Due to the enormous amount of rain we have been seeing in the southeast lately, my road bike has been seeing more use as all of the trails are soaking wet. With no end in sight, it looks like my legs are going to continue to get in some road spinning until mother nature decides to play nice. Weren’t we having something called a drought at some point in time?

Anyways…the increased road riding has given me the time to really test out the mapping features on the new Garmin Edge 705. A couple of friends of mine decided that they wanted to try out a new route on Monday that was a charity ride in our area. Normally, I hate doing new routes or trails without the aid of someone who has ridden it before. I am not a fan of wasting time with a map as we try to figure out if we are actually lost or the next turn is really just at the end of that next hill. Some like the adventure of that kind of riding…I just like to ride. With road routes, you have the increased stress of traffic and even when it is a known route (like this one was for a charity ride with multiple mileage options), you won’t know if it is well marked until you get there.

Google Maps and Garmin GPX

View Larger Map
Jeremy went to the ride site and found the Google map (zoom out on map above to see route) that gave the exact turn by turn directions for the route. Sweet! At least we have a map! As I sat there starring at the Google Map, the thought occurred to me…there has to be someway to get that map on the Garmin Edge 705. With the 705, you have to export maps, like the Google Map, to a GPX file that the Garmin can read as a course. Luckily, this Garmin came with the street mapping accessory, so I would be able to get turn by turn directions as we rode.

Problem #1 – As it turns out…Google likes to keep their maps pretty close to the chest, so there is no export option…what you see is what you get.

Solution #1 – With a simple Google search (the irony!), I was able to find a java script code that would take the map you see above and turn it into a GPX format! Sweet! You can find the code here. All you do is drag that simple code to your bookmarks bar and when you are on the page of your Google Map route…click the GMAPtoGPX link in your bar. When that new window shows up, click the full button. Take that code and save it in a text editor as routename.gpx. Once you have that file, upload it into your Garmin Edge 705′s GPX folder and you will be able to load the route and get turn by turn directions. It is really that easy.

The Road Ride with the Garmin Edge 705

Having done this for the first time, there are some things I am going to do differently next time around.

Modify Google Map – For this route, I did not modify the Google Map to our actual starting point. I left the official route loaded. Now, I was able to start the timer on the Edge 705 to record the entire ride, and the turn by turn directions started as soon as we hit the route…but it is very easy to modify the original route.

Change Settings – In its current configuration, the Garmin Edge 705 beeps every time you turn. This is perfect for when a turn is coming up as it alerts you without the need to stare at your stem the entire ride, but it also beeps when you change compass directions. I need to dig into the settings and see if there is a way to turn off the beeping for the compass heading changes. It can get annoying to hear something off your bike every time the road bends.

Other than that…everything worked perfectly. We had a great ride on a new route without having to wonder where the next turn was or look at a paper map. We didn’t escape the rain though as we ended the last 5 miles in traffic and complete down pour. Oh well…at least we were out riding…

Side note: There are two sites that I currently use to upload data from Garmin units…Garmin Connect and Motion Based. Each have their own strengths and weaknesses and I am going to get into that specifically in a future post. The screen shot above is from Motion Based.