Official Strava/Runkeeper Thread

[Subby]

At the very least I think it would be cool if we all signed up for the May Massive running challenge. Maybe we could split into teams and see which groups logs the most miles running.

Anyone interested?

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Subby

At the very least I think it would be cool if we all signed up for the May Massive running challenge. Maybe we could split into teams and see which groups logs the most miles running.

Anyone interested?

Sure, that works. For most of us (if not all of us), easiest way for us to get better/fitter/faster/etc is to simply just run/jog/walk more miles each week.

[Fidatelo]

I'm already signed up for the May Massive, and I know that getting a little badge, as insignificant as it might be, is a draw for me that I suspect will get a couple extra runs out of me over the month. Having some kind of little FOFC team competition would likely be fun, too.

[AnalBumCover]

If I plan my C25K training right and possibly add an extra session or two, I might actually reach the 80K badge! What motivation. It all depends on how far my training runs take me.

[Fidatelo]

Looks like I get to start my May Massive off on Wednesday with below-freezing temps (-3), a wind-chill (-9), and snow. May! Grrrr.

[sabotai]

Signed up for the May Massive. I'll be happy if I just get the 40km badge.

[Subby]

Let's split into two teams and then add the total number value of each team's badges to get the winner. That way if someone goes crazy and runs 300km it won't count any more than someone running 160km.

How does that sound?

[Fidatelo]

So does that mean a 40k badge has the same value as an 80k badge? Or would the guy who went 80k get both badges so 1+1=2?

[Subby]

Let's add them all together. So if you end up with a 40K badge and an 80K badge, you are worth 120 points to your team. If you end up going 79K, you are only getting a 40K badge and 40 points and major razzing from your teammates

[digamma]

Joined the group and the Massive.

[Fidatelo]

Sounds good!

[AnalBumCover]

So, how will we determine teams?

[digamma]

Random list generator of all 10 people in the FOFC group?

Or pick teams elementary school dodge ball style?

[AnalBumCover]

Random is cool for now. Then after the Massive May ends, we can have a better idea of determining more permanent teams.

Team Trout vs Colossal Squid?

[Ryan S]

I have signed up for the May Massive, but I doubt I am going to hit 40k this month with soccer commitments I have over the next few weeks.

[Alan T]

Random is good and easy.

I think for future months something like % of increase or whatever might be fun to mix in and help level the playing field a bit too. Most important to me is keeping it fun and an incentive to encourage everyone to keep up the good work

[Ryan S]

Has anyone noticed any screwy imports to Strava with Garmin devices? It looks like Strava is not taking into account the autopause, so the results are messing up the total time and average speed.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Ryan S

Has anyone noticed any screwy imports to Strava with Garmin devices? It looks like Strava is not taking into account the autopause, so the results are messing up the total time and average speed.

Strava seemed to handle my autopause correctly when I had to wait for traffic lights today. It has two different ways of handling it though from what I have seen:

1) On your run, it will show total time and moving time and give you your splits and numbers based on moving time (ie: handle the auto-pause correctly)

2) On Personal records or segments it ignores the auto-pause for the purpose of keeping records. ie: you can't sprint a 5k full speed, rest 5 minutes while paused and then sprint another 5k full speed and get credit for a 10k PR if that makes sense. On records, it considers the full recorded time

[Alan T]

Maybe this is a question for just Subby (unless there are other cyclist here besides him). When you track your bike on strava, what are you tracking? For running, I track my shoe mileage since it helps me get a feeling for when I need to replace my shoes (ie: my current shoes have a bit over 300 miles on them). With bikes, do you measure it for tire wear miles? or something else?

[Subby]

First Crack...

Team A

Chris Shue
Mc Lean, VA

Ben Lewis
Goose Creek, SC

Richard Dixon
Wake Forest, NC

Stephen Venable
Los Angeles, CA

Jason Wood
Pitman, New Jersey

Team B

Rob Ordona
Anaheim, CA

Alan Baker
Grafton, MA

Ryan Stevenson
Ayr, Scotland, United Kingdom

Dave Harris
Winnipeg, MB, Canada

David Gonzalez
Fremont, CA

Doug Timms
West Windsor Township, NJ

[Subby]

Originally Posted by Alan T

Maybe this is a question for just Subby (unless there are other cyclist here besides him). When you track your bike on strava, what are you tracking? For running, I track my shoe mileage since it helps me get a feeling for when I need to replace my shoes (ie: my current shoes have a bit over 300 miles on them). With bikes, do you measure it for tire wear miles? or something else?

Exactly - I can track component wear and get a better handle on when the bike needs maintenance. I am trying to learn how to do some of it, but I am still a major newb.

[Fidatelo]

Originally Posted by Ryan S

I have signed up for the May Massive, but I doubt I am going to hit 40k this month with soccer commitments I have over the next few weeks.

I might struggle in May, too. My boys have soccer two nights a week and I have Ultimate on another, so I might be lucky to get more than 1 run home from work in per week. I'm kind of hoping this competition spurs me to do a couple evening or weekend runs more than I might otherwise to compensate.

[Icy]

I'm Ivan Carrillo in Strava.

