How to export a GPX from Strava or Garmin Connect

From Strava

1. 1. Open strava.com in a web browser and sign in. The phone app does not offer GPX export; on a phone, open the site in the browser instead.
2. 2. Open the activity (your run of the course) or, for a planned course, the route in your saved routes.
3. 3. Open the menu marked with three dots on the activity or route page and choose Export GPX.

Strava changes its menus and which exports need a subscription from time to time. If the option isn’t where described, check Strava’s help pages for “export GPX”.

From Garmin Connect

1. 1. Open Garmin Connect in a web browser (connect.garmin.com) and sign in.
2. 2. Open the activity from your activity list.
3. 3. Click the gear icon at the top right of the activity and choose Export to GPX.

Runners report that exports of long activities can time out when Garmin’s servers are busy. If it fails, try again later, or save the activity as a course in Garmin Connect and export the course instead.

Clean it up before you plan

• Cut the extras. A recorded run often includes the walk to the start, a warm-up or the jog back after the finish. Everything in the file is treated as race, so trim it in a route editor such as gpx.studio.
• Expect it to be a little long. Races are measured on the shortest line around every corner; you and your GPS took a wider one. Up to about 2% over the race distance is normal.
• Use last year’s route only if it hasn’t changed. Compare it with the organiser’s current course map before you rely on it.

Why the recorded climbing reads high

Total climbing is the sum of every rise in the file, however small. A GPS or barometer altitude that wobbles by a couple of metres from point to point adds a little climb at every wobble, and over a marathon those add up to far more than the hills.

To show how much, we took the Berlin Marathon’s surveyed profile, which climbs 54 m, and added a random error of up to ±2 m to each point (one every 28 m). The total climbing jumped to 965 m. Smoothing it over ±100 m, as the gpx2pace planner does with every uploaded file, brought it back to 126 m.

So a big climbing figure on a recorded run is not a reason to distrust the route, but it is a reason not to quote it. If your file looks much hillier than the race claims, the GPX checks explain what to look for.