Playing with StatsHunters

Playing with StatsHunters

Byrichard

Today I saw a link to Stats Hunters on the Google App so I clicked through on a laptop, once I was sitting at a computer. This is an app that looks at Strava data and gives you a summary of how many activities you’ve done as well as how far you have travelled. 


According to the data this Strava add on can access I have 2753 logged activities with a total distance of 25,l404 kilometres. November 2018 was my best month with 898 kilometres travelled. I think this was kilometres ridden on Zwift if I remember correctly. 


My longest ride was La Visit Horlogère where I cycled from around Nyon to Le Post, around the Lac de Joux and back down via St Cergue. 


The biggest vertical gain in a day of hiking was the EuropaWeg part 1 where I gained 1803.2m of altitude. 


It’s fun to see the distance per year graph because my best year was 2775km of distance travelled. For context I had 2775 in 2019, 2487 in 2020, 2267 in 2021 and 2499km in 2022. The pandemic has really affected how far I travel by bike and by foot, despite hardly driving to do any of these activities.  We should not ignore how much we can do, without touching a car. 


You can see a breakdown per week for the last year if you want to., 


The general stats are interesting. My average distance per activity is 9.23 kilometres. My average speed is 9.29 km/h. My maximum speed is wrong, because that’s when I played with a GPS watch in a plane. 


The website gives a lot more information than I am exploring in this blog post. It’s interesting to see the hour stats. This tells you at what times of the day you are most active. 


In the type statistics you can select from moving time, distance and other factors. My walking habit accounts for 36.8 percent of sports, with hiking accountiing for 28 percent. That is 64.8 percent of my sporting time. Bike rides account for 20 percent and running for 4 percent. 


According to some stats I have done 2639 activities of 0-35km, 107 between 35-70km and 7 between 70-105km. The main reason for this is the mountainous nature of the landscape. If it was possible to do longer distances without too much climbing then I would. 


And finally


Although I have done no group activities for years now, my sporting habit endures, and has thrived. I have done so much more now that I don’t wait for the weekend to do things with others. Solitude is not a reason to do nothing. It is a reason to do more. I like the data trends that this app shows. 

A Lot of Walking in Circles
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A Lot of Walking in Circles

Byrichard

People think that you need to get in the car, drive for half an hour to two hours, hike, and then drive home for from half an hour to two hours but this idea is wrong. We can do a lot of walking in circles. In reality we don’t walk in circles. We walk in loops. We walk from home to home, but via a different variety of villages. Some days it is the villages that overlook the lake, and other days it is the villages that are under the Jura.


The walks are in almost the same place, but with different dynamics. One takes you along fields, trees, the camino de Santiago and the trail of the Hughenots and the next takes you along vines, orchards, woods and more. They also take you along different groups of people.



Most people seem to walk from village one to village two in a loop. They usually finish within an hour but I often walk from one and a half hours to two, and sometimes three, depending on whether it is summer or winter. There is more time to walk in summer. So much walking, 365 or so days a year, does mount up. Depending on the app it amounts to 2600 or more kilometres of walking. That is a considerable distance. 28,000 metres gained, despite not going up to the Jura, or doing sporty climbs this year. Simple walks, with the occasional bike ride thrown in.




In a normal year I might spend less time doing sports, but the carbbon footprint from driving to do those sports would be higher. I would also have more to write about, as I would have been exploring and discovering new places. At this rate my discoveries were books in lending libraries. I don’t mind walking. I show that I have the stamina to do a real hiking journey, rather than the loop walks. With the way the pandemic I could spend many more walks wearing out shoes going around in circles.






The Slowness of Public Transport

Byrichard

Today someone something to the effect “If I go from here to there it will take me two and a half hours so it would require a car.” That’s what I have been saying for years. That’s one of the reasons for which having a sporty life, during the pandemic, is not possible, or at least requires a much bigger commitment.


Summer sporting activities are vulnerable because in times of pandemics car sharing is no longer possible, and is no longer advisable. If you’re in a car for an hour or two each way then the mask will not protect you effectively, especially if the windows are closed. Trains used to have windows that you could open. Now that they don’t their allure is diminished during such times.


The problem, during this pandemic, has been the same for months now. We don’t know where people were when they were exposed so we don’t know what locations are safe, and which locations are not. We’re stuck in limbo. We might have been safe for the entire pandemic, never being within a kilometre of the virus, but we have no way of knowing.


