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The idea of having a GPS on my bike seemed amazingly attractive, but the first weeks working with the Garmin Edge 705 were pretty frustrating. I like the Garmin Edge: it is easy to ride a route and show it in Garmin Trainingcenter, but the otherway around of creating a route and riding it seemed impossible. Other Garmin softwarre like Basecamp and Mapsource were ment to do this, but they don’t work as fast and smooth if you frequent user of simple google map drawings. It’s a big omission on the part of Garmin: the ability to plan a route or course on your desktop computer and send it to the device. All Garmin had to offer was a package that converge googlemap-routes into tracks to use on my Edge.

I gave up with all the Garmin software, but there are others that offer good routing software. I got so happy when I discovered GPSies.com. There are other sites that have similar functionality, like BikeRouteToaster and MapMyRide, but for me the process with gpsiescom works best. With gpsies.com you can draw a route in a googlemap format but also in other maps like Open Source Streetmap or Open Source cyclemap. Just click your starting point and click ‘follow route’. If google maps refuses to follow (for a small tunnel, or a blocked road that you know for sure you can pass) click walking.  This way you create your desired route/track in a minute. GPSies also provide an altitude profile based on google data. That is beautiful but my experience is  that the given elevation meters are always overestimated. Don't trust them and if you really want to know calculate them on other statistics that you might find in Cyclingcols.com or Climbybike.com. 

For riding your track with your Garmin Edge it is important to know the diference between trackpoints and waypoints. Your Garmin has a 100 waypoint limit. So you can use waypoints only as special markers for important turns, stops or information. Routes (like GPX routes) are made out of waypoints. So don’t download your track as a route into your Edge, cause if you do it is full forever.I made that mistake and I couldn’t not put any more routes in my Edge. The only solution was to trow away the whole routemap out of my Edge, restart my Edge twice!!! (otherwise the data is still in the memory) and after that create a new route map into my Edge.

If you want to use the navigate function (which will only work when you've installed some kind of routemap) you have to download your track as a GPX track. Personly I got tired of the navigation function bleeping for every minor turn, and the moments my Garmin wants to redirect me when I go with my bike where my car-bases map thinks I can’t go.

Best way to ride tracks is to download it as a Course (.tcx). When you have course ready to ride in gpsies.com there are two easy ways to transfer the course data to your Garmin 705.

Firstly, there is a big Export to Garmin button. This works with the Garmin Communicator Plugin. (download this on your computer once). Select Garmin Course TCX and use the download button. Perhaps you want to downsize the amount of trackpoints (use the button) and download it using the export button. You will find your course in your Courses folder that is under training in the Edge.

The other way it to download it in a two step procedure first to your computer and than to the courses folder into your Edge, but the direct export from gpsies.com workes fine for me.

Ride your route: Fire up the Garmin, clip it, select the course, and don’t forget to press 'start' at the start of your course. You’ll have a pink/purple line to follow on the map view and a load of other data. Most of the data I ignore  (because most of it is related to the pace that you have previously set), but it is a joy to follow my purpe line that I or someone else has created with care.







Sources:
Frank Kinlan's Blog
Simon Clayson