[Subby]

Icy - don't forget to join the FOFC group:

FOFC

[Fidatelo]

So not only is it freezing cold and snowing, but now my headphones won't work after running home in the rain with them on Monday. Not a great way to start off the Massive!

[Subby]

Thank god for this challenge. I haven't run but one other time this year - it was nice to get out this morning for a quickie. No way I would have done it otherwise.

Fidatelo - you should get bonus points for running in those conditions. Which reminds me of my favorite saying..."If it was easy, everyone would do it."

[Ben E Lou]

So is there a way to get a GPS device that connects to the iPhone that makes apps like RunKeeper actually accurate? For today's run I used multiple apps to measure as a test and got these results:

RunKeeper: 4.36 miles in 44:50
MapMyFitness: 4.44 miles in 44:49
Strava: 4.5 miles in 45:15
Polar Beat: 4.46 miles in 44:50

I also hooked up my Polar GPS watch that uses satellites, so totally independent of the iPhone. It said 4.11 miles in 44:43. I then took our new-ish (bought brand spanking new 6 months ago) car on the same route and it measured 4.1 by the odometer. That car also has a Garmin GPS that came up with 4.1, so I'm feeling pretty confident that the 4.11 from the Polar GPS is correct. But is there a device similar to it that uses satellite triangulation (and doesn't cost me a small fortune) that will, for example, make the Runkeeper chick tell me the *correct* time and speed??? I guess I'm saying I want something will override the iPhone's internal GPS in one of the apps. Does that make sense, and does such a thing exist? If not, I guess I can just use the watch and look down at it, but I'd prefer not to have to do that...

[Ben E Lou]

Oh...and calorie burn. One would think that with my correct height, weight, and heart rate information entered into all of the apps, they'd get very similar calorie burn outputs, right?

Nope.

Strava: 927
RunKeeper: 747
MapMyRun: 958
Polar Beat: 630

All four are reporting 150 as the average heart rate.

[digamma]

I ran with Strava this morning and was within a tenth of a mile of what I thought I was running.

(Also checked on Gmap Pedometer.)

[AnalBumCover]

There are external GPS antennas that you can connect directly to your phone (or via bluetooth) and are more accurate than the internal GPS antennas in the phone. However they are in the $100+ range.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

So is there a way to get a GPS device that connects to the iPhone that makes apps like RunKeeper actually accurate? For today's run I used multiple apps to measure as a test and got these results:

RunKeeper: 4.36 miles in 44:50
MapMyFitness: 4.44 miles in 44:49
Strava: 4.5 miles in 45:15
Polar Beat: 4.46 miles in 44:50

I also hooked up my Polar GPS watch that uses satellites, so totally independent of the iPhone. It said 4.11 miles in 44:43. I then took our new-ish (bought brand spanking new 6 months ago) car on the same route and it measured 4.1 by the odometer. That car also has a Garmin GPS that came up with 4.1, so I'm feeling pretty confident that the 4.11 from the Polar GPS is correct. But is there a device similar to it that uses satellite triangulation (and doesn't cost me a small fortune) that will, for example, make the Runkeeper chick tell me the *correct* time and speed??? I guess I'm saying I want something will override the iPhone's internal GPS in one of the apps. Does that make sense, and does such a thing exist? If not, I guess I can just use the watch and look down at it, but I'd prefer not to have to do that...

I don't have a polar gps, but I am going to assume they are as good or close in quality to garmin gps watches. With that assumption, they would likely always be more reliable than the phone gps. I have heard some of the phone gps issues lies in poor quality of the gps itself, but also the phones in some cases use phone tower triangulation to try to determine location with a much lower level of accuracy but with increased speed. That is fine for many applications, but not really running apps. I have heard some people say that to increase your phone accuracy with runkeeper (and similar apps) you can try turning the cell off, which then should force it to gps only mode.. but I do not know if that is truthful or just a rumor.

Either way, I would assume you are better off using your watch if you have one. Is there any reason you want to use the iphone instead of the watch? I just use my garmin watch and then sync up my activity to runkeeper/strava/etc afterwards. I assume the polar watch can do the same?


As for calories.. yeah.. they are all over the place. I don't know how accurate any of them are to be honest. I know strava is almost always waaay off. I've had some runs that it said I burned 2000 calories before which is nuts. I don't know which is considered the most accurate there (if any)

[AnalBumCover]

I gotta get myself a Garmin watch.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Alan T

I don't have a polar gps, but I am going to assume they are as good or close in quality to garmin gps watches. With that assumption, they would likely always be more reliable than the phone gps. I have heard some of the phone gps issues lies in poor quality of the gps itself, but also the phones in some cases use phone tower triangulation to try to determine location with a much lower level of accuracy but with increased speed. That is fine for many applications, but not really running apps. I have heard some people say that to increase your phone accuracy with runkeeper (and similar apps) you can try turning the cell off, which then should force it to gps only mode.. but I do not know if that is truthful or just a rumor.

Hmmmm...a couple of points here.

