So what makes it different?

If you could have make it so that users could develop race courses, and race 'online' with multisport, that would be something that Strava does not have. Strava also has pics...but they don't seem to be attached to courses that others can see from that comparison page; and Im not sure if you can upload videos to strava of any of the routes that you are doing. This may be a differentiator as well. You can also let people use it to set up private groups so that they can share secret fishing, prospecting, climbing, spelunking, swimming, etc spots...of course that opens up the possibility of less than legal activities using this kind of service (but that can be said of anything).

The big thing that I personally look for are cheap racing that I can do (like strava segments), and course previews of races that I have paid for.

Good luck!

Stephen J

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I believe my local reality has been violated.
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Happiness = Results / (Expectations)^2

This is like trying to make another Facebook. Your wasting your time

Yeah, why did Facebook even start when MySpace already existed. And stupid Reddit, how did they think they could ever overtake Digg?

Edit: And that silly Google company will have no chance against Infoseek.

And to think; The Las Vegas Strip only exists because somebody was standing in front of a hotel in the middle of a desert and said "What if we build a hotel right next to this one?"

Unless you drive a Ford, then you don't even eat the food that your comment is serving, buddy. Competition is free-market.

Ok first off it doesnt really matter if my project takes off or not Im doing it anyways. Not everything in life is about money folks. Im learning knew things and enjoying the experience.

I love strava I use strava and probably will do so even when my site goes online. We can agree that strava pretty much holds a monopoly on the sports data analysis front. We also have garmin connect but despite being technically efficient they are lacking on so many other fronts its not even worth going there.

So we have one site! Strava! Bravo! I for one am always willing to try something new. Because I like to have choice. The more the merrier and you get to pick which site you prefer or suits you best. I mean imagine if we had one company for every service in this world. How sad would that be? At this moment premium membership on strava is what 90USD? Thats quite expensive. Maybe my site could 1/5th of the price. In any case I dont want to be another strava or even try to compete directly with them. I want to be different.

Let me rephrase my questions than: Are there any features you would enjoy additional from what sites like strava/garmin already provide?

Hey -

For me, I use TrainingPeaks as my real training tracker and data analysis tool.

Strava is really just a triathlon social media platform for me.

- Ed

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

So what does my site (currently) offer that Strava/Garmin dont:

1) Probably main bonus feature is Stress and Form estimates based on HR for all sports. Meaning you go for a jog, swim and cycle and you'll know exactly what stress you've accumulated and consequently form and fatigue as well.
2) The ability to schedule activities (run, swim or ride) and immediately have a chart showing how that will affect you form/fatigue. This gives you the ability to target an event and build towards accurately. Does strava have that? :)
3) More for cycling orientated athletes I have KOM points rankings. Over the year you build points for every top 20 climb finish.
4) I have more detailed equipment data analysis. Rankings can be viewed from a equipment standpoint. Example. You can see equipment rankings by country. Wet dream for brand marketing.
5) Tagging activities (strange that no one has this feature)

This is just the beginning. Something I dont have yet, and was thinking I could do next is having some summary pages showing your best swim and run intervals. For example best 100m, best 1000m, best 5000m, best half marathon, best marathon. And perhaps estimates on what you could perform based on your history and form. Things like this.

Any ideas are welcome.

PS: As for online racing I'm not going into that at present at least. There is too much competition already in that field. And I not a computer graphics type engineer. I would for now to keep the site as a data crunching site and perhaps improve the social network side of things.

RowToTri so you use a site for tracking and another for triathlon social media. With my site you could potentially have both in one. At the moment Im concentrating more on the data crunching, but I intend to also invest time on improving the social network side of things. I like TrainingPeaks but I dont find them user friendly. I feel like its almost too much data you drown in it. So my attempt is to make my site more user dynamic and friendly. Crunch all the numbers and give you the answers. For example, my site gives you an athlete profile (only for cyclists for the time being). What category/level and what type. For example I am a Cat 1 puncheur type rider. You could be cat 1 sprinter, climber, time trialist, whatever. All based on real or estimated data.

