Route Planning

How to Easily Plan Your Virtual Run

Hey Busse Woods Running Club! It’s Tim here. With marathon training right around the corner, I thought it would be helpful to share a few helpful training tips that show you how to plan a running route and push it to your Garmin watch for easy turn-by-turn navigation.

Busse Woods has historically been the go-to running destination for our club, but as we all continue to practice social distancing, some of us are looking for ways to avoid overcrowded popular trails. During the shelter in place order, Caitlin and I have been experimenting with the built-in turn-by-turn navigation feature that Garmin offers known as “Courses.” With this feature, we have explored new routes that we would have never have considered in the past. It has kept running fresh at a time when weeks have become nothing but a blur.

Here is the best part! Garmin and Strava recently pushed two new updates that make route planning even easier. DC Rainmaker is an incredible resource for all things fitness technology. I pulled a few of his films and I highly encourage you to check them out (remember to Like his videos). The below videos will walk you through how you can easily discover new routes and experience something new with every run!

Note: You have to be a Strava Summit member to make this work with the few clicks that are highlighted below. For more information on how to manually draw your routes and push them to your watch, click here.


How to Find New Routes in Your Area

Note that this video was published a few weeks before Garmin allowed users to push favorite routes to a device for turn-by-turn navigation. Remember to watch the second film to learn how to complete the next step.


How to Sync Your Favorite Routes With Your Garmin Device


How to Use Garmin Courses (turn-by-turn)

Optional video. I bet you are a pro by this stage!