Strava

Most of the stuff I'd put in Strava had gone through Garmin Connect first anyway, so I'll probably just use Connect a bit more for the GPS side of things (like, which day did I climb that mountain?) whereas I still use WKO for power data / training notes.

By the way, RWGPS has recently announced "popularity based" routing is coming soon (@hippy and @danstuff hopefully based on some sort of heatmap), pretty sure they'll boost their segment comparison interface too. Agreed RWGPS is geekier and not as immediate to use, that's why I love it and I am happy to pay for it.

Using different maps backgrounds allowed me to find and piece together routes that I wouldn't have otherwise ever managed, particularly offroad (including rad offroad tours @Tijmen );
Other features are just priceless, like the editing tools for long trips and multiday routes.

On Strava's move, they got to the point of social network level, more than stats tracker and are simply capitalizing on people behavioural addiction, fair enough. Half of the ppl on my Strava paid for it anyway, some of them will drop it, some of the free members will join it to fuel the addiction to segments and such. Not much will change.

As far as I am concerned, I am happy to have an excuse to stop care so much about segments, particularly where I ranked >#10th (significant majority)

Using different maps backgrounds

Yeah, this is super useful for TCR, finding banned roads and/or dirt vs. tarmac roads.

Also, all of the segment data will be public anyway, so there will soon be a way around, unless they remove the API functions in it

exactly what they're doing / have already done. I think the api are still live, but return blank data.

use RWGPS for mapping and strava just to keep track on stuff. never been bothered about KOM stuff as others have said it is only yourself that can be interesting to keep an eye on. but randomly am no. 2 on a segment in the area I have moved to. and am getting my sights trained on that no. 1 spot. though will fail.

anyway, have subbed. it's about the same as my donation to here and an integral part of where virtual plays an important part in my actual bike life.

You could see if importing your gps fit tcx or whatever files gives you the analysis you need over on http://www.fetcheveryone.com the log there is pretty useful and I always copy my stuff there. The log can be exported to excel from there too. It is free but accepts donations too.

Thanks, will have a look.

Don't mind donating to developers who work on their pet projects (like gpxeditor.co.uk and veloviewer).

Strava, on the other hand, is a VC funded juggernaut whose founders have already extracted huge amounts of money from and the company has more than a lax attitude to its customers and their data privacy/security - so fuck them.

I like what you're saying. I actually record my activities on an app called my-workouts then upload the fit file to both Fetch & Strava, purely for the kudos in the latter obvs.

Edit my-workouts has analysis within it's log also. I got it when Strava stopped allowing Bluetooth hrm connection on android app.

The new route builder is buggy - often doesn't seem to want to allow me to add waypoints. The standard map offered seems worse than the old 'terrain' option too

@rhb

I think I've gone into it before, but my end goal is that I just connect my watch to my PC and something notices that the Garmin has been connected, looks in the appropriate folder, finds any new .FIT files and then throws them at my server. Ideally it would grab stuff from Garmin Connect directly, that's also a possibility.

When my server gets a new .FIT file it rips it apart and works out what it was (run, swim, cycle, walk, cardio, etc).

If it's a swim it analyses how many lengths there were, the timings, the rests, deduces what kind of swim workout I did (long plodding distance or 1234321 pyramid, etc). Checks I set the pool length properly (my local pool has 25m and 33+1/3m length pool configurations). Looks at HR data (or finds it separately from an import from my Polar OH1+). Does it look like I did a swim CSS test (a fast 200m swim followed by a fast 400m swim a bit later) and if so calculate new swim CSS. etc, etc, etc. Let me fix swims where it failed to detect a turn properly, or interpreted me stopping in the middle of a length (for whatever reason) as an extra length.

For a 'cycle' it works out whether it was indoors or outdoors. If it was indoors was it a spinning class or me just messing around on a wattbike at the gym. If it was a class can it pull out specific intervals, can it match the profile of power/cadence/time to a specific block? If it was just me on a wattbike was it a ramp test (if so pull out the derived FTP), or a set of intervals (if so, work out what they were and how my HR fits, do I need to consider aiming for a higher power figure). If the ride was outside was it a commute or a blat round Richmond Park? If so find the segments I'm interested in and show me how well I'm doing against previous efforts (and how does HR compare).