1) Please get it to sync from Garmin if you can; that's the only reason I can tolerate as many sites as there are these days. I simply won't upload to another site on its own.
2) After selecting one of the individual activities (S/B/R), how do you get back to the full overall view without refreshing the page?
3) Please focus on usability overall. That's what kills me about a lot of these sites. Things like when you're looking for an old workout, scroll back through the years however it's done, click one, find it's the wrong one, and you have to scroll ALL the way back again if you didn't remember to "open in new tab".
4) Better ways to filter activities would be good as well for situations like the above. A simple "show me rides in Texas in 2011" pseudo-sql would save me a lot of time on occasions. Or "show me all runs this year > 12 miles".

I used to do web QA at work, so I'll be watching this closely. It has potential, but 1) and 3) will be huge.

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The point is, ladies and gentleman, that speed, for lack of a better word, is good. Speed is right, Speed works. Speed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

Do you plan to sync to TrainingPeaks, Strava, etc? It would just make it easier to upload workouts that way rather than downloading it to the computer then uploading to your site. Sorry if I missed that on your site

I'm not really sure where to go with an answer....Partly because I'm not sure what your goal is? If this is just a pet project, so that you can learn how to write web / athletic software...that's cool, I guess.

But, if you are truly thinking that you might want to supplant/replace/offer similar features to the big names...Your understanding of the landscape seems pretty underdeveloped. There's more out there than just Strava, and Garmin. Neither of those platforms is an analytics/planning platform.

You say you use TrainingPeaks---but, you don't really indicate a good comprehension of what TP offers. Do you have a premium TP account?

You say you want to be "different", but everything you describe is already offered by one or more of the main players. TP has hrTSS for all sports (and power/pace TSS if that data is available), Strava has SufferScore (but, I don't know much about it, because I only use the free version).

I tried your website, but it only sorta worked for me. It was slow, and didn't format things right. So, I couldn't really tell much about it. To be honest it seems pretty amateur-ish. I don't mean to be harsh, but you have a VERY LONG way to go to convince me to bother looking again.

What do I use?

Garmin Connect. It's the central interface to my 920xt. All data is then disseminated from there to TrainingPeaks, and Strava. I occasionally use GC for some simple comparisons, but not much. I do use it for Swim Data review, because TP.com sucks at swimming. Garmin does collect weather data, that TP does not. So, I can compare weather for a workout (runs especially) to another.

Strava: (Free only) basic athletic social media. My workouts autopost from GC. I comment/give-kudos to the few friends I have on there...and vice-versa. I occasionally test myself against a few segments in my area. Not as a segment hunter...just to kinda see how I can do. Casual, nothing more. I use Strava Heat Maps to find new places to ride around home, or when I go somewhere new.

Training peaks: My main training platform. I use this to setup my Annual Training Plan based around my races (A, B, C), based around TSS. I have a library of workouts that have all been setup for TSS. I schedule those workouts on the calendar to target the TSS from my ATP. TP does the computation of actual and predicted TSS, both combined as well as segregated by sport (based on actual completed, and planned workouts). TP does autotag workouts, and does allow tags to be assigned and searched--the feature is weak, and underutilized but it DOES exist. I use TP to review my training, enter all workout comments, and compare past performances to current to assess progress towards whatever my goal might be (pace, power, duration, etc).

I've used training log software since the mid 90's (UltraCoach anyone?)...and have used TP.com since it was called trainingbible.com (when was that 98-99?). There are lots of things about TP that could be better, or that are still missing...even after nearly 2-decades of being one of the industry leaders.

As others have said, you need to:

1) get a better understanding of the competitive landscape and what each competitor offers
2) figure out how you will differentiate yourself
3) define your business strategy. Do you want a site that goes head-to-head with the competition? Do you want to create one 'killer' feature that will get your company acquired by a larger competitor? etc.

You can start by looking at what's the current cutting-edge of tech for athletes. Things like running power, pods that measure Cda, etc. are just coming into the mainstream. If you had a feature that capitalized on one or more of those in some meaningful way you'd have a differentiator.

It's so late in the game to be competitive. Better to make plugins for Strava

Tom_hampton I appreciate your input despite the negative remarks. All input is useful.

