Mr. Garmin, what are you Connecting to?

I’ve become kind of dependent upon my Garmin Forerunner 305 since I’ve had it. It’s bulky compared to the newer models, but I can see my pace, my miles, and all sorts of information that I used to just guess at. I no longer have to figure out a strict route, because I can just turn around when the miles are right. And best of all, it gives me some feedback on how much I’m doing. So I’m pretty happy with the hardware. I’m even okay with the software that comes with the watch. The website, however… not so much.

Garmin Connect has traditionally been a place to store my runs online… and that’s about it. I can’t connect to anyone else or easily link to their runs, so it’s tough to track my friends. They’re supposed to release and API so I can grab the data for my website, but they never did. All I could find was the plugin for my sidebar, and some guy had to reverse engineer it.

Lately I’ve seen some warning labels and apologies on the site about features being temporarily disabled while they work on stuff. This might be annoying if it blocks me from uploading, but it’s actually a good sign. It means that they’re working on the site!

I looked around a little and found a pretty good blog post about the situation. You can get the latest news on Garmin Connect from the DC Rainmaker.