Not to mention that Strava gave all these partners less than 30 days (with Thanksgiving week in between) to comply. Even if anyone expected something like this to happen, it would have been reasonable to expect more notice. Hell, even Reddit, which handled its API changes horribly and screwed developers over, gave way more notice than this.
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I think if people weren’t expecting this or something like it then they haven’t been paying attention to Strava and their policy changes for a while.
Last year their syncing rate limits required intervals.icu to restrict syncing to paid members only.
From March 2022 Strava blocking syncing for Apple
May 2020 they moved leaderboards to subscription only, also broke the APIs as part of that.
This change reduced the functionality that many other apps could provide, just like their changes this month did.
They have long term patterns of removing features (also removed HR sensor support on phones), so changes like the one they just made are only surprising to people who have not been paying attention to this kind of stuff.
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Well, luckily you saw it coming and none of their partners did. 
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I’m up for building an app that’s just a cycling API that takes the place of Strava. Pretty sure I can I sit in the middle and transport files. You need to opt in for me to do so. And listen to me and why I like AG1 even though I’m allergic to apples. Go fund me to help?
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I’ve got an idea for some features. Maybe you measure parts of roads based on their length and grade and then compare the times people complete them on a big list. Add some lukewarm analytics and you’ve got a winner!
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If strava had wearables or cycling computers would this make more sense? Maybe if they had better training plans to follow and not just a written script to follow ?
They don’t have anything except leaderboards and random discounts for completing challenges.
Unless they drop the new strava watch and cycling bundle with an indoor trainer right before Christmas. 
I don’t know many people that use the phone to record strava anymore. If that even exists, they get all their data from other companies. So if garmin pulled out from sending data to strava, ( one major company) strava would become useless.
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Maybe not “could” but probably “should” have anticipated. Outsourcing critical functionality to 3rd parties leaves you vulnerable. TR aren’t the only one either. But whilst it may not be critical for TR themselves, it is a critical function for users. It also puts Strava in a dominant position as no-one else can act as this hub. All the apps have been caught asleep on this one so I’m not being critical of TR and as others have pointed out, Strava do some whacky things and have acted really poorly here.
Any business should look for weaknesses and vulnerabilities in their processes along with strengths and opportunities…
I don’t believe this will impact TR subscriber numbers but it surely is going to make things annoying for some users, especially Wahoo users. Luckily TR are on the case with the Wahoo integration and I wouldn’t be surprised if Strava roll back on this. From what I see lots of people have already cancelled their premium subscription (me included).
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I don’t see a sale on their (mobile) website, do you have a link?
Hi all, I’m just catching up on this debacle. Question for the group - can we start using TrainingPeaks or RideWithGps as our ‘middleman’ instead of Strava? Will either of those sync properly with TrainerRoad?
This.
Strava’s behavior has been, hmmm, erratic for quite a few years now, with whoever was in charge of the platform making user-hostile, questionable moves. That last move by Strava (which seals the deal for me, they have outlived their usefulness) was perhaps surprising as to the timeframe and lack of warning to “partners”, but it didn’t come out of the blue.
IMHO the only answer to the question “What is the source of truth (= data) for TR?” should be “on our servers (too)”.
Syncing is core functionality of TR and they haven’t even gotten around to syncing to Apple Health after all these years. The Apple Watch is the most popular smartwatch on the planet. I refuse to believe it is that difficult to implement seeing as Withing, Wahoo, Garmin, … all managed. @Nate_Pearson, what’s the hold-up?
I still find it super frustrating that TR doesn’t automatically sync my weight via Apple Health, cannot use sleep data to adapt my training and my TR workouts don’t count towards my activity rings.
Workable? Maybe. I’d characterize leaving syncing to Strava was convenient for TR, but definitely a risk to TR’s business.
But syncing is a central piece to making TR work, and TR outsourced it to a company with a spotty track record. That’s always a significant risk to companies when they become too reliant on a service or piece of software they don’t control. You don’t want to become a feature on someone else’s spec sheet.
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It’s showing for me as a banner across the top. There’s a code “CYBER20204”. Maybe just try the code.
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Zwift integration is more involved than simply syncing data files - and involves more project management and design decision making.
I don’t think it will take long for TR to establish pulling data from other services depending on the other services API.
In fairness to TR… I’m not sure syncing is necessary core functionally… there would still be a viable (but not as good) service without any external internal data streams at all.
This isn’t the case for a lot of other apps out there impacted by Strava’s decision to get out of the “central-data-hub” game.
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There was an Apple tv app. It had been in Beta for quite some time and was only available to the “Founder Members”. Do you seriously think they could have developed an Apple tv app within 3 weeks of starting work on it???
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In the longer term do you think Apple and Google health will step in to become people’s data storage hubs?
Or even just icloud and Google cloud?
Personally I’m always going to try and set everything up point to point going forward though to avoid middlemen…
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Recent moves by TR don’t support that, me thinks: they have started to include other activities in e. g. RL/GL, which means that getting the activity data is an essential part. I presume TR would also include sleep data — if they had access to that.
Moreover, TR’s main advantage compared to competitors is its huge database of workouts, especially those associated with training plans. If TR ever gets sold, IMHO this is going to be the main factor in their valuation. So yes, I think data syncing is central.
That depends on their tech stack. TR based its apps on Electron, a cross-platform framework. One of the prices you have to pay is that porting apps to other Apple platforms becomes harder. Ditto for accessing Apple-platform-specific features and services.
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Yes I agree, incorporating other acivities to determine your readiness to train means that syncing other data is core functionality.
I reckon Garmin will be over the moon about this move if it sticks.
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It was in beta for many months.
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Short term work around which I tested yesterday.
Upload workout file from elemnt app —> Dropbox
Install Dropbox on Windows or Mac
Drag file uploaded from Dropbox —> TrainerRoad.
It’s not ideal, but once set up it’s a 10 second job after a ride.
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It was called indievelo before being changed to TPV
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