I have used ST3 for 4-5 years and sporttracks.mobi at least 3 years. 2018 is my first year using the paid/premium TrainingPeaks. SportTracks.mobi has something they call effort, that corresponds to TSS (kinda) and a fitness graph that I find useless. But their presentation of workout data is far superior to TrainingPeaks. One look at how you can drill into a swim session on the two different platforms will make that fact jump out at you. SportTracks also lacks a lot of the ease of use I've found in scheduling my week using TSS in TrainingPeaks.

ST3, on the other hand has a real Windows XP looking interface that has not seen any love for years, but does have a plugin (Training Load) that does a great job of modeling your Training Load. I have used this the last several years to track my fitness, but it is a strictly looking-back view. You cannot schedule training to accomplish a result, you can just guess at it. It does allow you to know that all your data is living on your PC, if that's important to you, since the desktop and the mobi version sync with each other.

TrainingPeaks (paid annually and using your 20% off USAT discount) is about 3x higher, but using both is still just the cost of a single pair of decent tri shorts, so I use all 3 versions.

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I'm closer to the feathered end of the spear than the point.

Thanks David, good info (and i'm also back at the feathered end of the spear...!) Cheers, Greg

I had ST3 for many years. As noted there has been little love for it for a wee while so it is gradually falling apart - death by a thousand cuts. This is primarily because the company is pushing people to their online subscription service. I stuck with that for a little while but find that I get all I need from Garmin Connect and Strava without any additional outlay. I've now ditched ST3 and ST.mobi.

I am not a fan of the drive towards subscription based services.

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Trust me I’m a doctor!
Well, I have a PhD :-)

I still use ST3 on PC, although I also use Garmin and Strava (free). I never tried the online version, mostly because I know I'm not interested in a subscription service. As other folks have said, the interface is horribly dated, and it's really not getting updates any more.

Even though it's in a somewhat proprietary format, I like having my own copy of my own data. I don't know if it's true, but I had heard that Garmin limits detail (e.g. split times, etc) on old events.

One of few things I like is some of the by-year graphs and charts. Not too useful for planning, but good to see consistency and volume over the years.

i still use ST3, although mostly on strava now (social aspect). there are some definite advantages: owning my data (and backing it up), customization (plugins etc) multiple different maps (not a big deal now that google has trails , but for example you used to be able to take a jpeg of a trail map and use that as your base map for MTB or trail running, so much better than a blank base map)

I really liked the report view, where you could sort all your data/activities. ie shortest activity vs longest, or by time / distance, sort by bike/run/swim/ski etc sort and rank all my rides by average speed. sort by amount of climbing, sort by avg power or HR. and you can control these categories endlessly, as long as you input the data. you could have a category for how many pickup trucks passed me and threw a soda bottle at me as rode... which would only be about 2-3 rides , but i'd be able to find time/date of those activities instantly. searching through old activities on strava /garmin is horrible.

someone spoke about the histographs of training time/hours/miles per year or month etc, its all customizable so you can really dig into your data. which october in the last 10 years did i ride the most? or least? easy to answer instantly.

you can also make your sports into sortable categories, ie running is broken down into road vs trail, further broken down into speed/ track/ tempo / hills recovery etc, what ever you want it to be. this way i can see how many tempo miles i did this month vs track, and what percentage of my overall mileage that was etc...

once you get the hang of the software you can do so much, which is so refreshing compared to garmin or strava where they keep limiting what you can do . on strava their "training log" only shows S/B/R doesn't include any training time for other sports... and no option to change that. people have been furiously asking for years for them to update it to include other sports , but no response....

Mobi on the other hand seemed to lack a lot that i liked about ST3 and was subscription, which is a bummer because i already paid one time for ST3. the auto sync to ST3 was great though. i asked about auto sync from garmin connect to ST3 but was told no, you have to get a mobi subscription, which is why i moved away from solely using ST3 .

this is my first season with TrainingPeaks Premium (coached), and I also been using GoldenCheetah for deeper analysis for a couple seasons as well.

As a result, last April I quit paying for ST mobi and, when I replace my current laptop (which is scheduled for Friday) I will not reinstall the desktop ST version (which I haven't opened or synced for a while). It was good for some time (and I spent money in quite a few useful plugins), but TP+GC seems overkill already :-)

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Sr. Salitre

I am using it - I started with it back in 2009 and it has all of my data. I was originally turned on to it by DC rainmaker.

I really like it but I have not switched to their mobi because it does not seem to be any better than Garmin Connect or Strava.

It is less popular in the US because it is a German company, I am not sure they ever really had a foothold in the US.

I like how easy it is to search and query, you can ask it questions like how many times have I used X shoes, or how many rides have I done in X town, etc. It makes it really easy to slice and dice all workouts by any possible data point. I also like the google earth outputs and the easy jpg screen shots, and graphs.

I also use the elevation correction plugin, nice to get really accurate elevation.

I also like wearing the garmin under my swim cap, then getting accurate 100 yard splits from swims, that is a really cool feature.

Unfortunately I think it will probably die out eventually as a client type of software, they said a couple of years ago that they were not supporting the PC client version any more but they seemed to have changed their mind, I assume they still have a bunch of users on the PC version. They are now pushing out regular updates, so hopefully we have more years with it.

Guys, thanks to all for the advice and thoughts. Despite the obvious and apparent ease of TP, i've decided to try something different this year after all. I'll see how it goes. Plan is to use Strava to sync all my new workouts and a year or so of data, Golden Cheetah for analysing power and my old Sporttracks ST3 PC software to keep all of my historical and new workout data in one place, in a dropbox folder. I'll probably use the ST charts for looking at history and for the swim analysis.

TP in principle is easier, but, i've been pretty annoyed with some of their decisions for a while. Forcing use of pace for run TSS is an example, many people including me have requested being able to default to HR TSS for runs (since some of us run on trails and undulating routes). Making it difficult to download data, and i think stripping off edits and notes also.

ST Mobi seems pretty, but, substance of their calculations doesnt seem adequate so Mobi doesnt add anything other than simplifying data downloading which I can get for free elsewhere, ie Strava.

I'm on the fence on how to replace using the TSS/TSB calculations - but, my instinct is that for me there isnt enough precision in the automated methodology unless I'm sticking to true Ironman type training (not too hilly, road biking, road running, etc). My experience as someone who mixes nordic ski training with triathlon, including strength, is that workout TSS needs to be adjusted based on RPE for workouts other than biking-with-power. Even pace in the pool isnt very helpful if you do drills during a session (ie kicking, one arm, other strokes). Given this, i can either just plug daily TSS into a spreadsheet or into ST3. I'm not saying the TSS/TSB approach isn't right - just saying i dont think the data precision is there hence the simple daily TSB figure i'm addicted to seeing on my phone is at best directional anyway. I have more to learn in terms of how to get and predict a meaningful TSB.

Thanks again for the feedback!