New Garmin Course Planner – Upcoming Features Summary
Garmin is introducing new race planning tools to its Course Planner in Garmin Connect, specifically designed for ultrarunners and endurance athletes. The upcoming capabilities include:
- Cutoff Times: Add specific cutoff times to any course point (either race-mandated or personal targets). This will trigger a countdown timer on your Garmin device for reaching that point in time for the cutoff.
- Rest Breaks: Insert scheduled rest stops at course points, including the duration of each rest. Your device will automatically recognise and time the rest when you arrive.
- Course Point Notes: Add custom notes to course points, visible to anyone with access to the course—practical for strategy reminders, aid station information, or pacer tips.
- Multi-Crossing Support: When a course crosses the exact location multiple times, you can choose exactly where to place the course point, minimising navigation confusion.
- Bulk Management: Easily delete all cutoff times, notes, or rest breaks from a course in one step.
Take Out
These look like handy features. Although the elites may not use them, they will be beneficial in both racing and extended training scenarios for many committed, longer-course athletes.
Last Updated on 29 January 2026 by the5krunner
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tfk is the founder and author of the5krunner, an independent endurance sports technology publication. With 20 years of hands-on testing of GPS watches and wearables, and competing in triathlons at an international age-group level, tfk provides in-depth expert analysis of fitness technology for serious athletes and endurance sport competitors. ID
What watches will these features come to?
As an ultra runner myself, I can see benefits of a couple of these.
i speculate that only new generation watches will receive it.
Fenix 8 Series
Instinct 3 Series
Forerunner x70
i’m a Fenix 7X user, this is hard for me to push this commentary
Garmin is firing on all cylinders these days.
yes.
a bumper year !!!
definitely no complaints here
With the notable exception of the cylinder that brings new features to compatible older watches. The spark plug has been patchy in that one for a while.
Garmin could potentially add some kind of feature expansion to the the Garmin Plus subscription model in order to make it more appealing. Such a thing could conceivably bring a subset of features from the latest devices down onto the older devices provided the old device is able to support them from a hardware perspective.
This of course would cause even more outrage amongst owners, but it’d be a decent move a business standpoint.
“Cutoff Times: Add specific cutoff times to any course point (either race- mandated or personal targets). This will trigger a countdown timer on your Garmin device for reaching that point in time.”
…
“I’m unsure how the countdown timer would work exactly in practice. It’s timing you to a GPS point and would require estimating your likely speed over the upcoming terrain, which may differ from your most recent terrain. ie it can’t simply extrapolate the current average pace to the remaining 2D distance.”
This comment (“I’m unsure…”) doesn’t make much sense. As *you* described it (“countdown timer…for reaching that point in time”), and based on a common-sense understanding of “countdown timer” in the context of race cutoff points/times, the countdown timer should tell you how much time is left until the cutoff time for the next cutoff point, not the ETA/ETE [*] for that point.
For a concrete example, if the cutoff time for the next point is 13:30 / 1:30 PM, and the current time of day is 13:00 / 1:00 PM, the countdown timer should display 30 minutes.
[*]
ETA = estimated time (of day) of arrival (e.g. “you will reach your destination at 13:30 / 1:30 PM”)
ETE = estimated time enroute (e.g. “you will reach your destination in 30 minutes”)
Besides, Garmin already has algorithms for ETA/ETE (to the end of the currently navigated course), so if they will *also* provide ETA/ETE for the next cutoff point, there’s nothing new for them to do. (Whether or not those existing algorithms are accurate / reliable is another story.)
thanks Will
I’ll revisit the text. I’m getting bogged down by the sheer volume of stuff I have to do ATM. (That said, jsut had the weekend away racing!)