Written by Beth Dougherty
Interested in joining a weekend run but nervous you’ll get lost? We practice No Strider Left Behind, but it’s nice to have a backup plan in case you end up out of sync with the group. It’s especially nice if you are like me and you have no idea where you are despite living here for an eternity.
A big shoutout to Andrew Burnett, who creates course maps for our weekend runs and shares them ahead of time! Thanks also to Jen IsHere for showing me how to do this.
There are many ways to sync a shared course map to your watch. Here are two options that are straightforward, can be done on your phone/watch only, and don’t require downloading GPX files.
Option 1: Use the shared Garmin Connect map.
- Open the map provided in the Facebook (or other) post. It should open in Garmin Connect.
- Sign In to Garmin Connect. It should stay on the browser version of Connect but might open the app if you have it.
- The browser version of Garmin Connect will offer you an option when viewing the map to “Send to Device.” Select that option, select your watch, and click send to device.
- If it opens in the app, the app will automatically save the route and show a tiny sync symbol as an option. Click that and select your watch to sync it.
Option 2: From the shared Strava map.
- Make sure you have enabled Strava to sync routes to your Garmin device. Open your Garmin App, Go to Settings > Connected Apps > Strava > Enable courses. You only need to do this once.
- Open the map provided in the FaceBook post. (You can also open the Strava app and open the map in the Strava post made by the HCS Group.)
- Login to Strava if you opened the map from Facebook.
- Save the route in Strava.
- Go to Maps > Routes > Saved and make sure the route is starred. The star option will be to the far right side (It is off the screen on my phone). Starred routes will be sent to Garmin Connect and your watch when you sync.
- Sync your watch.
Before the run starts.
- Select Run on your watch.
- Click the middle button on the left. (Your watch might be different.)
- Go to Navigation.
- Go to Courses.
- You should see the course you saved in the list. Select the course.
- Press Do Course. This loads the map.
- When you are ready to run press Go, as usual.
Hope to see you out there!
If you run into problems, I can try to help, but there are more detailed instructions here: https://support.strava.com/…/115000919304–Syncing…
