Put Your parkrun Barcode on Your Garmin and Never Forget It Again
No barcode, no time — that's the parkrun rule. If you hate running with your phone, you can store the barcode on your watch instead, and the same trick works for gym and loyalty cards.
Never forget your parkrun barcode again
If you haven't come across it: parkrun is a free, weekly, timed 5 km run held on Saturday mornings in parks all over the world. You register once, you turn up, you run. No entry fee, no qualifying time.
When you cross the line you're handed a finish token, and a volunteer scans that token together with your personal barcode. That's how your time gets attached to your name. The rule is famously blunt: no barcode, no time. Forget it and your run simply doesn't appear in the results.
The phone problem
Yes, you can keep the barcode on your phone. Plenty of people do. But if you're anything like me, you don't want to run 5 km holding a phone, and the whole appeal of a Garmin is that you don't have to.
Printing it on paper works too, right up until it goes through the wash in your shorts pocket.
Put it on your wrist instead
- Screenshot your barcode. Open it in the parkrun app or your confirmation email and take a normal screenshot on your phone
- Install the Photos widget from the Connect IQ Store
- Upload the screenshot in the widget settings, and that's it
Two things worth knowing
Be patient on the first sync. The images transfer to your watch over Bluetooth, which is not fast. Set it up the evening before your first parkrun rather than in the car park five minutes beforehand.
Use full screen for scanning. On the widget overview, press the start button to go full screen — that's the view a scanner can actually read. Once you're in full screen you can scroll up and down through your images.
One practical tip: turn your screen brightness up before you hold your wrist out. Scanners struggle with a dim display, and an always-on MIP screen in bright sun can need a moment.
It works for far more than parkrun
Once the widget is on there, any barcode or QR code you can screenshot can live on your wrist:
- Your gym entry card
- Supermarket and loyalty cards
- Coffee shop stamp cards
- Event or race-pack QR codes
- Or just photos you like having close
I went further with this and got rid of my wallet almost entirely — that's a longer story for another day.
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