Heat maps are self reinforcing. They discourage exploring the roads less travelled, which may actually be gems that not many know about.
2 Likes
I guess if you never ride anywhere new, I understand the “anti-heatmap” sentiment. I like to go new places and ride new roads. I find heat maps invaluable for that. They’re also great for finding popular gravel, paths, and trails that aren’t obvious from street maps. As for the “the heat maps just focus on busy roads” statements, that’s true to a point, but that’s why I use my eyes to see if people are riding on busy roads or not when creating my routes. If the map is brightest on a busy road, I don’t choose that road.
4 Likes
Same for me, watch and computer.
However, I think Strava will have inertia like Facebook. Everyone is on it, but no one likes having to be on it, but because everyone is on it, everyone will stay on it. I will probably not renew a premium subscription.
2 Likes
I cancelled my subscription and am interacting with it less, and actually feel as though it is having a positive impact on my mental health. Before whether it was conscious or unconscious I would see people doing lots of activities and feel obligated to do so as well. Now it’s on my terms.
7 Likes
Depending on your use case intervals icu might be a good alternative.
Becoming a supporter costs $48 a year, about half of the TP annual cost.
TP adds TP Virtual which intervals doesn’t have.
2 Likes
I think it’s partly addiction and fear of missing out. You just have to go through that cold turkey phase, before fulling withdrawing and closing things down.
I’m not missing my rides being pushed to Strava. I’m still looking at friends rides for now. Mostly out of my addiction habit I’d think. That too will pass, and when I’m ready I can delete my Strava account.
6 Likes
I am not visiting Strava much at the moment due to the nasty taste they’ve left in my mouth, but I can definitely feel the addictive quality trying to draw me back ,thinking that I ought to give kudos to the couple of friends who are doing their pb out there on rides.
I was also wondering about the privacy problem, kinda trying to be nice to Strava!!!
For example. If I do a 40 mile ride, and then use the Strav privacy control to hid the first and last mile, that still shows on Strava as a 40 mile ride. If another app takes this ride information, do they automatically keep the same privacy settings? So if I send it to another app, will it also be hiding my home location? Or does it then get displayed as a 38 mile ride?
Does that make sense? If I pursue the secondary app for revealing my home location, does that make Strava jointly liable?
I know the original writing was about third party coaching etc. just me wondering what other reason they could possibly have!
I also find all of this frustrating but I am not aware of a good alternative. I like the social aspect of Strava as it is really the only “social” app I use as I never post on FB or Instagram and is nice to keep in touch with other riders.
Secondly, I like being able to see various segments to see where my fitness is at. It is nice to see the various times I have on segments for comparison. Second, this was super helpful this year pre-riding Leadville to get a relatively good gauge of where I was at. I am not a “KOM” hunter but do find the segments helpful when reviewing rides.
Between the social piece and segment piece I don’t think there is a good alternative. I know Ride With GPS has segments but it is very minimal and not as easy to look at. With that said, I do like the RWGPS route planner way better than Strava and use it all the time to plan routes.
2 Likes
A third party app gets the full data, it would need to set up its own privacy feature and you would need to set it up to hide your home location in that app. For example, if I send a run or ride to Strava, and hide the first and last mile or set up a privacy radius in Strava, when that activity gets pulled into Intervals.icu, I can see the whole activity. To hide my home location in Intervals.icu, I’d need to use its own privacy circles feature.
But that raises an interesting point. Looking at the Strava API, I think Strava treats partially private activities as public, as in, if you hide the beginning and end in Strava or set up a privacy area, but the activity is otherwise public, a third-party app has no way of knowing that, so they’d show the whole activity. Maybe that explains why they went with the “Third-party apps are no longer able to display your Strava activity data on their surfaces to other users” route, because otherwise they’d need to change their API to support these privacy options so they instead went with the easier blanket ban.
2 Likes
I did a bulk export from Strava to Ride with GPS last year. The privacy zones from Strava do not transfer, the rides were uploaded with the full GPS track displayed.
RWGPS offers their own privacy zone settings, but they are based around a specific point and not ride-distance based. You choose the radius from an address to hide, with Strava (as you noted) you can hide the start and end point no matter where the ride starts.
2 Likes
I think Strava also lets you hide particular locations, a certain radius around an address (I think they use postcodes in 
) so you could enter addresses of family and work and not worry that you could be tracked that closely.
