Steve B. , thanks for that advice. I did actually do that a couple days ago - disconnected all of the BT links, deleted and re-installed the app, paired up everything again via BT. Still have the same issues. I even went into my phones settings and shut down everything related to Connect that could cause battery drain: turned off location services, turned off background app refresh, cellular data. And yet, while I am riding, there is still battery drain from the Connect app running in the background - which should not be possible given that I turned off background app refresh.
I'm at a loss here. Very frustrated.