with the (only) possible workaround to it (which I dislike though):
"You can put a large trail in with multiple routes on it and it will show you when you're back on it when you hit a section you want to follow"

Antonio Tavanti

Just to update on this: out of curiosity I tried to combine the gpx of two trails in one file, using the online service provided by gpsies.com (Compare feature).
Apparently I could sync the resulting file to the watch seamlessly.

Start and finish are set on the first trail only, but on the whole the watch doesn't seem to complain of the disconnected parts.
I'm attaching an image of it.

If it works I guess it will be an ok workaround for what I was looking for.
I could even upload all Strava segments for a zone in a single trail and try them out in one or more runs always using that trail as a reference (this is another use case that just occurred to me).

Here's the pic:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/shwbrvye8dews3h/twotrails.jpg?dl=0

jjjohannn

I agree with Antonio
I am walking the Camino, so do 250 000 people per year. We need this function. Its a shame Antonio proofed TomTom wrong.....
By the way - how many tracks can be downloaded on a TomTom Runner3

tfarabaugh

jjjohannn wrote:

I agree with Antonio
I am walking the Camino, so do 250 000 people per year. We need this function. Its a shame Antonio proofed TomTom wrong.....
By the way - how many tracks can be downloaded on a TomTom Runner3

You can have 5 trails on the watch at a time. They are not adding any more functionality to the watches. Considering TT has left the wearables market and is not producing any new devices (and never even released the Adventurer in the US), we can safely assume at this point any updates will be limited to bug fixes (and even that may be limited - it has been over six months since the last update broke connectivity for many users and introduced battery drain issues and that is still unresolved). I would not expect much more development and certainly not something major particularly on the watch side (they may continue to tweak the MySports site and app, but not the watches themselves).

thewrongtrousers

tfarabaugh wrote:

You can have 5 trails on the watch at a time.

I currently have 8, so sorry but unless you mean something else this is incorrect.

jjjohannn

Thank you!

tfarabaugh

thewrongtrousers wrote:

tfarabaugh wrote:

You can have 5 trails on the watch at a time.

I currently have 8, so sorry but unless you mean something else this is incorrect.

Weird, it only lets me set up 5.

lampard

You can store up to 15 trails on your watch, see the user manual here: Manage trails with Sports

Cheers, lampard

tfarabaugh

tfarabaugh wrote:

thewrongtrousers wrote:

tfarabaugh wrote:

You can have 5 trails on the watch at a time.

I currently have 8, so sorry but unless you mean something else this is incorrect.

Weird, it only lets me set up 5.

I looked and it is 15, I actually just left the 1 out of my original post and follow-up (it was a typo).