Many of you have years of outings in a watch or another app. MushMate can read them, provided you have the right file: a GPX, one per outing or inside an archive. The hard part is not the import, it is finding the right button at Garmin, adidas or Strava. Here is the path, service by service.
The same notice lives in the app: in the manual entry, under the GPX button ("How do I get the GPX file?"), and on the website in the Guide, page Importing your outings.
First: where to import
- One outing: open the manual entry and tap "Prefill from a GPX file". Date, distance, moving time and elevation fill in; you pick the dogs. On the phone as on the computer.
- Several outings, or a .zip archive: on the computer, Traces › Import outings. Tick the outings, pick the team for the batch, import, then start again with the next team. Up to 200 files and 100 MB per batch.
Either way, the file is read on your device and never uploaded: only the computed session is sent.
Garmin Connect: one outing at a time, from the website
The Garmin Connect phone app exports no file. Exporting happens on the website, in a browser, on the computer or on the phone.
- Open connect.garmin.com and sign in.
- Open Activities, then the outing.
- Click the gear icon, top right of the outing.
- Choose "Export to GPX". The file downloads.
- Import it into MushMate.
Three traps:
- "Export File", right next to it, gives the watch's original file, in FIT format, inside an archive. MushMate does not read FIT: always take "GPX".
- The full Garmin account export (Garmin Account › Data Management › Export Your Data) arrives after 48 hours, sometimes much longer, and only holds FIT files. It does not help here.
- Garmin does not export several outings as GPX at once. For a history, export the outings one by one, then import them all at once in Import outings.
Does your watch already sync with Strava? The Strava connection (below) brings its outings in without any file.
adidas Running: the whole account, in one archive
adidas Running no longer exports one outing at a time: that tool went away in 2019. You have to request the export of the whole account. It is slow, but it is the most complete route: your whole history, tracks included.
- On a computer, open runtastic.com and sign in with your adidas Running account.
- Open Account & Data, then click Export Data.
- Confirm your email address if asked.
- Wait for adidas's email. Depending on the size of your account, it can take several days.
- Download the .zip archive from the link in the email.
- In MushMate, Traces › Import outings, pick the archive as it is, without unzipping it.
MushMate looks for the tracks in the "Sport-sessions › GPS-data" folder and ignores the rest: summaries, sleep, the other data of the account. Only outings recorded with GPS have a track.
The runtastic.com site has been partly taken down since adidas took it over. If the "Account & Data" menu no longer exists, ask adidas for a copy of your data from its Contact page: it is your right under the GDPR.
On the phone, which imports one file at a time: save the archive in the Files app, open it, and pick the .gpx files of the Sport-sessions › GPS-data folder one by one.
Strava: the connection, or a file
The simplest: connect Strava. Settings › Integrations › Connect Strava, then "Review and import activities". Pick the period and the dogs, and Strava brings the outings in with their track. A session imported this way is visible to you only: that is a Strava rule, not a MushMate choice.
For a file instead (the session is then visible to your kennel, like any GPX outing), exporting happens on strava.com, not in the app:
- One outing: open it, … menu, then "Export GPX".
- The whole account: Settings › My Account › Download your account › Get Started › Request download. The email arrives within a few hours.
In Strava's archive, files are in their original format. Only those ending in .gpx can be read. Unzip the .gpx.gz ones first (a double-click is enough on a Mac). .fit.gz and .tcx.gz cannot be read: for those outings, go back through "Export GPX".
On those screens, never touch "Delete account".
What others see
An outing imported from a file is a session like any other: the members of your kennel see it, track included, and it counts in the load of every dog that ran. Only sessions coming from the Strava connection stay private, by Strava's rule.
What MushMate does not do
- Connect to your Garmin or adidas account. Garmin no longer accepts new apps into its connection programme, and adidas no longer has one. We read the files you export.
- Read FIT, TCX, or a .gz compressed file. Only GPX and .zip archives of GPX come in.
- Go through Health Connect or Apple Health. We measured it in September 2026 on Android: neither adidas Running nor Garmin Connect writes their outings' tracks there, and Garmin does not even write the distance. That route would only bring numbers; we do not offer it.
- Guess the dogs or the surface. A file does not know who was in harness: you pick them.
Two choices we made
Our computation counts. Distance, moving time, stops and elevation are computed by MushMate, the same way for every GPX outing, so your sessions compare with each other. Figures may therefore differ slightly from the source app's.
Nothing is dropped silently. An outing on the same day as a session already recorded, within 1 km, arrives unticked and marked "Likely duplicate". It is often the same walk, recorded by both the watch and the phone. You decide whether to import it.
And the simplest remains recording your next outings directly with MushMate: the track, the stops and each dog's load arrive without any file.