Strava Boards.ie Club

Plastik

Are you using a phone as your GPS tracker?

BrookieD

nah Galaxy S2 - first time using this device for the Strava, Last time i used an iPhone 4 and was perfect

seamus

Is a Galaxy S2 not a phone?

Phones can be less reliable because when they lose GPS signal they will use local base stations and known WiFi networks to ascertain your location. Aside from being less accurate overall, it can also involve a certain amount of guesswork in figuring out how you got from A to B.

BrookieD

seamus wrote: »

Is a Galaxy S2 not a phone?

Phones can be less reliable because when they lose GPS signal they will use local base stations and known WiFi networks to ascertain your location. Aside from being less accurate overall, it can also involve a certain amount of guesswork in figuring out how you got from A to B.

cheers for that - something to bear in mind - any thoughts on a decent not too expensive GPS unit?

seamus

BrookieD wrote: »

cheers for that - something to bear in mind - any thoughts on a decent not too expensive GPS unit?

Depends on what your definition of "not too expensive" is

The majority of roadies buying GPS seem now to use the Garmin Edge 500. Cheapest site is usually handtec though occasionally it comes up cheaper elsewhere. The bundle is good, but if €220 seems a bit steep, you can just get the base unit without the HRM and speed/cadence sensor, and buy them later on if you want (but it'll work out more expensive overall).
The base unit alone will give you proper GPS tracking and speed readout, but you won't get cadence or HR without the extra add-ons.
The battery life is also shorter when you run it on GPS-only instead of using the speed/cadence sensor.

There is a cheaper unit in the Edge 200, which you should be able to find somewhere online for around €120. It's effectively the same unit except you can't add on any sensors later on, so it purely tracks your speed and route.

Lumen

The Garmin 500 is cheaper than a decent smartphone once you take into account contract costs, and it should last a lot longer. It only does one set of things but it does them very well.

I just don't understand how someone who is happy to get a Jobsian wallet-raping from Apple every year or so thinks €200 for a bike computer is poor value.

What's the average life expectancy of a smartphone? 18 months?

C3PO

The i-Phone app also seems to wildly inaccurate "elevation" figures!

Lumen

RPL1 wrote: »

The i-Phone app also seems to wildly inaccurate "elevation" figures!

This is true. Or at least it is true if you believe that Garmin figures are correct.

It might be better if Strava reported everything under 5% as flat.

doozerie

Lumen wrote: »

What's the average life expectancy of a smartphone? 18 months?

I'm not sure about life expectancy (which, based on my experience, is likely to be a lot longer than 18 months) but from what I understand the average time that a person holds onto a phone these days before replacing it is about 12 months. That's obviously not the same as life expectancy but is a measure of how disposable phones are considered to be by the general public and therefore potentially how long-lasting manufactuers might feel they need to be.

There are other good reasons to use something other than a phone as your GPS device, of course. For one thing GPS can be heavy on batteries and as many people would see a mobile phone as an important thing to have in an emergency, finding your phone to be dead when you try to make a call could be a real problem - phone battery life has certainly improved over the years but a phone that's not running power-hungry applications is still more appealing to some people, me included.

There is also a culture around phones that doesn't seem to have spread to the likes of Garmin devices (as yet anyway). Depending on how you look at it, this culture is either a good thing (e.g. of benefit to the end user) or a bad thing (e.g. invasion of privacy). One relevant example of this is that, in their efforts to provide a better service to you according to themselves, some providers are quite comfortable with retrieving a lot of data from your phone without your express knowledge or permission, such as recording your current geographical location every few minutes. Personally I want a relatively simple device recording my cycle rides just for my personal benefit, I don't want the baggage that a modern smartphone comes with for that particular purpose - having said that I do still carry my smart(-ish!) phone in my jersey pocket while riding though it's limited to being a device for making calls only, which makes me quite the Luddite really.

Morrisseeee

It's amazing (when you're bored!) the amount of 'browsing' you can do on Strava, ie. a click on someone's recent ride will inevitably bring you to a hill climb/KOM by other people, and a few clicks later and you're discovering routes in Norway or finding out who that person was you said hello to today! etc etc. After such browsing I remembered that fierce climb in the North York Moors, the Rosedale Chimney (1.4km @ 12.6%), but not far away is a lesser known climb but nearly twice as fierce: Battersby Incline (1.2km @ 19.2%) :eek: where the leader has an average speed of...............wait for it...............6.4km/h and a whopping 1228 VAM :eek:

on_the_nickel

Morrisseeee wrote: »

It's amazing (when you're bored!) the amount of 'browsing' you can do on Strava, ie. a click on someone's recent ride will inevitably bring you to a hill climb/KOM by other people, and a few clicks later and you're discovering routes in Norway or finding out who that person was you said hello to today! etc etc. After such browsing I remembered that fierce climb in the North York Moors, the Rosedale Chimney (1.4km @ 12.6%), but not far away is a lesser known climb but nearly twice as fierce: Battersby Incline (1.2km @ 19.2%) :eek: where the leader has an average speed of...............wait for it...............6.4km/h and a whopping 1228 VAM :eek:

Yea, but a Hippo got up it! (#11).

Dermot Illogical

on_the_nickel wrote: »

Yea, but a Hippo got up it! (#11).

