Strava: nice idea but….

When I got my nice android phone I didn’t even know it had a GPS (Global Positioning Satellite) receiver built into it.

But after a while I started using it with Google Maps to aid navigation during events

More recently, I’ve been trying out an application called “Strava”. This is designed to record all your rides and upload them pretty much automatically to a website. I was previously using a website which did manual entry (www.mycyclinglogs.com) but after a couple of days of using Strava I could see the advantage.

This is how Strava works. As you set off, you set the Strava program on the Android phone running. It uses the GPS to record where you go. It also records the time. When you get to your destination, you stop recording. Then the phone can upload the record of your journey to the website with another easy click of a button.

So far, so convenient

However, after a couple of days I noticed that the amount of climbing on my regular commute to Taunton had varied wildly. On closer inspection, here is what had happened.

The GPS track had somehow pushed me just north of the A38- which is where I actually was. Then it had realised and suddenly snapped me back. This process had added a lot of non existent ascent to the trace

If this just happened once in a blue moon then fair enough. But I’ve only been using it a couple of weeks and Tuesday morning this happened

I noticed this because the distance and ascent is quite wrong. Unsurprisingly, as the GPS has recorded a point that clearly isn’t on my route and then added this onto the journey

Tuesday evening, I started the recorder at work as usual. But when I downloaded the route later it was short. The data from the first few miles of the route was missing.

Back to the drawing board for Strava I think. I assume it works better on other devices, like Garmin GPS.