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November 1, 2026

RunCulture now works with Garmin!

Big news: RunCulture now works with Garmin. Connect your account to Garmin Connect™. Your workouts for the next 14 days show up on your Garmin watch, step by step and with a pace target, and you can send your routes along as courses. Here's how it works and how we handle your data.

A Garmin Forerunner watch on a wrist next to a RunCulture workout card: the ‘Active plan · Sync with Garmin Connect™’ badge above a tempo session with a 15 min warm-up, 20 min at 8:20 min / mi, and a 10 min cool-down, with a sync line to the watch, which shows 2.73 mi, 25:10, and a pace of 8:20 halfway through the tempo block

Big news: RunCulture now works with Garmin! It was one of your most requested features, and starting today, you can connect your RunCulture account to Garmin Connect™.

Checking your plan on your phone and trying to remember how many repeats you have left mid-run: those days are over. Once you connect, your workouts show up on your watch. Your watch guides you through each workout step by step, from warm-up to cool-down, and alerts you when you're running too fast or too slow. You can send your routes along as courses.

At a glance:

Your plan on your watch: the next 14 days, step by step and with a pace target. When you change your plan, the changes carry over automatically.
Your privacy: what we receive, what we send to Garmin, and what we don't do.

How to connect

    Click Connect to Garmin Connect™. You'll go to Garmin, where you sign in and give RunCulture permission.
    Leave the ‘Workout Import’ (for your plan) and ‘Course Import’ (for your routes) permissions turned on. You'll then return to RunCulture automatically.

You can also connect right from your plan. Click the Active plan · Sync with Garmin Connect™ badge at the top of your plan page and choose Connect to Garmin Connect™ in the pop-up. After connecting, you'll return to the same pop-up with syncing already turned on. Click Save, and your plan goes to your watch.

You'll need a RunCulture account and a Garmin Connect™ account that your watch syncs with. Right now, the connection works with every RunCulture account. A premium account is coming later, and we'll let you know which features it includes when the time comes.

Your plan on your watch

At the top of your plan page, you'll see the Active plan · Sync with Garmin Connect™ badge. Click it to open the Active plan pop-up. Turn on Sync with Garmin Connect™ and click Save. Your upcoming workouts will then show up in Garmin Connect™. Under Last sync, the pop-up shows when your plan last synced. Click the badge above to preview the pop-up.

The dot in the badge shows the status:

Green: this plan syncs with Garmin Connect™.
Orange: the last sync didn't go through. We'll try again automatically.
Red: this plan isn't syncing, for example because syncing is off or you haven't connected Garmin Connect™ yet.

You'll also find the same pop-up in your plan under Share and export, at Send to Garmin Connect™.

One plan at a time: your active plan

One plan at a time goes to your watch: your active plan. If you have more than one plan, other plans show a Make active · Sync with Garmin Connect™ badge with a red dot: that plan isn't syncing yet. If you're already syncing a plan, that badge opens the same pop-up with syncing already turned on. When you click Save, this becomes your active plan and goes to your watch. We then remove the upcoming workouts of your previous plan from Garmin Connect™.

If another plan becomes your active plan without you saving in this pop-up, syncing stays with your previous plan. The red dot and a message in the pop-up let you know. Click Save to switch it over.

What goes to your watch

The next 14 days. Today and the 13 days after. Every night, that window moves forward a day, so you always have two weeks ready.
Your runs. Rest days, strength training, cycling, and swimming stay off your watch.
Step by step, just like your workout card. Warm-up, blocks, repeats with recovery, strides, and cool-down, with the same duration as on your workout card. A step with a distance, like a block at race pace, goes along as a distance.
A name you'll recognize and a description. Each workout is named after your workout in RunCulture. The description includes the steps, the purpose of the workout, your tips, your own note, and a link to your plan.
Optional workouts, with "(optional)" after the name. If you'd rather keep them off your watch, turn off Include optional workouts in the pop-up.
Your race as a simple workout: warm up until the start, then race to the finish. Press the lap button to move to the next step. There's no pace target, so you set your own pace.
Linked routes as courses. Read more below.

Names, descriptions, and paces are in your own language and in kilometers or miles, just like you use RunCulture.

Pace targets

On every step with a pace, your watch alerts you when you're outside it. The center is the pace from your workout card. The leeway around it depends on the pace itself: the slower the pace, the wider the range, because GPS fluctuates more at an easy pace. Easy segments always get a little extra room. A few examples:

An interval at 4:20 min / km6:58 min / mi: your watch beeps outside about 4:10–4:30 min / km6:42–7:15 min / mi.
A tempo block at 5:00 min / km8:03 min / mi: outside about 4:45–5:15 min / km7:39–8:27 min / mi.
An easy run at 6:00 min / km9:39 min / mi: outside about 5:40–6:20 min / km9:07–10:12 min / mi.

Not every step gets a target. You run recovery and walking between repeats, workouts by feel (like fartlek and hills), and run/walk without a pace target. If such a step has a pace on your workout card, you'll still see it as a note.

In the pop-up, you decide how strict your watch is:

Pace targets on your watch: On every step with a pace (default), Only on faster segments (you run easy segments by feel), or Off (no alerts, but the pace still shows as a note).
Pace range: Tight (5 seconds less), Normal, or Wide (10 seconds more).
Pace target for strides: strides are so short that your watch may still say you're too slow while you're already speeding up. If that bothers you, turn this off.

When your plan changes, your watch follows

You edit a workout or move it. The workout in Garmin Connect™ is updated or moves along to the new day, so you won't end up with duplicates. If a workout is removed, it disappears from Garmin Connect™ too.
Your plan recalculates, for example after a test run. Your workouts then get the new paces.
Past workouts stay as they are.

Updates happen in the background. You don't have to do anything.

On your watch

Your workouts appear on their day in your Garmin Connect™ calendar. Once your watch syncs with the Garmin Connect™ app, they're on your watch too. On the day itself, you'll find your workout under your workouts or in your watch's training calendar. The name of that menu varies by watch.

Done with your run? You give feedback on your workout in RunCulture, just like before.

Your routes on your watch

Send a saved route from the route planner to Garmin Connect™ as a course in one step, including drinking water points along the way. If a workout has a linked route, it goes to your watch along with your plan. If you'd rather it didn't, turn off Include linked routes in the pop-up. Read all about routes in Your route, straight to your Garmin watch.

Your privacy

What we receive from Garmin: only your Garmin user ID, the keys for the connection (stored encrypted), and the permissions you granted. We don't request any health data, and we don't retrieve any activities from Garmin.
What we send to Garmin: the workouts from your active plan, with their name, description, steps, and date, plus the routes you send yourself or link to a workout.
What we don't do: we don't sell your Garmin data, share it with others for their own purposes, or use it for AI.

You'll find everything in our privacy statement, in section 10 about the Garmin Connect™ integration.

Stop syncing or disconnect

Turn off syncing: in the pop-up, turn off Sync with Garmin Connect™ and click Save. We then remove this plan's upcoming workouts from Garmin Connect™.
Delete your plan: that plan's upcoming workouts disappear from Garmin Connect™ as well.
Disconnect: in your profile under Connected apps with Disconnect, or in Garmin Connect™ itself. When you disconnect through RunCulture, we first remove your upcoming workouts from Garmin Connect™. Workouts you've already run stay put. After that, we delete your Garmin data on our side. Courses for your routes stay in Garmin Connect™. You can remove them there yourself when you no longer need them.

Have a Garmin watch? Open your profile and connect Garmin Connect™.

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