Has the Garmin 800 distance bug been fixed?
 

I'll be riding my first 400K this weekend, and I'm planning to use my Garmin 800 as I've done on the previous rando rides. I've read before about the device freezing up when going long distances though, and wondered if it has been fixed with firmware updates or not (I'm running 2.40 which AFAIK is the latest version). If so, great! If not, what setting would you recommend to minimize the chance of the GPS self-destructing during the ride? Current plan is to reset every 100 miles so that I can keep using the original cue sheet easily. I have data recording set to smart (I'm assuming that records less data points compared to the 1second option)

I thought the battery life on these was only like 7 hours?

they'll last 13hrs or so, and I can charge as I ride by hooking it up to a USB battery.

Best of luck on your 400k.

The bug has not been fixed. There were people reporting it again this week on the Garmin forums. I never experienced the issue myself, but I have only logged up to 360k (first day of a 800k) in one file.

On a long brevet, I zero the odometer at the start, so that I have a field that will show the total distance (assuming that the paper route sheet uses the total distance from the start). Then I stop and reset to save the data whenever is convenient. On a 400k, I may split the data at the control location closest to the 200k point.

Thanks! Did not think at all about zero'ing the odometer -- might give that a try as I'd be able to split the data just at the ~200k control as you say. It's crazy that Garmin's ignored this problem after so long...

I wrote a tool to merge multiple GPX log files into one, for uploading the combined output to sites like Strava or RideWithGPS. So if you ever have to split the recording of a ride into multiple segments (changing batteries, work around firmware bugs, etc) this might help.

My Garmin 800 froze up after just 55 km (35 miles) and 2.5 hours of riding earlier this week - neither the screen or buttons did anything, and the displayed kept displaying the same information (I was permanently doing 16.5 kph for the rest of the ride apparently). Letting it sit around after the ride until the Low Battery warning came on made it wake up again.

Got thru the ride with no malfunction. The odometer idea was fantastic, as it allowed me to adjust the meter every once in a while to keep it in line with the route sheet.

My 500 does that on longer brevets also - I can do a 4-button reset on it which unfortunately, resets everything. It picks up the course I loaded but I hate losing the accumulated totals.

Building routes with http://bikeroutetoaster.com/ seems to cause this to occur less often and moving forward, I'll break the total into smaller segments also.