The Zero Second Not a Number Strava Mystery

Yesterday I noticed that I had an unusual workout that was getting likes. It had zero minutes of exercise, zero distance travelled, and NaN speed in km/h. In other words I had a track that should not have been counted by Strava as a workout.

Everyone is familiar. If you go for a ten minute walk, or a fifteen minute walk Apple will ask “track walk/cycle” and you’ll say yes. When you go to Sports Tracker and other apps, you will notice that there is no map, just duration, and a high speed.

When you wear the apple watch it wakes up after ten to fifteen minutes and asks “track workout?” and you’ll say yes. If you’re lucky your phone will have the GPS track. If you’re unlucky it won’t.

Yesterday I suspect that the Apple watch created two files. The first file was the workout with a static GPS point, fabricated when I accepted the workout. The second file, just 3 minutes, was counted as a 3min cycle at 56 km/h. I noticed the same thing last week within the same scenario.

I usually think “A three kilometre bike ride is not worth tracking, so I don’t bother starting the GPS. In yesterday’s scenario we had three complications.

The first is that because Suunto and Sports tracker are logged in to the same account I can track with either the Apple Watch or the Suunto watch, but if I track with both then I get duplicate data. That’s why I wore the Apple watch but tracked with the Suunto run.

I tracked the ride to the ride, and the ride itself with the Suunto device, and then I stopped it at the end of the group ride. It didn’t ask me whether to count the group ride, on the Apple Watch.

When I rode home I tracked with the Garmin Explore 2 but didn’t keep the data. With the Garmin Explore 2 I want the map/climb duration features, but track recording is as a backup. Since the ride home was untracked by the Suunto device when the Apple Watch asked “Track workout” I said “yes” so it did.

That’s when I thought “oups, that was a mistake”. Rationally it makes perfect sense that it kept just the 12 minute ride, rather than the entire ride in three parts. At the same time when I saw the zero minute, zero distance, zero speed error file I was curious.

What is curious is that the file seems to have been spliced. One file has the HR data, and the other has the GPS data. I suspect that with clear breaks between part 1, the ride from home to the start of the ride, part 2, the ride, and part 3, the ride home Apple theoretically has three signals for workouts, but it only kept the most recent. It didn’t restore parts 1 and 2. That is normal and expected behaviour.

TDLR

An Apple Watch automatically detects that you might be walking, running or cycling, and it will ask “Do you want to record this”. If your bike ride is twelve minutes, then by the time you say yes the activity is over. It (the apple watch) then backtracks to find the HR data but may not have access to location data. That’s why the activity duration is logged, but not the GPS co-ordinates.

Strava saw one file, and showed the route correctly, but got the corrupted data and displayed that data as a workout. I noticed when I was AFK (Away from keyboard) so I saw people liking it, but I couldn’t delete it. I was curious to see which app created this mess, and I strongly suspect that it’s from data the Apple Watch gave to Sports tracker, which was then read by the Suunto app, before passing it to Strava. The activity that is correct is the one that Apple sent directly to Strava, If I remember correctly.

In conclusion, it’s not the Apple watch, by itself, but rather Apple, Sportstracer, suunto and strava going through generations of a gpx file before returning NaN.

And Finally

It is better to intentionally track workouts from the start, rather than 10 or more minutes into an activity, as an afterthought. As we have seen the files tend to be improperly formed. Neither Sports tracker, Suunto nor Strava know what to do with the data. It’s a case for leaving the Apple Watch at home, or turning off Suunto to Strava synching.

The one caveat is that when you turn off sync, you get a backlog the next time you enable it. It’s easier to delete activities after the fact.

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Sports Tracker is Waking Up

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In the 2000s I was using a Nokia N95 8gb with Sports tracker to track my walks every day. Eventually, when I started scuba diving I switched to Suunto to track dives, and eventually wore one for hikes, and then I upgraded to the Suunto Ambit 2, 3, Spartan Wrist HR Baro and then the Peak 5.