With fourty infections during the last two days is Switzerland back to Pre-21st of June numbers or is the lull simply because those who were most likely to be infected are now on holiday? Will we see a big increase in the number of cases shortly?


As long as that insecurity lasts summer socialising through sports is less appealing. People have also migrated to using Facebook to plan activities and a consequence of this is that if you want to dump Facebook, you have to be creative about finding other groups, and websites, to find activities to participate in.


Imagine an app like Happn or SwissCovid but for sports. That would be really useful. You would not have to spend hours on social networks, looking for opportunities and you would not have to be active about finding things. It would run in the background and if you spend enough time it could give you more info.


It’s like the flyby function on Strava. You go for a ride and you can see who the other cyclists were, that you crossed paths with. In theory, you can then start to plan group activities. We need apps to help us meet new people who live close by so that we can stop relying on cars, public transport, and social media websites.


As the pandemic has reset how we think of time and space we need to rethink how we use modern technology to connect with others. Do we really need to rely on American Social networks to connect with people in Europe? Do we really need to be so centralised?


With Apple Login it would be interesting to create apps that allow us to connect with others, without relying on websites with dubious moralities. With my learning of Ruby On Rails, PHP, MySQL, PHP and more, the opportunity to create such a service is growing.

I Completed the Apple May Activity Challenge Yesterday
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I Completed the Apple May Activity Challenge Yesterday

Byrichard

I completed the Apple May Activity Challenge yesterday. The goal was to walk or run 349 kilometres within one month. I finished this challenge two days early.


Using the Apple Watch Series 3 and the SUUNTO Spartan Sport Wrist HR BARO I tracked all of my activities. For the first two or three weeks I tracked activities with both devices and then deleted the duplicates on Strava and then I stopped tracking with the Apple Watch as I saw that activity data could be communicated to Apple’s Activity tracking.


During the past month I walked 10-15 kilometres a day and when I didn’t walk such distances I was cycling. As a result I have had a sporty month. I’ve walked in the rain, the wind, and recently the heat. I took up running again and this provides me with an opportunity to play with a podcast, and to play with apps.


Running requires for my legs to adapt to the sport so I’m doing shorter distances than my cardiovascular system can cope with. I don’t want to feel knee pain so I’m doing less than I know I could. It’s about building up gradually, and eventually exceeding my previous best.


Now I have two days to recover, before the next challenge.

Strava – The Escape Plan
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Strava – The Escape Plan

Byrichard

Strava – The Escape plan has the goal of getting people to move 15 minutes a day 5 times a week for four weeks. This includes all sports from Alpine Skiing to Yoga with walking, hiking, kayaking, cycling, swimming and more. In other words your walk to the shops, the café and the work commute are included.



With so many sports activities included in this challenge, it should be easy for everyone to achieve. You could walk to work the first day, cycle the second, swim in the evening on the third, play on one of the elliptical machines on the fourth and follow a yoga session on the fifth. There is no reason not to succeed. As I look through the list every one of these sports would be practised for extended periods of time beyond just 15 minutes. I can’t see many people going for a fifteen-minute hike. I would expect it to be for longer.



Most of the challenges on Strava are based on specific sports and specific distances. In these situations, you can compete with others and see whether you are in the top ten. In this case, you simply log a fifteen-minute activity and you’re done five days a week four weeks in a row.


This is a habit-forming challenge for those who either do not do fifteen minutes of exercise in one go on a daily basis or for those who never consider a fifteen-minute walk from the train station to the office as an activity.



As a point of reference, I am on day 71 of the move streak goal. It’s set at between 400-500 calories per day and requires at least an hour of walking to reach. I don’t need to “get moving”. I need to continue moving.

Cropping an activity on Strava
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Cropping an activity on Strava

Byrichard

When you’re hiking, cycling, climbing or doing other sporting activities it is easy to forget to stop tracking an activity. When you’re at home or static this is less critical. When you get into a car after a hike or other activity that mistake will screw up your average speed and other data.


Yesterday I realised that I had forgotten to stop tracking on my Suunto device and on my apple watch. With the Apple watch this was less important because it logs individual climbs. With the Suunto device however it tracks the speed of the drive as well as the increase and decrease in altitude.



