Using Your Garmin Watch With Runna

To connect your Garmin watch to your Runna plan, start by opening the Runna app and heading to your Profile.

From there:

Once connected, your Runna workouts will automatically sync to your Garmin Connect profile.

If you switch plans or make changes to your current plan, your Garmin workouts will automatically update to reflect those changes. When you mark a workout as complete, it will also be removed from your Garmin Connect calendar.

Important: The Garmin Connect app and your Garmin device are separate, so you may occasionally need to manually refresh the connection to ensure plan changes and completed workouts are reflected correctly.

If your workouts don’t appear to update straight away:

If you’ve accidentally skipped a workout on your watch and need to resend it, you can manually resync your workout from the Garmin Connect app.

To do this:

Once sent, refresh the Bluetooth connection between Garmin Connect and your watch so the workout can sync across successfully.

If your intended workout doesn’t appear under Workouts in Garmin Connect, open the Runna app and check that the session hasn’t been marked as completed or skipped. Workouts marked as complete won’t be available to resend to your watch.

If everything looks correct and the workout still isn’t appearing, try refreshing your Garmin Connect app and updating your Runna app to the latest version.

To enable automatic syncing from Garmin Connect to Strava, head to your Garmin Connect App > Settings → Connected Apps → Strava. Once connected, any Runna workouts recorded on your Garmin watch will automatically push through to Strava.

Although we can sync activities from Strava back to Runna, we’re unable to sync activities from Garmin → Runna → Strava due to data-handling limitations. For this reason, we recommend syncing directly from Garmin Connect to Strava.

Note: If you’re used to recording workouts on your phone or Apple Watch using the Runna app, you may notice a small difference when uploading to Strava from Garmin.

Garmin-recorded workouts will not include the “with Runna ✅” title or the workout description when uploaded to Strava. This is due to limitations in the Garmin workout file format, which doesn’t allow us to pass this information through.

Depending on your Garmin model and settings, there are a few different ways to start your Runna workout.

Option 1: From the Run Activity

Option 2: From Scheduled Workouts

Option 3: From the Training Calendar

Once started, your Garmin watch will guide you through the workout as planned. When you finish and save the workout, it will sync back to Runna automatically.

There are a few Garmin settings we recommend adjusting to get the best experience when following Runna workouts on your watch. These settings help ensure your workouts run smoothly and your data is easier to review afterward.

Please note that your Garmin workout will appear in the same unit of measurement (miles/kilometres) as your Runna plan. For a smooth experience, we recommend making sure your Garmin account is configured to the same unit of measurement.

By default, Garmin watches automatically create a new lap every 1 km or 1 mile. For longer intervals in Runna workouts (for example, 2km Repeats), this can cause laps to split partway through an interval and makes analyzing your average pace a little tricky.

We recommend turning off auto lap when following Runna workouts. If you’re heading out for a casual run, time trial or race, you may want to turn auto lap back on so your watch continues to provide regular pace updates.

Auto pause automatically stops your workout when your watch detects that you’ve stopped moving, such as at traffic lights. While this can be useful on easy runs, it can cause issues during interval workouts.

During recovery periods, especially if you’re walking, auto pause may stop the workout and pause the timer counting down to your next interval. We recommend turning auto pause off and manually pausing and resuming the workout if you’re forced to stop running briefly (for example, at traffic lights).

If you connect headphones to your compatible Garmin watch for music or podcasts, enabling audio prompts can be a helpful way to receive pace cues and workout alerts without needing to look at your watch.

To enable audio prompts:

You can enable or disable specific alerts based on what works best for you!

At the moment, we only support the syncing of 'Run' type workouts to your Garmin Training Calendar and to your watch. We also cannot sync other activity types recorded on your Garmin device, such as strength sessions, weights or yoga, back into Runna just yet.

However, you can use our new Calendar Sync Feature to schedule and keep track of all of your training and manually add any additional workouts into the app via the Activities tab!

All watches that support Garmin Coach will work with your Runna training plan, but not all devices will support audio cues and features will vary by model.

We’ve compiled a list of watches compatible with your Runna plan below, which was correct at the time of writing. For the most up-to-date list of supported devices, please check Garmin’s website.

When you run a workout on a Garmin watch, Garmin controls the audio prompts - not Runna. This means what you hear may differ from the Runna app.

Even if audio cues are enabled in Runna, Garmin will usually override them and use its own audio prompt settings. If your watch is compatible, make sure you’ve enabled audio prompts in Garmin Connect as outlined above.

This is usually caused by Garmin Auto Lap being turned on.

Auto Lap creates laps at fixed distances (e.g. every 1 km or 1 mile), which can cut across your structured workout steps (warm-up, recoveries, intervals). As a result, Garmin’s laps no longer match your planned segments in Runna, and your splits may look inaccurate or misaligned.

For structured Runna workouts, we recommend turning off Auto Lap on your Garmin device. This prevents Garmin from re-lapping your workout and ensures your splits align with your planned workout steps.

If your Garmin is asking you to press Lap or Continue to move through your workout, one of the following settings is usually turned on:

If you’re completing a hill workout, manual lap presses may be expected. Please see our Hill Workouts guide for more information.

If your GPS track, pace, or distance looks inaccurate on Garmin, this can affect what you see in Runna. That’s because Runna displays the activity data exactly as Garmin records and syncs it. Common causes of inaccurate Garmin GPS:

This usually happens when Runna can’t match your completed Garmin activity to the planned workout in your training plan. The most common reason is that the run was recorded as a free run on your Garmin, instead of starting the Runna workout that was sent to your watch.

If this happens, the activity may still sync into Runna, but it won’t automatically attach to the planned session. However, can manually link your completed activity back to your watch:

If you have any questions about using your Garmin watch with your Runna plan, we recommend checking out our support article “I’m having issues syncing Runna with my Garmin device - what should I do?”

If you’re still experiencing issues or have further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us via the in-app support channel. If the issue relates to your Garmin device itself or a technical problem with the watch, we’ll do our best to help, but you may need to contact Garmin Support directly for further assistance.