There used to be three reasons not to use Garmin Connect for transferring trailrunning routes to your watch
- For years, Garmin did a forced elevation correction on the courses, based on an inaccurate digital elevation model (DEM). This resulted in ridiculously large differences between Garmin’s estimates and the actual elevation gains. For mountain courses, you want to monitor your vertical speed. You also want to track your progress during a climb. Garmin’s elevation numbers could not be used for these purposes.
Luckily, after many years, Garmin finally has fixed this issue in 2025. I checked with several races in the Alps, which all turn out pretty good regarding elevation precision.
Unfortunately, two valid reasons to bypass Garmin Connect for course creation remain : - Garmin adds rubbish turn-by-turn directions for trailrunning (see article #5 for more details)
- Garmin Connect has limited course creation options, more or less forcing you to use other mapping tools anyway.
Luckily Garmin Connect is not mandatory, there are other options to get your routes uploaded to your watch. Independent of the option chosen, the file has to be in .fit format, because that is the binary format used by Garmin. Mapping software often offers export to this format. Alternatively, gpx or tcx files can be converted using plenty of online tools.
Option 1 – Wired
This is by far the simplest solution, but requires the watch specific charging cable.
- Connect your Garmin with this USB cable to the laptop and
- Copy the file(s) to the X:\GARMIN\NEWFILES folder.
- Disconnect the cable
The course will now be available on the watch for navigation.
Option 2 – Wireless
This is a more advanced solution to set up, but in the end it is much easier to use because you do not need to go and find your Garmin cable.
GRouteLoaderIQ is a small CIQ app you can install on your Garmin watch. It can connect to webservers to download route files. You can find this app in the CIQ store:
https://apps.garmin.com/nl-NL/apps/f03dbbbc-c4b8-4da8-af9c-f262af8c2d0e
The creator has a lot of information on his website, including a pdf with instructions which I am not going to repeat here. In case you are interested to go the wireless sync way, have a look at
https://sites.google.com/view/grouteloader/grouteloaderiq
The webserver can be anything, the recommended options are:
– Laptop: GRouteLoader windows app with Caddy webserver built-in
– iPhone: Use the TinyServer app as the webserver
– Android: Use the Gexporter app as the webserver
Let’s zoom in a bit more to the laptop solution, because that is what I use most of the time. The GRouteLoader windows application can do a lot, but I only use it for it’s build-in Caddy webserver. So for me the full procedure for a pre-planned trail course is as follows:
- Upload or Create the course into plotaroute.
- Optionally improve the course (snap-to-map)
- Optionally add or remove turns
- Optionally add waypoints
- Download the course to a .fit file on your laptop
- Move that fit file into the folder where Caddy is configured to serve his files from
- Start GRouteLoader on the laptop (this automatically starts Caddy as well)
- Open GrouteLoaderIQ on the watch
- Connect to the caddy webserver (predefined menu item) and select your course
The course will now be available on the watch for navigation.