Originally Posted by
TimothyH
My experience is that other people's rides make terrible courses, that it is better to recreate it manually. What I mean is that little swerves can be seen in routes created from someone's activities. People don't ride in perfectly straight lines. GPS is sensitive enough that if I am not in the exact same spot in the roadway as the rider who recorded the activity then the GPS says I'm off course. Course found... Off Course.... Course found.... Off course... and on and on and on.
I'm not suggesting using actual recorded activities.
Other people were wondering how to import courses into Garmin Connect.
The trick is to import the course as an activity (since the only things you can import into Connect are activities).
What you are creating in ridewithgps (any course planner) is, basically, a synthetic track (an activity).
You load the nice, clean ridewithgps gpx track file as an activity into Connect
just to get it into Connect.
Then, you save the "activity" in Connect as a course so you can load it into your phone and then into your Garmin.
The gpx file you get from ridewithgps can't be loaded directly into Connect. That's why the instructions in the link I posted talks about using gpsies.
I'm not recommending this approach.
This is much more work than just copying the exported file to your plugged-in unit.
With a Polar device, Garmin Connect isn't going to be very useful to you anyway.
Originally Posted by
TimothyH
Also, you have to be a premium (paid) member of RwGPS to do direct write to a Garmin, correct?
Yes.
You also have to have the unit plugged into your computer.
That feature isn't that much more convenient than exporting the file and then copying it to your device (which is free).
Originally Posted by
TimothyH
Again, I use a Polar V650. Flow Web Services allows GPX or TCX route (course) import into what it calls Favorites. Anything marked as a favorite - routes, workouts, etc. - gets synced to the device. Here is what it looks like...
You probably should have mentioned that at the start.
Export the file from ridewithgps as a tcx or gpx track file (one of the first two options) and do whatever with the file.