Strava has two options to fix this mistake. Split is good for running and cycling activities. It allows you to split and then delete what you do not want to keep. Crop allows you to select the in point and the outpoint of an activity like you would if you were editing video.



In the image above you can see the track from the climbing gym towards the motorway. Initially I adjusted the sliders simply to remove that segment but noticed that there is a more precise tool.



With the climbing profile view you can see each climb as well as the difference in altitude as you drive from the car park to the motorway. I deleted the superfluous data and pressed “crop”. I then had a clean export of my activity.


This is a quick, intuitive and useful feature to know about. It allows you to keep a more accurate record of previous activities and a more reasonable track of distance covered over the last week, month or year. Some day I might go back and clean up previous activities.

WordPress and Strava – Using WP Strava on this blog

Byrichard

I installed WP Strava on this blog to share my Strava cycling and running activity. At the time of this blog post you can see my most recent bike rides in the left column as well as the most recent map. With a minimum of code you can also include your bike rides within a post like you see below. You write activity id=number of activity and the ride will be integrated within your blog posts without the need for embed codes and an iframe.

This is useful for activity bloggers such as myself. The code is simple and easy to remember, as soon as I find the right keyboard keys to avoid the need to copy and paste. Shortcodes are to add information to blog posts and the widgets are for the side bar.

SHORTCODES

activity id=NUMBER – add to any page or post. Also takes the following
optional parameters:

  • som – english/metric (system of measure – override from default setting)
  • map_width – width (width of image in pixels)
  • map_height – height (height of image in pixels)

WIDGETS

Strava Latest Rides – shows a list of the last few activities

Strava Latest Map – shows map of latest activity with option to limit
latest map to activities of a certain minimum distance

Limitations

It would be nice for the maps that are included within posts to be zoomable, so that we can look at the details of the bike ride and see information for specific segments. This functionality is available on the website but there is no easy link to the strava posts. It’s an advantage because it’s native to your site but it’s a shame if you’re trying to grow a strava following. For that functionality you need the widget.

Overall it’s a quick and simple solution to add Strava maps and ride/run data to your blog post. You can then add images and a textual description to complement the map.

Strava Now Has Rock Climbing, Hiking And More
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Strava Now Has Rock Climbing, Hiking And More

Byrichard

Strava now has rock climbing, hiking and many more sports. Sports tracker, movescount and other applications already allowed you to do this but it is nice to see one more network provide us with this option.

Up until now I had to make sure to go for a bike ride or three per week to keep people updated on what I did. During week days I am likely to go for bike rides. On two to three evenings per week I may go climbing and on the weekend I may go hiking or for a walk. As a result I can track the diversity of my activities.

With rock climbing I would like them to add two or three more fields. I would like them to add an option to add the grade of the climb we did. This would need to use the European and the American systems. It would help us track our progress and even track how hard we worked if we’re wearing a heart monitor as we climb. In effect it could provide us with a way of seeing who else is climbing and whether we match their skill level. In the long run this could contribute to new groups. I have created a group for Swiss Via Ferrata in anticipation of via ferrata practitioners joining the network and sharing their climbs.

Until recently I would only track cycling and running. Now that walking, hiking and climbing have been added I can track a number of new sports. It should result in people using the app more frequently.  It could be fun to see climbing and hiking heat maps. We will see how they adapt the input section to match the sports.

 

StravistiX for Strava

StravistiX for Strava

Byrichard

StravistiX for Strava

Stravistix for strava is a Chrome plugin. It allows you to analyse the data from your ride in more detail and with more graphs. In the detailed view you can see heart rate information, speed, power, grade, elevation and  ascent speed. It allows you to see each metric in more depth.

It allows you to look at your statistics in detail. You can see what percentage of the ride was flat, uphill or downhill. You can see how fast you were climbing and how your speed varies.

This breadth of data is fun to play with. It allows you to see whether you do spend as much time as you thought climbing. It also allows you to see how much of your time was spent static or moving.

There is a weather module for wind, temperature, clouds and humidity. This is a nice way of checking whether the wind is favourable to the ride you are thinking of doing that day.

What I would like to see next is a log of the weather and especially wind during the ride. It would like to see ground speed in contrast to wind speed. This data should be relatively easy to acquire.

Plugins are great because they allow you to do more with the data that you or other people generate. They allow weekend and professional riders to analyse how they are progressing. It also allows riders to compare themselves with others.