Today I am (at long last) finishing up the Garmin Connect website series. If you want to look at the whole series, you can start here: Garmin Connect Overview.

I really like using the site when I want to look at my stats and other information at a glance. I still find the watch a bit cumbersome to use to find the information I am looking for. That is totally on me! I like the larger format of the website, and since I know I can see this stuff there, I tend to keep going back to it instead of making it a habit to retain how to do something on the watch. I kid you not, sometimes I have to go to The Wrinkled Runner YouTube channel to watch my own tutorials!

A Few More Bits of Info

There are just a few more things I want to go over on the site that may help you.

The Daily Summary

This is basically the same as your Home screen on the phone app. You can easily get to yesterdays information, though.

There are a few more details you can see as well.

You are able to get to the Running Activity page easily.

Which will show you the full stats on whatever run you completed that day.

You can also choose to see your current Training Status (VO2 Max estimate, whether you are “Maintaining, Productive, Recovery, etc.) and then go to another page to see how your month or year looked with graphs.

When you go into the more detailed analysis, you can see your “Acute Training Load”, which takes your data and tells you if you are Low, Optimal or High based on history and fitness level.

A training load that is too high means you may be overtraining.

All the other stats you see on the app are on this page as well, also in more detail.

Challenges

If you like a challenge, there are a whole bunch you can tap into in the Challenges Tab. All you have to do is join them.

I haven’t intentionally joined any through the Garmin, but I do have the “successful” badge come up from time to time so I’m not sure if you are already technically joined or not for all of them.

When I do a challenge for running that isn’t a race, I do the Conqueror Challenges. They are not that expensive, easy to do even if you aren’t a racer and you get a very nice medal at the end.

Calendar

The calendar shows you all your runs for either the week, month or year. Scroll to the bottom, and you will find your distance (along with time and calories burned). This is cool for seeing your overall distance, especially at the end of the year.

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News Feed

I don’t really use the news feed feature. I’m not on Strava, so the running social media aspect is kind of lost on me. Your news feed (well, my news feed) is pretty boring because I don’t follow anyone and my profile is locked so it’s just “post” after “post” of my own runs.

Training and Planning

I’m only going to mention this tab because it has so much to offer, but I have gone over how to do a lot of this in different blog posts and YouTube videos (see the box at the end of this post).

Play with everything, and look at the workout builder, training plans, courses, etc. This tab can add some excitement to your running, so take a look!

If you are looking for a race, go to the “Races and Events” section, and you can see all the races near you!

When we lived on the waterfront here in Buffalo, there seemed to be a 5K every weekend at the marina we could see from our window. I would have no idea what the race was for or how people found out about them. With this section, as long as you give Garmin permission to use your location, you can get tuned in to what races are near you. This is great if you are training for longer distances and want to quickly find a tune up race.

This feature lets you click on the race, which sends you to a pop up window with more details and a link to the website to sign up! Couldn’t be easier!

The Rest of It

Connections and Groups are for those of you who are social runners! I am “social” with my clients and family members that I run with, but not online. It looks like you can choose to connect with others and also join groups. If that’s your thing…have fun with that!

You can also go through all your Badges, Personal Records and Goals.

This is a really comprehensive site that I think a lot of Garmin wearers are missing out on. It’s probably in the booklet you get with the watch, but who reads all the booklets we get, lol!

If there is anything I missed that you think is a real game changer, let me know and I’ll add it to the post.