Change your route mid-ride, with no signal

You’re halfway round, sitting outside a café with a coffee. The wind has turned, the group wants to cut the loop short, or the pass ahead is closed. The new route is on your phone. The old one is on your Edge. There’s one bar of signal, or none.

With Ridekit you send the new course straight from the phone to the Edge over Bluetooth, right there at the table. It needs no internet and works while the ride is going.

Before you leave: bring the alternatives

The easiest change of plan is one you’ve already got. When you plan a ride, put the likely alternatives in your library too: the short way back, the valley road if the pass is shut, the bail-out to the nearest station. They cost nothing on the Edge until you send them, and on the phone they’re one tap away.

While you still have signal, tap Get ready on each of them. That downloads the map along the route and the stops along the way, so you can look them over at the café with no internet (see the support page for what still needs a connection).

Send the new course

1. Open the new route in Ridekit.
2. Under Tools, tap Send to bike computer.
3. Tap Send at the bottom and keep Ridekit open until it says the course is on the Edge.
4. On the Edge, open Navigation → Courses and start the new course.

Riding with a Wahoo, Hammerhead or another bike computer? On the same page, Export for your bike computer… makes a FIT course or a GPX with stops on the phone, with no internet, to open in your bike computer’s app.

If you’re riding in focus mode (you tapped Start riding on a route), the send is in the ⋯ menu at the top of the ride screen: Send to bike computer. To follow the new route on the phone too, open it and tap Start riding: Ridekit rides one route at a time, so it asks whether to finish the other ride and start this one.

A heavy route sends faster at a lighter detail level, chosen on the same page. A 240 km route with 47,000 points goes from a minute to 6 seconds at 2 m detail, and rides the same. That’s worth it when the group is already clipping in. More in Edge slow with big GPX files.

A route from someone else at the table

Your friend has the better route on their phone? If they ride with Ridekit too, they can pass it to you by AirDrop with Share with a rider. AirDrop goes straight from iPhone to iPhone, so it needs no signal, and the route arrives with its stops and offline map. Then you send it to your Edge as above. The steps for both phones are in share a route with your riding group.

If you do have signal, a route from a planner app or a link works too: share it to Ridekit and send it. See routes from Komoot, Ride with GPS and Strava.

Not sure which way? Compare them

Compare routes, under Tools on a route page, puts up to 4 routes on the map in colour. For 3 or 4 alternatives you get an overview of distance, climbing and how much is unpaved. For two versions of the same route, it lists what changed, where, and how much each change climbs. It’s free.

On a multi-day ride

With Pro or Plus you can split a long route into stages, at good stops or at the controls. Each part starts a little before the previous one ends, so the Edge picks up the next course right where you are.

In focus mode, Ridekit offers the next stage near the end of the one you’re riding. When you tap Finish ride, the page shows how far you got, with the next stage (or a route that starts where this one ends) and Start beside it. Start it, send it from the ⋯ menu, and you’re off.

If it doesn’t work

• “The Edge is held by a Garmin app”: on the Edge, open Connected Features → Phone and turn Enable off, then on again. Ridekit asks every second, gets back in first and sends. Out on a ride with no signal this happens less: Garmin’s apps usually stay quiet offline.
• The Edge says there’s no room: it keeps at most 100 courses. Delete a few old ones on the Edge and send again.
• Changed your stops since the last send? The route says Changed · send again. Send it once more so the Edge has the new course points.

More answers on the support page, and the basics in send a route to your Garmin Edge with no internet.