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1
In Depth Product Reviews
You probably stumbled upon here looking for a review of a sports gadget. If you’re trying to decide which unit to buy – check out my in-depth reviews section. Some reviews are over 60 pages long when printed out, with hundreds of photos! I aim to leave no stone unturned.
2
Read My Sports Gadget Recommendations.
Here’s my most recent GPS watch guide here, and cycling GPS computers here. Plus there are smart trainers here, all in these guides cover almost every category of sports gadgets out there. Looking for the equipment I use day-to-day? I also just put together my complete ‘Gear I Use’ equipment list, from swim to bike to run and everything in between (plus a few extra things). And to compliment that, here’s The Girl’s (my wife’s) list. Enjoy, and thanks for stopping by!
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Have some fun in the travel section.
I travel a fair bit, both for work and for fun. Here’s a bunch of random trip reports and daily trip-logs that I’ve put together and posted. I’ve sorted it all by world geography, in an attempt to make it easy to figure out where I’ve been.
4
My Photography Gear: The Cameras/Drones/Action Cams I Use Daily
The most common question I receive outside of the “what’s the best GPS watch for me” variant, are photography-esq based. So in efforts to combat the amount of emails I need to sort through on a daily basis, I’ve complied this “My Photography Gear” post for your curious minds (including drones & action cams!)! It’s a nice break from the day-to-day sports-tech talk, and I hope you get something out of it!
5
The Swim/Bike/Run Gear I Use List
Many readers stumble into my website in search of information on the latest and greatest sports tech products. But at the end of the day, you might just be wondering “What does Ray use when not testing new products?”. So here is the most up to date list of products I like and fit the bill for me and my training needs best! DC Rainmaker 2023 swim, bike, run, and general gear list. But wait, are you a female and feel like these things might not apply to you? If that’s the case (but certainly not saying my choices aren’t good for women), and you just want to see a different gear junkies “picks”, check out The Girl’s Gear Guide too.
I feel the raw power coursing through my veins! After pushing back against Zwift for #FreeLuciano and Strava for this, who is the next arrogant cycling service that will bow to my (our) might?
Strava’s whole MO when an issue pops up has been JUST DELETE/DISABLE IT for a long time (downhill segments, virtual segments, flyby, bluetooth sensors, Apple Health). One can only speculate why that is. It feels like engineer hours at Strava are an extremely scarce resource.
Relive is sitting in the background saying “Hey, how about us???” ;-)
I respect company that reverse bad decision quickly, the new strava is def better than 2018 strava
And I also respect a company that apparently empowers employees enough to make mistakes like this instead of putting everything behind process and barriers and signing off every little change by a dozen people who don’t really care and their dogs. Or maybe this is what happened and nobody saw the implications? Unlikely I’d say, because in that case they’d probably be much slower rolling back. Only surprised they didn’t catch this in some a/b incremental rollout.
Yup, I agree. I’m glad to see them take ownership and fix it quickly.
They do have a pretty vast semi-public beta program, but for backend toggles like this (meaning, they control whether or not the local app actually does what it says it does from a server), I get the impression those betas are more limited.
I just got that response to my support ticket! Just in time for tonight’s ride to make sure everything is up and running again.
Thanks for the update…So is there a way to get workouts that were recorded when this toggle was in play, so are missing from Apple Health into Apple Health now? I’ve tried the usual connection troubleshooting and it’s not worked….Not a big issue, having this fixed for future workouts is the big win 👍🏻
I’ve already cancelled Strava subscription and moved on to RunGapApp. Took me maybe an hour to sort it all out and get three years of history loaded and all the feeds set up the way I want. Not sure I’m in the mood to go back to Strava, though admittedly, it has some features that are unique like segments. I wonder how many others like me are out there. I still have Zwift and Garmin loading to Strava and perhaps that will be enough.
Yep, same here. Too much effort to go back.
Our attempt to prevent duplicate activity by carpet bombing all activity 🤣🤣🤣🤦♀️
Hallelujah!
I’m still irked. I missed my rings on March 9 (the only day Strava screwed me). Broke a 3 year streak. 😭
Oh man, I hope they are able to fix it for you!! I have a 1061 day streak going myself and would be sick if it was broken!!
Hi Karl, you can manually enter your workout on Apple Health app for that day. I hope it helps to keep your streak alive!
The title of the article was a ‘three-reader’ for me… are Strava “turning THEIR back on” Apple Health. :)
Haha, I never thought to read it like that. But, makes sense. Reminds me of explaining the three ‘Rights’ to my daughter just last night at dinner.
Right (direction)
Right (correct)
Write (making marks)
4th Right – Guaranteed privilege/allowance (or something like that, I’m not Webster or Oxford, LOL).
Three rights make a left
5. Rite (of passage)
Tenuous 6. (play)wright
Narrator: The daughter quietly runs away from the dinner table.
Glad I only got the 3 month subscription to RunGap. I’m grateful RunGap was there, though.
HealthFit would do the same but for a one-time price instead of a subscription
HealthFit doesn’t write to Health, it only reads.
What do you have to do to restart syncing? I’ve tried disconnecting, reconnecting, download strata again etc and no joy since it stopped.
My understanding from them was that it was an instant behind the scenes change.
Right got it sorted. When I redownloaded I needed to go back into Strava settings and reconnect to Apple health.
