Garmin marathon schedules and macs

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    Alright! I'll give it a go. This is exactly the method i used. I hope it works...post here if you have any trouble and i'll check my working again but you should be sweet.

    The idiot’s guide to making the Runnersworld garmin marathon schedules work on your mac.

    1.     Open ‘Garmin Training Center’ and go into your history.

    2.     Select a workout from your history…any workout will do.

    3.     Click “File/Export…” and save the file to your desktop (or anywhere). You can call this file anything you want…I’ll call it ‘macschedule’.

    This creates the “macschedule.tcx” file which is what you will edit to add the runnersworld schedule.

    4.     Create your schedule on Runnersworld and download this file, again save it to your desktop (or anywhere) to create the rwschedule.wkt file.

    This is the .wkt file which you will remove the data from and paste into the .tcx file.

     

    5.     Press down the ctrl key and click on the macschedule.tcx file, and select “open with…/other”. Find your applications folder (although it usually goeds here automatically) and choose ‘TextEdit’.

    6.     Do the same to open your rwschedule.wkt file in TextEdit.

    With both files open, you will now copy and paste ‘text’ from the rwschedule.wkt file into the macschedule.tcx file. Note that in the wkt file it looks messy, and in the tcx file everything is on neat lines…don’t worry about this. Spaces and returns don't matter in coding...only getting it right wth the '<' and '>' below is  what you need to worry about.

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    7.     With the rwschedule.wkt at the front, press cmd-f. Type in ‘<workouts>’ in the ‘find’ field (NOT the quote marks). . Make a note of where this word is…it’s about the 6th or 7th line of the start of text. (Note the plural is important! There are many mentions of the word ‘workout’ but only one use of ‘workouts.’ This is the start of the point you will want to ‘copy’.)

    8.     Leave the cursor to the left of the ‘<’on ‘<workouts>’, and scroll right down to the end of the rwschedule.wkt file and find, right at the end, “</workouts>”. Hold down the shift key and click to the right of the ‘>’. Copy all of this text.

    9.     Now go into the macschedule.tcx file and press cmd-f to find ‘<workouts>’ in this file.

    10.   Leaving the cursor to the left of the ‘<’, again scroll down to the end of the document. You should find, a few lines from the end, ‘</workouts>’. Hold down the shift key to select all of this text up to the right of the '>' and press delete. Then paste the text from the clipboard.

    This has added the sessions to the macschedule.tcx file. But there is still some “code” you need to delete before it will work properly.

     

    11.   Staying in the macschedule.tcx file, press cmd-f and in the find field,  search out “<workouts>” again. NEXT to this will be the code-phrase ‘<Running Name="Running"><Folder Name="Runner's World">’ and you want to delete this.

    12.   Back in the search (cmd-f) type in ‘<Workout>’. In the ‘replace with’ field type ‘<Workout Sport="Running">’ and press ‘Replace All’. (Note that unlike in MSWord you will NOT get a feedback dialog box saying “made 29 replacements” but it has done this).

    13.   Go right to the end of the document. You are looking for the following line(s) of code: ‘</Folder></Running><Biking Name="Biking"/><Other Name="Other"/>’. It should be right at the end. Delete all of this.

    Now, you will save the file and import it back into Garmin Training Center.

    14.   Now go to “Save As”. Un-select the tick-box ‘if no extension if provided use “.txt”’ if it’s checked, and make sure the Plain Text encoding is left on Unicode (UTF-8), then save the file.

    15.   Now go back into Garmin Training Center and Click “File/Import…” and import the macschedule.tcx file from your desktop (or where you saved it).

    16.   Go to the fridge and get yourself a beer, you big programmer, you! Well done!

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  • Oh, ignore that <!--EndFragment--> stuff that's the runnersworld forums playing up. image
  • Green One, thanks for going to all that bother. I've tried for several years to prompt a remedy for this whole problem from Runner's World and from Garmin. They clearly don't care about Mac users - which is why I gave up my subscription to RW. It's also why I refuse to buy another Garmin product.

    That apart, I've followed your instructions to the letter but when I tried to import the saved file as described in step 15, the file is greyed out on the desktop and can't be imported.

    From my limited knowledge of the process you describe, I'd have thought it would have been "Save" at step 14 in order to retain the original macschedule.tcx file, no?

    I tried manually adding the .tcx suffix to the macschedule file and this changed it from being greyed out to being clickable but then I got this message:

    "The file /Users/Mark/Desktop/macschedule.tcx is an invalid Training Center XML file and could not be opened."

