Linking Garmin Connect, Blogger, Twitter, Facebook – Part 1 (Updating my blog to include Garmin output from my races)

After a bit of trial and error & a lot of Googleing, I've finally managed to integrate Garmin Connect, Blogger, Twitter and Facebook together. I have now managed to do the following :

• Automatically update my blog to include Garmin output from (only) my races :
• List my latest tweets on my blog


• Automatically update Twitter and Facebook of any new blog entries

In this post, I'll try to explain how I managed to get the Garmin output of my Races to appear on my blog. I'm sure most of the above could be done without too much hassle and in very little time by someone who is tech savvy. But considering it took me a lot of Google'ing and a lot of trial & error, I thought it's only fair to share it in the hope it might help someone else..
Setting up Garmin Connect to display and Feed Garmin info only from your racesThis is the only initial setup that is required. This has been driven in the back end using RSS feeds from the Garmin connect site. The Garmin connect RSS feed can be obtained from the "Dashboard" tab in garmin connect:
Clicking on it will give you the link to your RSS feed - http://connect.garmin.com/feed/rss/activities?feedname=Garmin%20Connect%20-%20dineish&owner=dineish
Accessing this link will give you details of every single workout. However, I only wanted info of my races published – I really did not want to annoy my Twitter and Facebook friends by publishing every single workout of mine (I think I annoy the non-runners enough already). This was fixed by playing around with the security settings on Garmin connect. By default, all activities on Garmin are set to "Public" which allows sharing of the activities (which resulted in RSS feed having all activities).
I changed the default privacy to "PRIVATE". This can be done by clicking on SETTINGS > DEFAULT PRIVACY and selecting PRIVATE. This will ensure all activities are now locked.







All I have to do now is, every time I want info from a race published, I have to "unlock" just that particular activity. This can be done in the "Activities" tab by selecting "Quick Edit" .

This will give you the option to unlock the activities you wish to publish (under the privacy column). You can also add the description, activity type and event type as required on this screen.
Once done click on FINISH and TADA! Your RACE info is the only info on your RSS Feed link!!! (TIP – be VERRRYYY patient for the initial changes to be updated in the RSS feed. It could take upto a day or two at times)
Now that the RSS feed is displaying only the RACE info, things get a lot easier and we could set up the fun stuff.Burning your feed using feedburnerYou can use feedburner to "burn" your feed. This is supposed to help you with allowing users to subscribe and provides traffic analysis etc. etc. , but for me the most useful part was that it gave me a much shorter and nicer link to my garmin output feeds - http://feeds.feedburner.com/GarminConnect-Dineish
Automatically update my blog to include Garmin output from (only) my racesI used BuzzBoost in Feedburner for this. This can be done by using "Use as a widget" option. You can also use BuzzBoost to set up a similar widget to any site.

Buzzboost also gives a HTML script that you can copy and paste to any other blogging sites or your own web site.







This sets up a nice column on my blog containing info from my recent races...
In the next post, I'll share the instructions on how to automatically update twitter and facebook with my garmin output from my races and new blog entries..