As for my understanding of the landscape being underdeveloped. You mentioned Strava, TP and than Garmin Connect. Same ones I mentioned. There are more but they are the Top Dogs. Of course you probably know more about TP than I do. Im not saying its not a great tool. It is! Its the best tool at what it does. I didnt mean to downplay them even if I ended up doing so. My apologies to them. I just meant that in my perspective its too geeky, too many charts, too much data to siphon through. Its a question of taste and form.

My site is currently slow and formatting/aesthetics is not perfect because I just started. Its in development phase so I actually do appreciate comments/suggestions on how I could improves things in this department as well. Saying the site is ugly doesnt count as a suggestion. At the end of the day you cant please everyone.

The beta test site is currently hosted on heroku on a free package. So of course it will be slow. its just for testing. A full production server will be x1000 times faster. So you need to take my site with a grain of salt. You cant compare strava/TP in its current form to my site. They have 10 years of an advance to me. Right? Go look back how strava looked like at its inception and still thats not my current phase cause I am in developement. So with that in mind Im just asking for suggestions on how to improve my current site, nothing more, nothing less.

Toby thanks for this reply. This is exactly the type of input I was looking for. Im sure I can implement all features you asked. God bless you mate. The environment here is proving quite demanding.

This! Thanks will definetely look into this. Running power sounds amazing.

Some specifics complaints to add to this:

Changing units from metric to imperial blanks out the form when creating an account.
If I change to Imperial Units, allow height to be feet and inches.
Having to click on the map to select my location is cumbersome. Just let me put in address or zip code or something similar.
The site is slow, but it's unclear if that's the coding or the server.
The look seems a little dated.
Can't import TCX, only FIT and GPX, but it does let you upload any file format, despite the inability to parse them.
The link to view an activity isn't obviously a link, the biggest link is the sideways G logo, which errors out for me.
The map preview on activities in the feed is a circle, but I would prefer a square or rectangle.
The Elevation Profile graph shouldn't start at 0, it should go from slightly below the lowest elevation to slightly above the highest elevation.
The other charts seem a bit compressed when viewing on my 27" monitor. Looks like you picked their size to work well on a smaller monitor, and so they are crammed over on the left with a large blank space in the middle of the screen.
In general, I'd like to see URLs that don't require me to know extra info, for example, your link to my profile is /users/17 vs /users/bufordt

Start working on security and privacy now. In fact, don't make any other improvements to the site until you've address privacy and security. For example, I can change my password without having to put in my old password, and without having to input the new password 2 times.

You might want to look at history. Established companies get overtaken by alternatives all the time.

Why bother creating Amazon? Sears already has the mail order world locked down. Or alternatively, Barnes and Noble has the book world locked down.

Why make Android? iPhones will never be beat. Or Why make the iPhone, Blackberry has mobile devices figured out.

WordPerfect has 80% of the word processing market, why bother creating Microsoft Word.

Frisbee has the flying disc market cornered, no need for Discraft to make an ultimate disc.

 

All very practical things I can work on and most things without too much trouble. Thanks a bunch!
PS: And yes, the speed will be always be slow on a heroku free account specially with the amount of data we are dealing with here. On a full production server hopefully things will be much faster. But Im still a long long away from that. For now this will have to suffice.
PS2: In the future I will surely need to I pass some of the work load on certain pages to background jobs to speed things a long a little. Thats part of the plan.

I'd love an alternative to Strava - I feel as though they've stopped listening to their users, and I pay for Premium (or whatever they call it now). For example, check out the support thread on creating custom club challenges - it was started in 2013, promised by the Strava community person several times, including claiming it was DEFINITELY on the roadmap for 2017, and guess whether that feature has been implemented (the Strava person has gone silent).

I'd echo other suggestions I've seen here - support for advanced metrics (run power, swim power for Vasa users) as well as some of the Xert features such as FTP estimation based on workout data vs explicit tests.

I'd ultimately like a hybrid of TrainingPeaks and Strava - if you have a training program that, for example, targets not only a duration and NP but also a specific number hill repeats of a certain duration/intensity - I'd love to see automated compliance data and comparison against similar efforts to see if you're getting fitter. And comparison in general against people I "follow" (so I can understand, for example, what they're doing that I'm not ;-)). You can pull a lot of this type of data from the various platforms today, but it's time consuming.

