Garmin Challenge With Friends on Any Device

Garmin Connect challenges work well when everyone owns a Garmin. Real friend groups are rarely that tidy. One person has an Apple Watch, another tracks nothing, and someone else only cares about logging a weekly gym session.

You do not need to replace your Garmin or ask everyone to buy the same watch. Keep Garmin as your tracker and put the shared challenge somewhere everyone can join.

Why Garmin's own group challenges exclude friends

Garmin Connect is designed around Garmin accounts and devices. Its native challenges use preset formats and count people inside that ecosystem. That is convenient for a Garmin-only running club, but it leaves a mixed group with two bad choices: exclude people or keep a second scoreboard by hand.

A neutral challenge solves the group problem without changing how anyone records activity.

The setup that works for mixed devices

1. Create one challenge with a clear metric, target, start date, and end date.
2. Connect Garmin once so matching activities or health data can sync automatically.
3. Share the join code with every friend, regardless of their device.
4. Friends without Garmin log manually in a few seconds or use another available option.
5. Use one chart as the official score.

On Meryus, Garmin owners get automatic updates while manual entries appear on the same leaderboard. Nobody needs to change watches, install an app, or maintain a spreadsheet.

Good challenge ideas for a mixed group

Total distance

Set a shared running, walking, cycling, or swimming target. Garmin activities can fill this automatically. Friends using another device can enter the distance shown by their own tracker.

Active minutes

This is often fairer than distance. A walk, gym session, ride, or swim can all contribute without inventing a complicated points system.

Workout count

Count completed sessions instead of performance. It works for different fitness levels and is simple to log manually.

Steps or sleep

Garmin can supply steps and sleep data for supported challenges. Friends can enter the same daily number from another device, keeping the comparison useful without pretending every tracker measures identically.

Rules to agree before inviting people

• Pick one metric and one unit.
• Decide whether manual entries are allowed. For a mixed group, the answer should be yes.
• Set a fixed date range so late entries do not change the finish line.
• Keep the group private unless everyone agrees to share a public progress link.
• Treat the challenge as motivation, not a laboratory test. Different devices estimate some health metrics differently.

Garmin stays automatic, nobody gets locked out

The point is not to make Garmin less useful. It is to keep Garmin's convenience while removing Garmin ownership as the price of admission. Create a free Meryus challenge, connect Garmin from your profile, and send the join code to the whole group.

For the native feature comparison, see Garmin Connect challenges vs Meryus. For health-focused ideas, read how to run Garmin sleep and step challenges.