# Garmin Livetrack: Location Showing the Whole Race/Route



## The Boz (Sep 28, 2011)

I've read and watched youtube videos all about Garmin live track, which is nice for friends to see where you are. But it doesn't strike me as adding much more functionality than the "Find My Friends" app on the iPhone. For races or long rides, as far as I know, it just shows your location on a map, perhaps with more accuracy and a better map.

What I'd like is for spouse/friends to be able to see exactly where I am riding along a planned route. Obviously Garmin has to know what route I am riding, but If I create/download a route and download it to my Garmin, and then start the course, I want others to see the whole planned course route, and they they can see how close I am to a feed zone or the finish of the race. Or my wife can see I'm getting close to the end of the ride and will be home soon (It doesn't really help her to just see a dot on a map up in the mountains...)

Will Garmin live track do this?


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## Harold (Dec 23, 2003)

No. The functionality you're asking for would require your Garmin to also transmit the course it loaded, which it will not do. I'm not aware of any service that does that.

That said, it doesn't take rocket science to come up with something close. Leave behind a printed map of your planned route. Your spouse or whoever is following your live track can then use their brain to match up your current location with your planned route. Not exactly what you're asking for, but reasonably close to it.

It would be useful for Garmin to implement this, though. At minimum through a setup process before you leave. You supply the course and then Garmin uses that map when showing your current location.


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## Psycho1 (Aug 26, 2014)

You could always "share" your course with who ever you want before the ride. I like live track, but several times, when my ride takes me to an area with no cell service it causes my garmin to lock up or not save my ride. 

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## Harold (Dec 23, 2003)

Psycho1 said:


> You could always "share" your course with who ever you want before the ride. I like live track, but several times, when my ride takes me to an area with no cell service it causes my garmin to lock up or not save my ride.
> 
> Sent from my LG-H872 using Tapatalk


Yeah, I don't bother with Live Track because this pretty much describes every ride of mine. The close-to-town trails that are only 10min from my house sit in a big, topographic bowl that cell reception simply doesn't penetrate. There's reception up on the mountain tops, but as soon as you get off of them, reception is gone again.


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## Psycho1 (Aug 26, 2014)

Harold said:


> Yeah, I don't bother with Live Track because this pretty much describes every ride of mine. The close-to-town trails that are only 10min from my house sit in a big, topographic bowl that cell reception simply doesn't penetrate. There's reception up on the mountain tops, but as soon as you get off of them, reception is gone again.


Yeah. It used to work alot better. But your correct, lost rides are on and off coverage, not Willing to use anymore because of the problems it causes. Bummer because it used to be a nice feature

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## Harold (Dec 23, 2003)

Psycho1 said:


> Yeah. It used to work alot better. But your correct, lost rides are on and off coverage, not Willing to use anymore because of the problems it causes. Bummer because it used to be a nice feature
> 
> Sent from my LG-H872 using Tapatalk


Where I ride, a cell phone is mostly only useful for features that don't require cell service (camera, offline maps). Anything that requires constant cell service is a total non-starter.

If you want the sort of tracking that Garmin Live Track offers, you need to use a SPOT or Inreach to bypass the cellular limitation. But those services don't offer exactly what OP wants, either.


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## The Boz (Sep 28, 2011)

Yeah, I figured what I was asking for a bit too much.

In two weeks I'll be doing the PCP2P, and this is the race map:









https://www.trailforks.com/route/park-city-point-2-point-2018/

There are just so many trails in Park City. As you could imagine, this isn't exactly easy for a non-mountain biker such as my wife to look at this map, and compare it to a dot on another map to figure out where I am and how far I have to go. Maybe, but not easy. Cell service in Park City has been getting a lot better, although there are still some dead spots I'm sure.


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## Harold (Dec 23, 2003)

It really sounds like what you're after is how Trackleaders does it. Which I'm pretty sure is done programmatically on the TL website.

Trans North Georgia 2018 live tracker by trackleaders.com


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## VegasSingleSpeed (May 5, 2005)

Harold said:


> No. The functionality you're asking for would require your Garmin to also transmit the course it loaded, which it will not do. I'm not aware of any service that does that.


I don't know about Livetrack, but any of the Garmin Inreach devices will do this through MapShare.


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