Garmin has not opened its doors to apps like this one, so debrief has no Garmin connection and does not pretend to. It reads the file your watch already made. You export it once from Garmin Connect, drop it here, and read the debrief about a minute later. Here is the whole path, then what a month of runs unlocks, then how to stop exporting.
The ninety seconds
- Open the run on connect.garmin.com. Sign in on the website and open the activity. The Garmin phone app cannot export, but the website works in a phone browser.
- Click the gear icon, then Export Original. The gear sits at the top right of the activity. Garmin hands you a ZIP with the .fit inside. Leave it zipped.
- Drop the ZIP on the upload page. Up to 20 files at once, so a month of runs is one drag. Import, weather, terrain and the debrief run in the background, about a minute per run. You can close the tab; the journal shows each run while it is being processed.
Private beta.
Leave your email and we send an invite when there is room.
What a month of runs unlocks
The debrief gets better with every run in the log, on a fixed ladder. The counts below are the ones debrief holds itself to, and your journal shows where you stand on each.
1 run
A full debrief of that run. What happened, why, and what to do next. Execution, terrain, weather and splits, every number checked against the recording it came from.
3 runs of one kind
Comparisons. Kinds are easy, long, tempo, intervals. Once 3 of one kind are in the log, each new one is read against the others.
8 runs of one kind, near your usual length
Full baselines. Normal for you gets a real shape, and the debrief can say how far off it a run sat.
10 runs this year
Thresholds, zones and training load. Your threshold pace and heart rate are estimated from the log, which switches on zones and training load. Know them already? Set them on your profile on day one and skip the wait.
25 steady outdoor runs of 50+ minutes
The heat model. How you personally respond to humidity. Until the runs are there the debrief says nothing about it, because no number beats a fake number.
Two more honest notes. Only runs from the last 14 days get a written debrief on their own. Older runs still count on every rung above, and any one of them gets a debrief when you ask for it on the run’s page. And the load trend (fitness, fatigue, form) needs about two weeks of runs in the log, so a month dropped on day one is enough.
Never export again
There is a way around the export that runs through your own accounts, not through Garmin’s. Two apps copy activities out of Garmin Connect and into the Suunto app: Health Sync (Android and iOS) and RunGap (iOS). A Suunto app account is free and needs no Suunto watch. Connect that account once under Connections on your profile, and from then on every run the copy delivers should arrive here on its own, debrief included.
Plain words about what this is. It is a copy you set up between two of your own accounts, with apps other people make. debrief never touches your Garmin account, and Garmin is not involved. Both apps cost a little: Health Sync is a few dollars after a week’s trial, and RunGap sells its sharing features as a subscription. As of September 2026, Health Sync lists Garmin Connect as a source and Suunto as a destination on both Android and iOS, and RunGap lists both services on iOS. Their Garmin sign-in is theirs to keep working; RunGap’s has broken and been repaired before.
We have not yet run this route end to end ourselves. If you set it up and a run does not show, the export above always works, and we would like to hear about it at hello@debrief.fit.
Other watches
COROS. In the COROS app open the activity, tap the three dots at the top right, choose Export Data, then .FIT. Drop that file the same way.
Suunto. Connect once under Connections on your profile. Runs arrive by themselves.
Apple Watch. An export app such as HealthFit saves runs as .fit files. Drop those.
Your first debrief.
Leave your email and we send an invite when there is room.