That said, if someone downloaded all my rides , that would have a bunch of rides that stop near home, so my heatmap would have a neat circle 
of blankness, so I actually entered several overlapping postcodes to increase the radius and disperse the centrality.
Just in case anyone was wondering, if you cancel your strava subscription and have time remaining on it, they will refund the remainder. I just did this. Cancelled via the website. Then raised a support ticket attaching proof of purchase and said I want a pro rata refund on the remainder because they have changed the terms and conditions to which I signed up. They came back to me within 24 hours and have refunded my remaining 8 months and put me back to the free version.
3 Likes
Couldn’t agree more! I’ve been in a new job for the past 3 months, really senior role taking over my life for a while and training has suffered because of it. I’ve accepted this and I know it will get better, but when I go on Strava, it definitely gets me down seeing my friends doing loads of training and enjoying long weekend rides that I don’t have time for at the moment.
So, along with changing my subscription to the free version I have taken this as a catalyst to stop getting drawn in to looking at others rides. I’ve deleted all my followers and I’m no longer following anyone else. I’ve also deleted the Strava app from my phone. I think it’s also good for the converse reason: it stops me falling into that social media trap of “showing off” when I’m doing lots of rides in nice places, uploading photos of the views.
I’m not a fan of social media in general as I’ve seen what it can do to people’s mental health (a whole other topic!) and so I feel that removing Strava from my life can only be a good thing in this respect. Another positive for me, all driven my their decision with the APIs!
I’ve kept my free account for now until I make a final decision to delete it completely but these are all steps in the right direction for me personally and I’m looking forward to just using Garmin and TR (both of which I have set to completely private).
I am still friends with my Strava followers IRL as I didn’t ever have an open account where random people could just add me. So I know I’ll still see all my bike club buddies IRL when I’m back training again and joining weekend club rides.
4 Likes
I handle that manually. I never intentionally start or stop recording at my work, or my home or the homes of those dear to me. Sure I lose a few hundred metres to a km per activity, but pfft, distance is a vanity metric. If I forget to stop, I run it through Gotoes to trim it first.
As an armchair referee (disclaimer!) I don’t know why the privacy zone thing has to be so hard. All they have to do is permanently delete the offending lat & lon data from uploads that start within the zones, or replace it with copies of the first non-offending sample. Consider lost GPS when you ride through a long tunnel. The device keeps recording, & Strava shows all the HR, power, & cadence data regardless of losing GPS fix.
I went full cold turkey. Went full private. Deleted all my friends. Unfollowed everybody. Deleted all my pictures. My Strava feed is a ghost town. And I have to say, I have zero regrets. I don’t feel like I’m missing anything. Maybe partly because 90% of my feed was Zwift rides. At least by next spring I’ll have fully adjusted to my post-Strava life but I don’t see any real desire to go back for now. Garmin and Zwift push to TrainingPeaks which pushed to WKO5.
2 Likes
Yes - I have done this, but so long ago I can’t remember.
Try asking chat GPT how to automatically move files from one folder to another. Zwift completed workouts are always in the same place; you can move them to your dropbox folder for TR to pick up.
I did this with Interval.icu and also I think goldencheetah and it worked.
I’ve been cold turkey for nearly six months from Strava. Not logged in. Don’t miss it. My next step will be to delete the account.
6 Likes
VeloViewer posted an update on their blog:
https://blog.veloviewer.com/update-on-strava-api-use-and-the-implications-for-veloviewer/
We have been working closely with the team at Strava and are appreciative of their partnership. At this time, we fully understand the implications and will be making a subtle adjustment to make sure that we continue to uphold the highest standards of data security and to ensure that we fully align with Strava’s API agreement.
The single change is that users who choose to share their data publicly within VeloViewer will now be asked to confirm consent regularly. Visibility will default back to ‘private’ if consent is not reconfirmed. Previously, it was a ‘one & done’ consent process, this change will help users to be fully aware of the data sharing that they have agreed to.
This change will be released in the next couple of weeks and all other functionality will remain unchanged. We hope that you will continue to enjoy exploring your data and planning your adventures with VeloViewer.
5 Likes
Carving out exception after exception for partners that matter.
9 Likes
I feel like it would be so easy to say “we’ve heard your feedback and have updated our API agreement to clarify these use cases that people have expressed concerns about” instead of carving out case-by-case exceptions arbitrarily but that might require admitting that they messed this up in the first place. Then again, I don’t have a title as lofty as “VP of Communications and Social Impact” so what the hell do I know.
5 Likes