At the same time as I was jumping from one watch to another Sports Tracker was growing, and then Suunto bought it, and it became Movescount and this app was truly fantastic. I really loved the web app. It then became the Suunto App. Sports Tracker and the Suunto App are iterations of the same app. The Sports tracker app plays nicely with the Apple Watch, among other apps, whereas the Suunto app plays nicely with Suunto and Xiaomi devices.

I felt, for a long time, that Suunto wasn't taking advantage of how great the Movescount app was but in recent weeks I have noticed more social media posts for the Sports tracker app.

This morning, or last night I noticed the emergence of the "My Badges" tab. It has running, hiking, cycling, weight lifting, paddle sports, diving, snow adventure, stamina building and power striker.

It also rewards distance achievements and adventure milestones. The milestones seem to be forward looking. If they were retroactive then I would already have all of these badges, with ease, after three decades of using Sports Tracker, Movescount and the Suunto app.

On the Suunto app I have 486 activities logged, in part because I slid to Garmin to track certain sports and that's where the badges are present. On the Sports tracker app I have 4125 activities tracked, with 33,000 kilometres travelled over 2805 days and four thousand eight hundred and twelve hours of tracked activities.

On Strava I only have three thousand nine hundred plus activities. This is after years, and years of tracking sports.

And Finally

I would welcome a European company becoming more dominant in this space once again. It would be nice not to have to rely on Strava, Garmin and other apps. I was sad to see Movescount decline, and for years I felt that Sports Tracker and the Suunto apps would be abandonned. If they gain momentum I will be happy.

#Apple #Garmin #movescount #sportsTracker #strava #suunto

A Cycling Network Operating Centre or NOC

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Today I looked at the Sports Tracker app and I noticed that all of my activities started from home, whether cycling, hiking, or walking. That's because I spent this month cycling and walking from home. I didn't use the car, or trains to get around.

I was thinking of this luxury when I was walking to the food shops this morning. Usually I would go by car, not because I am too lazy to walk four kilometres to the shops and back, but because recently the roads have been congested. People commuting to work all drive at the same time, so the entire road gets clogged up. That's why I walked.

During the pandemic it was nice, because people had lost the freedom, and habit, of driving for everything, so roads were quiet, both in terms of traffic, but also in terms of noise pollution. It's a shame that we didn't preserve the habit of walking, cycling and hiking from home, rather than getting into the car to do activities.

This morning, when I looked at Sports Tracker, and my activities pattern I was happy with two things. The first is with the realisation that all of my activities started from home, but also that I had such a pattern, emanating from home, over the Jura, towards Morges and the region above, Les Rousses and more. If I had cycled with Geneva groups then the pattern would cover even more area.

And Finally

I enjoyed walking from home and hiking every day, for years, and now, this summer, I really enjoyed going for long rides from home, rather than taking the car, or catching a train. I love the convenience of being self-propelled.

#carFree #cycling #driving #sportsTracker #walking

Oh wow, #SportsTracker ( #Salomon, #Suunto) redesigned their sports tracking app in version 7.1.0 and it’s a lot clearer.

The new daily health module and the newly available “commute” graphs in the widgets are a great addition 👍

Have you got favorite feature(s)?

Mine are the ability to find previous activities, see where in the world I’ve exercised (another reminder of how lucky I am), see my own heat map.
Seeing where I am compared to where I was once saved me a few times!

Fin tur til Nordnes med torsdagspadling fra Puddefjord Kajakklubb.

Store cruiseskip som Norwegian Prime er ganske imponerende fra kote null.

#sportstracker #Kajakfahren #bergen https://www.sports-tracker.com

Recently I got back to inline skating after ~17 years of not inline skating, and it's surprisingly fun. To infinity!

#inlineskating #rollerblade #skating #outdoors #sport #Park #infinity #Strava #SportsTracker

#sportstracker #Radfahren

Kleine Abendrunde  https://www.sports-tracker.com/workout/rolandfischer9539/68a0f52cc866e328f4492a35