1. I've read that turning off wi-fi and putting the phone in an arm band helps. Doing that has eliminated the crazy "thinks I'm on the next street over for a few seconds" stuff that I used to see. I might try turning off cellular too.
2. All of my runs are near my house. It's a rather large development that makes it easy to run loops without dealing with traffic. It's a relatively new development and the cell tower coverage around here isn't that great. I suppose that could be part of my problem.

Either way, I would assume you are better off using your watch if you have one. Is there any reason you want to use the iphone instead of the watch? I just use my garmin watch and then sync up my activity to runkeeper/strava/etc afterwards. I assume the polar watch can do the same?

Yes, I can sync up Polar, but I really like the apps (Polar Beat and RunKeeper in particular) that tell me my time, distance, speed, heart rate, etc. at intervals that I define without having to look down at the watch and push buttons. (Time, distance, speed, and heart rate are all on different displays.) But it would be nice if the information those apps gave me was actually accurate.

I suppose my next steps would be to try turning off cellular and also trying it in a different part of town.

The other thing that seems to ring true about the cell tower thing for me is that there seem to be parts of my runs where Runkeeper and the watch are pretty much identical, and other parts where they move apart from each other fairly dramatically--and now that you mention it, those areas *do* seem to be at the same spots in the neighborhood...

[sabotai]

Run #1 is in the books. 3.1km in 30min (mostly walking. 10 min warmup up, back and forth running and walking, then ~5 min cool down walk). My Garmin has it at 3.14km miles in 31:20. I'm guessing Strava does some rounding off.

[lighthousekeeper]

Don't make a bet against Subby that involves running!

Evidence:
http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/...7&postcount=79

[lighthousekeeper]

dola - seeing the strava site is kinda discouraging. some people have already run 30 miles in May!? So some people just run marathons in their spare time even when chicks aren't cheering them on?

[Ben E Lou]

Alan, you may have nailed it. I just re-drove the route with cellular turned off and Wi-Fi turned off, and all the iPhone apps measured it between 4.09 and 4.15. Now, there is the variable that this time the phone was sitting still on the dashboard of my car as opposed to jiggling in an armband, but this is encouraging. I will give it a try tomorrow with cellular turned off.

Also, for what it's worth, I did a little digging and found the suggestion to turn off cellular on an actual Apple support site page. Thanks a ton for the tip. I will be very happy if my run tomorrow measures out like I hope it will.

[Ben E Lou]

Dola: I guess I am surprised that I never really thought about it, but some of the streets that I run on are so brand-new that there are no occupied homes on them yet. The area is still being built out. Some parts of the route do not even show up on GPS maps. The apps make it look like I am off-road. :-) I guess it makes sense that the cell tower coverage would not be strong or accurate in such an area.

[Fidatelo]

Well, the weather, my broken headphones, and other commitments have been enough to dissuade me from running home today. But I vow to come back strong tomorrow!

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by lighthousekeeper

Don't make a bet against Subby that involves running!

Evidence:
Front Office Football Central - View Single Post - The Shitty Habits of a Middle Aged Man

Hey, if it gets him out running more, its a good thing! I mean the biking is ok and all, but running is where it is at!

[Alan T]

Test

[Alan T]

Heh, pretty cool

[lighthousekeeper]

so how do you get achievements & PR's to show up?

[AnalBumCover]

Continue logging more runs. Strava will track your achievements and PRs for you.

[AnalBumCover]

Originally Posted by Alan T

Test

This should be in the first post

[Subby]

AWESOME.

I could not get up early enough to run this morning, so I brought my stuff in and will try and run during lunch.

[Subby]

DOLA

Also - got my first big KOM yesterday on a segment called Water Plant Westbound Sprint. I also have a KOM on another segment but that has maybe 8 other people. This one has over 1100, so it feels legit! Of course, I am one of three people at the top, so they only show the pic of the first person to get it. Time to go back and get 44 seconds.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Subby

AWESOME.

I could not get up early enough to run this morning, so I brought my stuff in and will try and run during lunch.

I have a 5 mile race on Saturday, so taking today and tomorrow off to rest up the legs. Still should make my weekly goal for miles for the week though.

[AnalBumCover]

I originally posted this in my Running Dynasty, but I thought this deserved a x-post to this thread.

Do You Think You Run Slow? Why Being “Slow” Doesn’t Matter

Ok, so I can’t convince you that being “slow” is all a frame of reference. So I’ll ask you, why does being slow even matter?

Runners are perhaps the most welcoming and friendly group of athletes I’ve ever met. No runner I know has a problem slowing down to run with a friend. Think about it. Would you enjoy a run with a friend, even if you had to slow down considerably for them to keep up? I bet you would, and your running group feels the same.

Second, regardless of your pace, you’re doing better than almost 80 percent of Americans. In a study conducted by the CDC, researchers found that less than 20 percent of Americans get the recommended levels of exercise, and more than a quarter of U.S. adults do not devote any time to physical activity.

[sabotai]

2nd run in the books. First time getting over 5km. 10 min warm up, 30 min of intervals and when I saw that at the end of my 10 min cool down walk I was going to be close to 5km, I decided to do another lap of the immediate area of the park to finish it off. Total: 5.8km in 58:05.

And I'll probably end up being bedridden for the entire weekend.