Get your whole history
Garmin and Strava hand everyone all their activities in an archive, on simple request. This guide explains how to get it, then drop it into Sillage. Allow five minutes for the request, and the wait for an email.
In short
- Request your archive on the Garmin or Strava website.
- Wait for the email with the download link.
- Download the archive: a .zip file, to keep as it is.
- Drop it into Sillage, which looks for your activities in it by itself.
| Garmin | Strava | |
|---|---|---|
| Where to ask | The data management page of your Garmin account | strava.com, “Settings”, “My Account” |
| Stated delay | Usually within 48 hours, sometimes up to 30 days | A few hours |
| What it contains | The original files from your devices, as .fit | Your activities as Strava received them: .fit, .gpx or .tcx |
| From where | The website, preferably on a computer | The website only, not the app |
Before you start
Your account, your archive. Everyone can only request their own: you have to be signed in to your own account. Nobody can do it for a friend.
The account’s email address. The download link is sent there: check that you can still read it.
A computer, preferably. The archive often weighs several hundred megabytes.
Garmin or Strava? If your activities come from a Garmin watch or bike computer, take Garmin’s archive: it holds the original files, with power, heart rate and the segments the device timed. Take Strava’s if you have no Garmin, or for activities recorded with the Strava app. You can also drop both: duplicate activities are recognised.
Requesting your archive from Garmin
- Open the data management page of your Garmin account and sign in with your Garmin Connect details.
- Choose “Export Your Data”.
- Click “Request Data Export”. The request is saved: you can close the page.
- Wait for Garmin’s email. It usually arrives within 48 hours, often much sooner. Garmin allows itself up to 30 days.
- Open the email and download the archive without delay: the link stops working after a few days.
- Keep the .zip file as it is. No need to open it or take anything out of it.
Inside the archive, your activities sit in the DI_CONNECT folder, then DI-Connect-Uploaded-Files, as further .zip archives full of .fit files. Sillage goes and finds them there. The rest of the archive (profile, health, sleep, settings) is of no use to it.
Requesting your archive from Strava
- Open strava.com in a browser and sign in. The request can only be made on the website, not in the app.
- Hover over your name, at the top right of the page, and choose “Settings”.
- In the menu on the left, open “My Account”.
- Under “Download or Delete Your Account”, click “Get Started”.
- On the next page, click “Request Your Archive”.
- Wait for Strava’s email: it can take a few hours.
- Download the archive from the link in the email, and keep the .zip file as it is.
Depending on the account and the version of the site, the section may be called “Download Your Account”, and the button “Request Download”. Requesting the archive deletes nothing: deleting the account is a separate step, on the same page.
Inside the archive, your activities are in the activities folder, as .fit, .gpx or .tcx, often compressed as .gz. Sillage reads them as they are. Photos, routes and messages are of no use to it.
Dropping the archive into Sillage
- Open the “Import activities” page of your Sillage account, or your upload link.
- Drop the .zip file into the “Drop your files here” box, or click it to choose the file from your downloads.
- Start the upload and keep the tab open. A bar shows the progress: a long history takes several minutes.
- Read the report shown at the end: it says how many activities were imported.
What Sillage does with the archive
Your browser opens the archive on your computer and sends Sillage only the .fit, .gpx and .tcx files, in small batches. From Strava’s archive it also reads the table of your activities, to send nothing more than the name of each one, and whether it was ridden in a virtual world. Photos, messages, descriptions and profile files never leave your computer.
Sillage does not keep these files. From each activity it keeps its name and its track: the positions, the time, the elevation, and the heart rate, power and cadence when they were measured.
An activity already imported is not added twice: Sillage recognises it by its start time. So you can drop Garmin’s archive and then Strava’s, or restart an interrupted import, without duplicating anything.
Your activities can only be seen from your account. Only your efforts on a group’s segments are seen by the other members of that group.
Reading the report
It is normal for many files to be set aside, especially with Garmin’s archive: it does not only contain activities.
| The report says | What it means |
|---|---|
| activities imported | The activities added to your history. |
| already there | Activities Sillage already had: they are not added a second time. |
| this FIT file does not contain an activity | A daily tracking file or device settings. Nothing to do. |
| no timestamped GPS track in this file | A session without GPS: gym, treadmill, pool. It cannot be replayed on a map. |
| file too large | An activity file of more than 30 MB, which is very rare. |
| unreadable file | A damaged file, or one in a format Sillage does not know. |
If something goes wrong
The email does not arrive. Look in your spam folder, and check the email address of your account. At Garmin, the wait can last several days. After that, make the request again.
The link no longer works. It has expired: make the request again, you will receive a new link.
The import stops halfway. Restart it with the same archive. What is already imported stays, and Sillage only picks up what is missing.
“Too many uploads in a row”. A very large archive dropped through an upload link can reach this limit. Wait a few minutes, then restart.
“No FIT, GPX or TCX file in the archive”. This is not the right archive. Take the one from the link you received by email, without changing it.
On a phone. It is possible, but the archive is heavy and the upload long: a computer is safer.
What next
As soon as the import is done, Sillage looks for your efforts on the segments that already exist. Within the hour, it also suggests new segments, based on the roads you have travelled several times.
Once the import has finished, you can delete the archive from your computer: it holds far more than your activities.
For a single activity, no need to request an archive again: the guide to downloading an activity is enough.
Strava explains the request in its own help (“Exporting your data”). These sites change: if a button no longer has this name, look for the closest one.