Ian

The thing I would like to see the most out of a new activity tracking website is the ability to do better searches on other peoples activities. It would be nice to have a heat map, select a section of that heat map, and pull up any activities in a certain time frame that were contained in the heat map. How I use Strava these days mostly is poaching my friends activities and using there gpx files to plan my own adventures. It also would be nice to have all of the latest data gadgets supported. Better search capability and premium features pushed downward would be my vote. Good luck!

Oh, and a prediction algorithm for identifying drafters and dopers.

Actually, initially you only mentioned Garmin and Strava. Someone else brought up TP. Yes, there's many others: Trainer Road, The Sufferfest, Bereda Training, to name just a few. If I were in your shoes, I would know them ALL (and be able to list ones we've never heard of and what makes them interesting), and I would try them all out extensively to understand their strengths and weaknesses. I would want to know more about the training website/software landscape than ANY single user out there.


I don't agree---and I think I'm a core TP user, as I imagine much of the ST collective is, also. My issue with TP charts is the difficulty in organizing them, and the limitations of many of the charts to "cycling only". I have three primary use cases for TP: planning (annual, monthly, weekly, daily), data collection, performance review. I need different charts for each of those activities, and for each different sport. The issue with TP-charts is my inability to organize the various charts into those different use cases...and the fact that some of the charts are ONLY available for cycling. I have a much longer post regarding other weaknesses of Training Peaks.


It wasn't a matter of "ugly". I'm not cosmetically oriented. It simply didn't work. Yes, there were some "issues" that appear to be browser compatibility related---you will need to get a handle on the 9 million different browsers if you really aspire to be mass market. But, my primary issue was that for the most part it just didn't display anything. I was able to see enough to sorta get a feel for it...but, that's about it.


My assessment is that you have the cart before the horse. You've sorta created a site as a hobby without any firm grasp of what you are really trying to accomplish. If you want to "compete" in this space, then as I (and several others) have said above, you need to do a lot of homework. To me, what you've done here amounts to asking how to change your highschool 5 paragraph essay into a PhD thesis.

1) I didnt create this site as a hobby, more of a test of what I could accomplish. I have time. Thats not a problem. I am taking it seriously enough to consider pushing it to full production at some point in the distance future. One step at a time please.
2) Im not a business orientated person nor a professional programmer. Studying the competition to exhaustion is not my way of working. I have a good grasp of what the three top dogs do and 15 years of power based training so I believe i have a good idea of what I aim to accomplish.
3) The reason for 2) is that Im not in this to replace strava or garmin connect or TP. I simply want to be a valid alternative. I already have features that none of them have. Apart from what Ive already mentioned I also have wind estimate calcs for the entire route based on power readings. Gearing estimates based on speed and cadence. Maybe TP has this, not sure, not dissected them fully. Garmin has multisport, strava hasnt. Ive implemented this. My plan is to have enough nuggets in there that perhaps some people would be willing to give it a go. So Strava and Garmin have nothing to worry about. Are they not the sharing type? So I refuse to think a year ahead of me. I live in the now.
4) Im not in this to revolutionize the market. The market is set, first step is to become part of it, than to follow my own path.
5) I started this project in February of 2018 with little to no programming history behind me. I realize I have a LONG way to go, but that doesnt take away what Ive accomplished already which is a little beyond highschool level thank you very much. Or are US highschools that good!? Comparing my project to a highschool essay was going a touch too far, no?
6) I will not take any negative comments personally. No worries (im australian). And I appreciate all the positive criticism and suggestions.
7) Some peoples comments are treating my project as if a final product. Its not! I just started. Hope we have that clear enough. You need to error many times to achieve anything in life. Im here to make mistakes. Arent we all.
8) So with this in mind. If you want to highlight the bugs in the site please do (very useful) but that was not my purpose for posting here. Moving forwards I would prefer constructive comments/criticism. Not blatant "your going no where with this" or "your amaterish" type comments. If you dont like the site move along and let other people be helpful.

My initial question was and still remains un-answered. As Triathletes what features are missing from this never ending landscape some seem to know so well? Just forget for a minute my site and how amateurish it is. What features would you love to see out there?