Garmin Watch - "portable device"

[iggy]

After much gnashing of teeth and bashing my head against a wall, I'm starting to think the answer is "can't be done" but I figure I will ask here to see if someone has any ideas...

I have a Garmin Vivoactive 3 watch and I recently lost/didn't save an activity that I would really like to recover. I found a couple of messages out in the innerwebs about using recuva to recover the .fit file and then a secondary step to fix that file and be able to upload the data. However, the watch I have only shows as being a "portable device" and recuva does not recognize it as a drive and thus I can't search it. 

Is there any known way to be able to get the watch loaded in such a way that recuva can see it? I have found references out there of it being used to save the data, but I can't find any documentation or instructions for doing it. I haven't found anything here that would lead me to believe it is actually possible but I figure it can't hurt to ask just in case someone has any ideas.

I recently ran my first ever marathon and in the process of trying to not cramp up after it, never hit the save button on the watch so the .fit file isn't out there but by all reports is on the watch and could be recovered if I can get the watch mounted in some manner. 

Thanks in advance if you can help.