For a run: classify the run first: Local parkrun (sometimes comes up short of the 5k), usual 5k or 10k route, run commute (either way), school running club, etc. Check for specific segment times. Look at HRV data and flag anything interesting. See how far I'm doing against my goal of running all of the paths that cover Putney Heath and Wimbledon Common.

For everything, put together a page like the "Training Log" page from Strava with times/distance totals for each type of activity. Also do a PMC [sic] chart that takes into account running, cycling and swimming properly.

Let me see fastest 1k/5k/10k/etc times but allow me to flag individual chunks as rubbish due to GPS quirks (for example my fastest 1k segment on VeloViewer is where there was a GPS glitch, it'll take a long time for me to better it, but I can't mark the whole run as useless as it other fastest segments/etc that are valid). Also let me divide time into arbitrary chunks (years/seasons/etc) so I can compare how I'm doing against a few years ago, and also allow me to see my current year/season/whatever PBs for each distance rather than showing me times I won't be able to get near for at least another 6 months.

Take into account weight properly. (i.e. work out W/kg based on the weight on the day. Weights change, don't just assume that because I enter a new weight that's the weight I was 4 months ago which completely fucks the W/kg calculations from back then, etc).

Give me a dashboard page that shows me nice graphs making me happy. Show my weight trending down (or when I get it down not increasing). Show my weekly/monthly/yearly totals. Show my times at various things (5k, 10k route, parkrun, certain cycling segments, certain run segments, 1k swim, etc) over time.

(I'll also design it with other people in mind, in so much as it could be extended to handle multiple users with proper data separation, but have no plans to try and take on Strava, MyCyclingLog, Runalyze, etc. I have other pet projects I'd like to try and make money from first.)

The main problem is that everything that currently exists does 20-80% of what I want for a specific sport and rarely does all 3 tri disciplines properly. Sites either assume you're at your ideal weight, or will screw up average figures if you include commuting, or some other limitations.

It sounds like there's a product there that data driven athletes would go for. Could it also record if it was fun?

Strava can get to fuck for 7 nuggets a month. I'm going dark.

Keep getting emails about people taking my KOMs. Has covid bred a load of turbo-monsters that are now emerging from their Wahoo caves?*

*Have a Wahoo cave and do all my training in our spare room / cave

HUGE IF TRUE

Yes and less traffic. I’ve got to the top of a 46k one ;-) It’s one of four I have hahaha

Speaking for my place, with its sample size of n=2, yes. Both of us have been out recently KOM hunting. Strava literally changed its free version because it saw that I had emerged outside again...

I haven't given a fuck about KOMs since Strava was released, but I got bored after a month of turbo only (and embarrassed that my missus appeared faster on loads of local KOMs because I never upload anything). But you don't live near here so it's not me hitting yours up.

Flag ALL THE RIDES

Adding my own ire to the general irritation. I use Strava for two purposes. Social and checking my own progress against known segments. Now one of these appears to have disappeared. 99.9% of segments I have no interest in what other people have done so I don’t care about losing that data but how I performed on a segment is my data and I’d like to see it please.

Segment is arbitrary A-B and if someone else created the segment... it's not really your data.

Having said that, if you know a segments name you can still (currently) search for it to see where you are in the list.

That list is now on sale.

I'm just going to dump everything into Garmin Connect for the time being. Would like to use TP but it's hideously expensive.

I still use WKO3 because I don't like subscription models or having to share my data online.
TP is less than a tenner a month. I didn't think it was too bad but when you consider I've had maybe 10 years of WKO use for maybe £100, paying monthly seems expensive.

how I performed on a segment is my data and I’d like to see it please.

I’ve not lost this?

No, I have.

Pretty sure it was still there the other day when the ‘following’ and other leaderboards had disappeared but yeah, now it’s saying I have to subscribe to see my previous efforts.

Meh, it’s kind of pointless for me now then.

With the loss of segments, Connect will show me everything I want to see.

I'm getting the same, 3 gone in the space of 2 weeks, nothing taken in maybe 2 1/2 years leading up to it.
Seems drivers aren't the only ones taking advantage of the quieter roads