Garmin Data Hack

Big wet kisses to the sweaty runners in my life. You amaze me with your diligence in running in this summer’s heat. Same to the walkers, yogis, cyclists, and all others working up a sweat and tracking it on your watch.

I know that Garmin is under attack and we all fervently hope that they will be back in business in a few days. I know also that some of you are driving yourselves crazy without the ability to sync to Garmin Connect. (You know who you are.) I’ve done some research and you can get your data from your watch without Garmin Connect. Here’s how to get your activities.

First, plug your watch into your computer. If Garmin’s program comes up, just quit it. You don’t want it. Then open your watch as if it were an additional drive. Copy the whole thing to your hard drive. It should look like this:

Open the Activity folder. Those files contain all your runs, yoga, and whatever you’ve been doing.

You can open these files directly in three different programs. I’m going to use Runalyze as my example because I think it does the nicest job and because it is the hardest to figure out how to upload data. The other two are much simpler to figure out.

  • http://www.rainorshine.bike (No registration required and it allows you to convert your file to a .csv format that you can import into Excel. But not as nice as the other two.)
  • https://runalyze.com/ (The best in my opinion. Lots of data and graphs and relatively easy to upload a batch of files.)
  • https://quantified-self.io/dashboard (Does a nice job of giving graphs and interpretive data from your Activity files.)

Runalyze

To use Runalyze, first register for it than hover over the plus sign in the upper right corner. Click Activity Upload.

Click to Upload, then select all the files you want analyzed from the Activity folder. It will take a few seconds to a few minutes to upload. Afterwards you will have a lovely dashboard of data.

There are fewer options for getting steps and sleep. I will let you know if I figure it out.

In other news, Steve insisted that we get a portable air conditioner for the workout/yoga room to reduce the load on the central air and to provide a cooler environment that might tempt us into working out inside. I tried it out last night and it was a lot more fun to use the spinning bike with cold air blowing on me. I think that this environmental solution will help me improve my fitness.

Sending good fitness vibes to you today. Be well, friends!

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