    It really is an astonishing situation that we are even having to have this exchange in order to get some straightforward functionality working.

    I mean, it's not as if Apple sell some of the most popular computers and other devices in the world, is it?
  • Hi Spartacles,

    You are probably right on that point. Just press save and import back in, rather than save as. Did that work?

    And you're also right on the other one...Runnersworld sort it out for us Mac users!

  • Green One - thanks for this. followed your instructions and i get this message

    The file /Users/James/Desktop/macschedule.tcx is an invalid Training Center XML file and could not be opened

    any thoughts?
  • green one, thanks, i followed it to the leter and it worked, however i think the last couple of points need further explaining.

    To those following the schedule that greenone did above, i would add that do point 14. and then my point 15.  is as follows

    go to the original mac file that you downloaded (the one with the txt extension) delete EVERYTHING in it and then copy EVERYTHING that you have just done from the file that you did "save as" and paste it into the txt file.

    Basically unless you have the right extension it wont work.

  • far too difficult for me to follow image

    I wish Garmin would just sort their lives out and help people with Macs image
  • I just followed the work around to the letter (including point 15) and I don't even get a message come up to say it hasn't worked. Just nowt at all....

    Am seriously fed up with Garmin/Mac etc, etc.

    Thanks for the guide though GreenOne. I am sure it's at my end and not your guide. Will try again when I can summon the enthusiasm.
  • Oh dear, I've given up too, its such a shame isn't it image
  • ok. Am just about to try for a second go, but when I put the race date in (23/05/2010), the website comes up with "invalid date format".... I assume that this isn't going to help??
  • Hey, hey!! The Green One's work around works! I tried again and the invalid date format message disappeared so I went through the step by step guide again. Would you believe it, but the whole programme is now sat on my 405. Amazed. Thanks GO - top man.

    Malakite - don't give up...!
  • I did the unthinkable and put Garmin Training Center on the pile of scrap that is my PC at work then transferred the schedule to my 305.

    Just as well that worked because I got a London place last night in my club's ballot.
  • I tried one more time to raise some interest in Garmin making the Mac version of GTC support the .wkt file you get when you download a marathon schedule from RW.

    The answer I got is that the latest release of GTC for Macs (version 3.0.0.6) does support .wkt files.

    See this thread (read right down to the bottom): Garmin forums 

    The last post is from someone who's running Snow Leopard and who says it works.

    I can't try on my Mac until next weekend so if anyone else cares to do so, it would be great to know whether or not it works for them.

    Thanks!

  • Btw, this is where you get the latest versions of Garmin Training Center
  • Thanks Spartacles,

    Just tried the new BETA version of GTC and it will import the .wkt files, thanks very much for the posts, much appreciated,

  • Nice one Neil, I'm really glad it worked.

  • Why don't you just partition your hard drive and install xp, vista, W 7 (whatever) on it, and run it in dual boot?
  • Because I don't want two OS's on my Mac.
  • I have decided to speed up the pace settings for my garmin mara training schedule (running on a Mac). The RW FAQ suggests you delete the old schedule in GTC and then update a new one incorporating the changes. Does anyone know how you delete the entire 16 week programme from GTC? I assume it's not entry by entry.....? 
  • I have the Garmin 205 and have to say its the biggest load of crap out there? Some days you can turn the thing on and get a satellite connection withing 5mins. But thats only Some days and most of the time it could be anything for up to an hour being I get the satellite. Last night I wanted to  pace myself @ 7min miles for a distance of 10miles so after waiting for about 20mins to get the connection I said bugger it and just went out and ran...After running about 9 miles and about to come into my village guess what..bingo, I got a connection.
  • Adrian, that is how you have to do it. Delete all the entries in the GTC calendar and import your new schedule then synch it to your watch.

    Bonkers, but there you are. There's no batch delete that I can see anyway.
  • shouldn't complain I suppose. At least the thing is now Mac compatible.....
  • WOW just read this thread again, updating as we speak, fingers crossed it will work, and if so WOOHOOO! image
  • Hi Spartacles - well it appears to have imported the 'wkt' file which is great, then I hit to 'export' to the Garmin which it did - the question is how to check/start it up on the watch! Am I right in thinking that I simply go to 'Training', then 'workouts'? I named it in the Garming Training Centre, but thats not displaying on the watch itself although I don't suppose it would??

    Think I'm almost there, just need a bit of help with the settings on the 405 I think now! image Very excited it may just work soon though after over a year of waiting for Garmin to get themselves into gear! image
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