Weirdly tho, my Apple Watch was able to send via Strava app to Apple health through the outage…
Seems like this is more of a Garmin Connect problem than a Strava problem. If GC would correctly report up to Apple Health most of us wouldn’t need the Strava work around anyway.
Garmin Connect is merely one company. There are hundreds of companies that Strava partners with.
Absolutely, Garmin needs to fix their issue, but people value Strava because it is that middleman between all sorts of platforms/devices.
Great news
If they wanted to put a quick fix into place, they could let the users decide if they want all workouts to sync to Apple Health or let folks cherry pick the ones they want to sync to Health just like they let people decide which workouts sync into Strava from Apple Health. It shouldn’t be that hard.
I spent hours trying to resync Strava and Apple Health to close my rings. It might be a small thing, but to some athletes who need a little bit of motivation everyday to keep going, it was huge to me. I simply could not get Strava to send the data to Apple Health. I finally searched the internet for help, only to find out right here that Strava disconnected it. Thank you Ray for your timely articles. Thank you Strava for re-connecting it after the outcry from other athletes. I hope whoever thought this was a good idea to disconnect it has been fired and their termination package rescinded. It probably was not an athlete wearing an apple watch who had their data pushed through by Strava.
Well I’m glad I don’t work for you!
Suggested new title – “Ray Maker – The Most Feared Person in Endurance Sports Gadgets and Apps – With the Stroke of a Pen (keyboard) Companies Bow to His Will”
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Thank you so much for advocating for this!!!
RunGap probably had their best day ever yesterday. I dropped the £3.49 on them.
I had the same support message from Strava…
So, has anyone had previous workouts sync as promised by Strava – I have had none since 8th March except my new ride yesterday – all the ones in between still not appeared.
No, not yet. I keep checking. Missed workouts have not synced yet.
Same here! I’m missing 3 workouts from last week. New ones seem to sync just fine.
To get old rides back. Edit the title, save and refresh the tab for each missing ride. They should reload.
Nope. Not working for me :-(
Ah, refreshing each workout only did not help, but refreshing the entire “you” feed did help! Now I got my missing workouts in Apple Health. But seems like my activity rings are not re-calculated and closed in hindsight.
Wondering if I should keep using RunGap, which I setup yesterday, or if doing so will now cause duplicates?
May I have no idea what this is even does or doesn’t do… my strava shares with apple health but never once has a ring actually closed from it?
I run at least once a day which should close all rings based on my apple watch’s settings for time, calories, steps and yet nothing like that links.
I wish they also resumed providing their service in Russia. Kind of an bad move to stop athletes communication and support in these times(
All, can you confirm that avg.heart rate is coming over to apple health from strava ? My set up is Garmin to Strava and than to apple health , I get all my data except avg. heart rate … any suggestions how to fix this ?
Thanks
Rich
Good news, but I’m going to stay with RunGap. It works better then Strava, at least for me, being able to also write GPS track and heart rate to Apple Health/Fitness.app. For some reason heart rate data from Strava was broken.
All My rides came back yesterday but today they have stopped again March 17th. I rode on RGT Cycling’s virtual world. The ride sync’d to Strava but has not sync’d to Apple Health. I have a feeling they are still being selective on what Devices/Software that they do allow syncing. Anyone else having issues?
Per the WSJ, Strava just hired a new CMO, Zipporah Allen, who “previously served as chief digital officer of Taco Bell, where her work included a taco subscription program that the fast-food chain launched in January.”
Ms Allen said, “We’ve got a really active and engaged and passionate community around the brand. And so how we communicate that to build more users onto the platform, how we actually leverage our community to show up in the world…that’s the work that we’re going to get started on.”
link to wsj.com
Not gonna lie, I’d love to have integration between Strava miles pedaled/ran and free tacos. Not sure if I really want those to be Taco Bell tacos, but hey…beggers can’t be choosers.
That’s a great idea. And, given Strava has connections to multiple tech companies there’s no reason they couldn’t just duplicate that code for multiple taco stands, not just Taco Bell. Better yet, now with this recent experience, Strava knows better not to worry about customer’s receiving duplicate “entries!” Tacos that is. Going one step too far, Apple could then integrate Miles completed, Average heart rate and “Tacos Awarded” into their rings! I think we have something here! ;-)
what happens when you have garmin connect connected with strava, but also both connected with Apple Health?
are there some fields in GC that are unique to GC (vO2Max?) and that would be lost in the Strava transit? and what happens when two devices feed the same data to Apple Health? e.g. wearing a HR strap and an Apple Watch whilst cycling?
Hi Ray,
great info as always. Thanks!
After reading your previous post on Strava (service interruption), it came to my mind why you couldn’t write a post on best practice for data sync? I use Garmin, a Beurer weight, Trainingpeaks, Strava, Stryd, intervals.icu and other platforms, and have been trying to find out the best setup (RunGap, Fitnesssyncer, iHealth etc.) to sync activities, sleep data, steps and body composition (weight etc.).
What do you think? Would really, really like to have that
Best
Ulli
Definitely a good one to stick on the rainy day list!
Lots of rainy days to come in the NL ;-)
Normally I’d agree, though in this somewhat astounding last two weeks and next two weeks – it’s all crazy amounts of sun!
Same here in Berlin. Not sure if I’d opt for rain to get my articel ;-)
this would be an awesome video, i have a few different devices as well that i try syncying
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