When I’m training for a long-distance running event like a marathon, there’s one feature I use on my Garmin Epix Pro, and now on the Garmin Fenix 8, that proves more useful than almost any other – route creation. With a few taps on Garmin Connect, I can ask the app to automatically generate a circular route that starts and ends in the same place. Occasionally the distance needs tweaking – it might serve up an 18.5 km run when I selected 20 km – but generally, the feature works splendidly.
Once I have the route, I send the GPX file to my best Garmin watch by syncing it – the work of a moment – and bam, I have turn-by-turn directions on my watch via maps and alerts to turn at the correct times. This allows me to completely switch off from having to navigate my way around the course and simply focus on my run.
Many of the best running watches are full of this sort of automation, from virtual pacers to target heart rate zones, that takes a bit of the mental load off during a big run. However, during my extensive testing of almost every running watch brand around, only Garmin can pull off this sort of route creation feature to make it easy and seamless to use on the fly. And thanks to the new Garmin Fenix 8 and Garmin Enduro 3, things are only about to get better.
In an exclusive chat with TechRadar, Jon Hosler, product manager for Garmin Fenix 8 during its development, talked us through the new dynamic routing feature on the Garmin Fenix 8 and Enduro 3. Dynamic routing effectively allows you to run a set distance, ending at your starting point, without doing as much forward planning. Even if you deviate from the route you originally planned, your watch will intelligently recognize what you’re up to and reroute you with the original distance selected in mind.
“We've noticed that a lot of people like to deviate from their course and do something slightly different, or, you know, a road's closed that day, and they need to go a different way,” said Hosler, “and that can really derail that run completely if you don't know where you are.
“It’s now more adaptive. If you do change your route midway through, [your Garmin watch] will remember that you wanted to go that 5 kilometers or 10 kilometers and create a new route in the moment, that gets you back at that same distance. If you want to run around the lake for a second and then still get back at 5 kilometers, you know, we're trying to make that possible."
While staying in Paris during the Olympics, I had to deviate from my planned running route due to road closures for the cycling events and this feature would certainly have helped me stay on track. But there’s more to dynamic routing: it can also route you back to your starting point during unplanned runs with set distances.
“The second half of [this feature] is some people know where they're running, but just like a little confidence that they can get back to where they started from easily. If you go into a run and set a target, we give you a reminder throughout the run but don't give you turn-by-turn guidance.
"At 40%, so, for example, once you get to two miles, we would start creating a back-to-start route automatically, and prompt you ‘Would you like to route back?’ and [if the runner selects yes] we give you that route suggestion, just for the second half of your run.”
These changes to one of my favorite running watch features will be invaluable to people like me: runners who travel a lot and train for long-distance runs. It’s often hard to find circular routes to run the sort of distances we need to in training, especially in new areas, but Garmin is determined to make it easier.
