Strava

So some of you may have noticed a little widget that's popped up on this blog on the right hand side about halfway down the page with the title "Activity Widgit".  That's hooked up into a program, or I guess what you would call a web application that allows you to upload GPS files either from your Garmin or the iPhone app and away you go.  Now people who do have a Garmin will probably already be familiar with either Garmin connect (web) or garmin training center (offline computer based) which you can use to offload your data and look at it.  I mean there are some cool things on connect such as the web player that allows you to "play" back your workout and see how you did.  So what makes Strava better or more appealing than either connect or training peaks?

Well on face value, there's not a whole lot different in the main feature set, you'll be able to see things like elapsed time, total time, avg speed etc etc etc. What is nice about this is you can track everything..... like literally everything.

The visualization is absolutely top notch. As can be seen below

Those of you that use map my ride will know about the categorised climbs, but what if you could own hills and be KOM on that segment?  You can actually see hills (it'll automatically objectively classify them for you) and then see who else has climbed it, and then try and better your times.  This way you don't even need to put any effort towards keeping track of that.  What if you've got a segment that you always run for intervals? Well you can create a segment and keep track of progress there too.  Best of all, it can break it down and you can see on a certain segment, your ride (or pr) compared with the KOM of that segment and see where you're losing or making up time.

Now if you're still reading at this point chances are probably pretty good that you're as much of a data junkie as I am. Looking at things like how you feel vs heart rate.  How high was your average cadence etc.  Strava can take all of that data and then capture it so you can go back and analyze the crap out of it. 

Look at all the pretty colors

The other thing that's cool about this that I like is that you can choose to obscure certain locations (ie home work etc.) So it'll automatically truncate your ride there, and you don't have to worry about security issues.

You don't exist around your set locations

But possibly the most useful thing out of all of this is the ability to track parts usage.  Training peaks has a great feature for shoes, but I mean with your bike there's a million things, wheels, brake pads, cabling, cleats ...... and the list just goes on and on and on.  From your control center you can say when you put on a part, it'll tell you how much mileage you've done, and voila.  Replace a part and let strava know you've retired it.  No more pink stinkies on my second monitor with notes like new chain, april 22.  This system not only is much more elegant, but sooooo much more accurate and easy to maintain.

So at the end of the day, it begs the question is it worth it.  I may or may not have mentioned it's not quite free. It's free, but on that it'll only allow you to upload 5 full rides a month (for some that's fine).  It'll keep track of all your KOM's regardless of that, and it will never "Delete" your rides.  Their velo plan which is the full meal deal is 6 bucks a month of 59 bucks for a year.  I can send you a link for 5 bucks off if you want, just comment below.  So back to the original question, does it do anything ground breaking? Well I wouldn't say all of the things it does are, the parts tracker is super super nice, but I wouldn't say ground breaking.  It does what you would imagine someone before you would've though all about, brings it all into one nice package that has some cool features (like tracking and competing against friends or strangers on hills) and it does it all well without fuss.  I'm on the velo plan right now and love it, and maybe, just maybe when it runs out I'll get it again.

One last thing, even though this is geared primarily towards cyclists you can really upload any kind of activity you want into there.

~Cheers