Audax Controls on Garmin

On Audax it’s useful to know that a control is coming up/you’re there, especially with “info” controls. Here’s a rough guide to using RideWithGPS to get your Garmin to provide such alerts for you.

As an example, please see my route on RideWithGPS for the Double Dutch Audax.

If you open the above course on RideWithGPS and look at the Cue Sheet you’ll see it’s not got the usual turn information in it, just the controls. There are a couple of features within RideWithGPS that make this easy to do. If you’re planning a route from scratch, go to the options tab and untick “Generate cuesheet while planning” before you start. If you’re editing an existing course, then click the Edit button in the Cue Sheet and select “Clear all cues”. Once you’ve a completed route with an empty cue sheet, use the “Add to cuesheet” feature to add an entry for each of the controls.

You’ll notice that I put in two entries per control: The first is called “A. Xyz” which tells me I’m approaching a control. I put these about 1/2 mile before the control and try to put them somewhere where the Garmin is unlikely to be bleeping about something else such as a turn. The second is the control itself as “Xyz”.

Once you’ve got the route and cue sheet…

For the Garmin Edge series: Export the route as a TCX Course (leave “Notify before turn?” option blank) and put onto the Garmin Edge as normal. As well as Garmin’s normal navigation, you will then get a beep and text as you approach a control and at the control itself.

For other GPS (such as the popular Etrex): I believe the TCX Course option might work for those as well. Failing that, when you export as a GPX Track try ticking “Include cues as waypoints?” which I expect will create both the “pink line” and the controls as waypoints.

Note that I have a premium subscription to RideWithGPS – if any of the features I mention above are missing in your free or basic RideWithGPS then that might be the reason.