How to Export a Cycling Workout to Your Garmin Edge

The short version

1. Download the workout from SurgeIQ Lab as a FIT workout file.
2. Plug your Edge into a computer and copy the file into the Garmin/NewFiles folder.
3. Disconnect the Edge properly. It files the workout into its workout list.
4. On the bike: Training › Workouts › choose the workout › Ride, then press start.

If you train from the workout list, that’s the whole job. If you want the session on the Garmin calendar, or you’d rather send it from your phone than find a cable, rebuild it in Garmin Connect. Garmin Connect won’t import the file itself (Route B explains).

What you’re sending

A structured workout is the session written as steps, each with a length and a target. Take a standard threshold session:

The Edge runs that as five steps, one after another:

1. Warm-up15 min easy
2. Interval 115 min @ 95–100% FTP
3. Recovery5 min easy
4. Interval 215 min @ 95–100% FTP
5. Cool-down10 min easy

With the workout on the Edge you don’t have to remember “fifteen hard, five easy, fifteen hard”, and nothing gets taped to the stem. The Edge shows the current step and its target, counts down to the next one and beeps before it changes.

A workout file describes a ride that hasn’t happened yet. An activity file is a ride that has (what your Edge records), and a course is a route to follow. Garmin handles the three differently, which is why a workout file can’t be uploaded just anywhere. The file itself is covered in what’s inside a FIT workout file.

Step 1: Export the workout from SurgeIQ Lab

Available now: the free workout builder

No account needed. Build the session in the workout builder (warm-up, intervals, repeats and cool-down, with % FTP, watts, heart-rate or cadence targets), then select Download FIT workout. You get one .fit file holding the workout’s name, each step’s length and target, the repeats, and any note you added to a step. Nothing goes to Garmin and nothing is saved; the file lands in your downloads folder.

Coming with free accounts: your weekly plan

Accounts aren’t open yet. Once they are, your week sits on the This Week page, and each ride on it has:

• View workout: the step chart, the duration and the heart-rate, power and RPE targets.
• Why this workout?: the reason the session is in your week.
• Edit: move it, change its length or number of intervals, or make it easier. The structured workout is rebuilt, so the next file you download matches.
• Export to Garmin: Download .FIT for the Edge, plus trainer-app files for indoor sessions.

You can also download every ride in the week as one .zip. What you won’t find is a button that sends workouts to Garmin Connect. The page says so: sending workouts into someone’s Garmin account needs Garmin’s approval for its Training API, and SurgeIQ Lab doesn’t have it.

Account features coming soon — see what’s planned.

Check it before you export

Thirty seconds tonight saves a confused interval tomorrow. Look at:

• total time, and whether it fits the time you have;
• the warm-up: long enough for what comes after it?
• interval length, number of repeats and the recovery between them;
• the cool-down;
• the targets and what they’re based on. A % FTP target becomes watts using the FTP set on your Edge, not the one in SurgeIQ Lab (see why your FTP matters).

Step 2: Pick a route onto the Edge

For tomorrow’s session, if you’re at a computer, Route A is quicker and nothing gets lost in the retyping.

Route A: copy the file over USB

1. Plug the Edge into your computer with its USB cable.
2. Open the Edge in your file browser (on Windows it shows up as a portable device or drive), then open Garmin and then NewFiles.
3. Copy the downloaded .fit file into NewFiles.
4. Eject the Edge before you unplug it.
5. On the Edge, open Training › Workouts. The workout is listed under its name.

On a Mac, Garmin’s Edge 1040 manual says the computer won’t see the Edge by default and points you to Garmin Express for working with its files. Riders often use a separate file-transfer app to reach the folders, but Garmin doesn’t document that, so we can’t promise it for your setup. If the cable is the problem, Route B skips it.

For a whole week at once, unzip the download and copy the .fit files, not the .zip. On your computer the files are named by date; on the Edge each workout shows only its own name, so two rides called “Endurance ride” look identical in the list. Load each one the night before, or delete last week’s copies as you go.

Route B: rebuild it in Garmin Connect

Garmin documents no way to import a workout file into Garmin Connect. Its import feature is for activities, rides that already happened. What Garmin Connect can do is build the same workout in its own editor and send it to your Edge:

1. In the Garmin Connect app, open the menu and select Training & Planning › Workouts › Create a Workout. On the website, it’s Training & Planning › Workouts.
2. Choose cycling and enter the steps from SurgeIQ Lab: warm-up, each interval and recovery (or a repeat block), and cool-down, with the same lengths and targets.
3. Save it and give it a name you’ll recognise on the Edge.
4. Select Send to Device (or the send icon), choose your Edge, and sync.

If you type power in as fixed watts, convert from the FTP you trust first: 95–100% of 250 W is 238–250 W. Fixed watts don’t move when your FTP does, so you’ll have to edit those workouts after a new test. The full walk-through, including how to check that the sync went through, is in how to send a workout from Garmin Connect to your Edge. Route B is also how a session gets a date on the Garmin calendar; see putting a training plan on the Garmin calendar.

Step 3: Find it and ride it

On an Edge 540, 840, 1040 or 1050:

1. Select Training › Workouts.
2. Choose the workout.
3. Select Ride.
4. Press the start button.

The Edge shows the current step, its target and your numbers. As a step is about to end it beeps and counts you into the next one. The lap button ends a step early and moves on. Model-by-model controls for pausing, repeating and ending steps are in how to start a structured workout on a Garmin Edge.

The night-before checklist

• Edge charged, and the power meter and heart-rate strap paired and on fresh batteries.
• The FTP on the Edge matches the one your plan uses.
• The workout is under Training › Workouts. Open it and scroll the steps once.
• A road picked for the session. Two 15-minute threshold intervals need two uninterrupted 15-minute stretches, which rules out most commutes (more in riding intervals outdoors).
• Old copies of the same workout deleted, so you don’t start last week’s version.

After the ride: Strava, and planned vs completed

Getting the workout onto the Edge is half the loop. The other half is what happens to the ride afterwards:

1. PlanSurgeIQ Lab writes the workout
2. Executethe Edge steps you through it
3. Recordthe Edge records the ride
4. Syncthe ride reaches Strava
5. Analyzeplanned vs completed
6. Adaptcoming later

The Sync step depends on your own Garmin Connect account being linked to Strava; SurgeIQ Lab reads rides from Strava, not from Garmin. See what free accounts will include.