Typical! A lemming followed him over. (#15)

Lusk Doyle

RT66 wrote: »

Typical! A lemming followed him over. (#15)

You're not busy enough at work!!!!

seve65

Morrisseeee wrote: »

It's amazing (when you're bored!) the amount of 'browsing' you can do on Strava, ie. a click on someone's recent ride will inevitably bring you to a hill climb/KOM by other people, and a few clicks later and you're discovering routes in Norway or finding out who that person was you said hello to today! etc etc. After such browsing I remembered that fierce climb in the North York Moors, the Rosedale Chimney (1.4km @ 12.6%), but not far away is a lesser known climb but nearly twice as fierce: Battersby Incline (1.2km @ 19.2%) :eek: where the leader has an average speed of...............wait for it...............6.4km/h and a whopping 1228 VAM :eek:

must be close to the slowest av speed for a KOM. I say go Mr Hippo, go !

And classics like the Mortirolo
11Km @ 11%
app.strava.com/segments/614726 :eek:

Angliru
13Km @ 9.4%
app.strava.com/segments/738025 :eek::eek:

seve65

And the Zoncolan
7.5K @ 13.5%
app.strava.com/segments/657601

where the leader has averaged 10k with a vam of 1300+. impressive, well he is a pro.

dave2pvd

Still no data on board for me.

Feeling somewhat left out though, so I'll post up my buddy's info of our rather long Sunday spin:

131km
2,724m

Six Gap

See if you can figure out what part of that route was the most difficult.

colm_gti

dave2pvd wrote: »

Still no data on board for me.

Feeling somewhat left out though, so I'll post up my buddy's info of our rather long Sunday spin:

131km
2,724m

Six Gap

See if you can figure out what part of that route was the most difficult.

Christ that's some amount of climbing!

dave2pvd

colm_gti wrote: »

Christ that's some amount of climbing!

Moving a bit slow today alright.

Cookie_Monster

dave2pvd wrote: »

See if you can figure out what part of that route was the most difficult.

leaving the cafe at the 2h 45m mark

dave2pvd

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

leaving the cafe at the 2h 45m mark

I wish! There's barely a sign of civilization in those there parts, never mind cafes. Guess where Deliverance was filmed? Pretty close by. So yeah, you keep moving.

The most difficult bit was the descent from Hogpen Gap. Check out the >10% gradient. Add in the gusting cross-winds and Zipp 404s. Made things interesting!

C3PO

A couple of days off sick and I'm dropped from the Climbing "Top Ten" ...... merciless!!

colm_gti

RPL1 wrote: »

A couple of days off sick and I'm dropped from the Climbing "Top Ten" ...... merciless!!

Haven't checked that strava leaderboards site in about a fortnight and I've jumped over ten places to #14 :eek:

I know I've been hitting a lot of hills but didn't think it'd be enough to get so close to the top ten!

daragh_

Ryan is at 85,250ft.

Good luck catching up

colm_gti

daragh_ wrote: »

Ryan is at 85,250ft.

Good luck catching up

Not a chance! Have you seen that some lad has completed 125% of that climbing challenge?! Mad whoor!

daragh_

It's easy to win. Give up the day job. Sell everything. Move to France. Ask Velopeleton if he needs a dishwasher. When not washing dishes spend ALL your time climbing in the Pyrénées.

colm_gti

daragh_ wrote: »

It's easy to win. Give up the day job. Sell everything. Move to France. Ask Velopeleton if he needs a dishwasher. When not washing dishes spend ALL your time climbing in the Pyrénées.

All for the sake of a specialized branded bottle, I'll do it!

seamus

daragh_ wrote: »

It's easy to win. Give up the day job. Sell everything. Move to France. Ask Velopeleton if he needs a dishwasher. When not washing dishes spend ALL your time climbing in the Pyrénées.

You need to think like a programmer;

- Download .gpx files for ten or twenty decent spins in the locality.

- Write a script which randomly picks one of these files and edits it just enough (using a fairly random mechanism to alter the numbers) to make it appear like you completed it today.

- Upload to Strava every day.

- Win

That is of course, if you put more stock in winning than actually getting out on the bike.

daragh_

colm_gti wrote: »

All for the sake of a specialized branded bottle, I'll do it!

Or you could just hang around the end of an A4 race. I hear those guys can't get rid of them fast enough.

Lumen

daragh_ wrote: »

It's easy to win. Give up the day job. Sell everything. Move to France. Ask Velopeleton if he needs a dishwasher. When not washing dishes spend ALL your time climbing in the Pyrénées.

In all seriousness, I think Strava is a fun way to see what other people are doing and motivate ourselves to push on a bit, but these sort of challenges do risk Strava becoming a bit of an end in itself.

I assume Ryan's climbing metres or whatever are are a side-effect of his training goals, not the target.

ROK ON

Just back from a lunchtime cycle.

I felt great and despite not having warmed up, I was half way up Molls Gap and on for setting a new PB (over 1 minute off my prior best).

Then out of the corner of my eye I spy a crisp 20 euro note lying on the ground. I just ploughed on and made it to the top and checked my Garmin to see where the note was (2.4km from the top).

On my way down, it was still there.

If it wasn't for strava, I would have gotten off the bike and taken the 20 when I first saw it.