As of the few weeks back, Strava started tagging Zwift generated rides as “Virtual Rides”. This was a good idea, but unfortunately the code what controls the activities that show up in the Training Log on Strava filters the Virtual rides out, and simply shows them as XT (crosstraining).
I suspected that the Strava guys, being somewhat lazy coders, probably base the virtual tagging feature on the device that generated the fit file. Sure enough, the binary dump of the fit file shows that the device that generated the file is marked as “Zwift”. I manually changed it to Edge 500 using a Hex edit tool (you have to calculate the offsets, etc) , and voila - now the rides are importing as regular cycling rides and are showing up properly.
But those of us, who are not computer nerds - what to do? Fortunately, https://www.fitfiletools.com/ makes the editing process a snap (well, kind of).
Here are the steps:
Disable Zwift integration with Strava (Dashboard - > My Profile → Connections)
Not sure if they’ve changed anything in the past month but you can also get your .fit file directly from My Documents/Zwift last I checked. No need to download it from online.
That said, I frequently use fitfiletools to remove my power data when posting to strava. Lots of good apps in there. Most recently I left my edge 500 on after getting off the bike at IM LOU. fitfiletools made it easy to crop out the 6 hours it took me to do the run, eat pizza and get back to my bike for pick-up.
Yep - I wrote the instructions to cover the case of people using a separate PC/laptop for Zwift/TR and then going through the steps using another machine or a tablet or whatever.
Thanks for pointing this out though!
Since virtual rides don’t get synchronized by tapiirik, I immediately change the “virtual ride” to “cycling” by editing the workout in Strava the minute I am done. Would changing the workout type in Strava from virtual ride to cycling accomplish what you want to do as well?
Not that there aren’t numerous other ways to cheat Strava, but I assume your process will also make rides on the UCI lap (and likely other future "Real World’ courses) look as if they were truly real rides? Thus they will use Zwift’s estimated speed data for the real ride leaderboards?
I get what you are trying to do, and it’s legitimate, but I also believe they added the virtual ride category to try and support Real World courses without conflicting with people who were actually outside
On another note, I am amazed at how many people I see just absolutely flying on Zwift. I assume they are using a Zpower or somehow poorly calibrated setup… I don’t otherwise know how they can hit the W/kg numbers I see.
They correctly mark rides as Virtual. It is not just Zwift. They automatically mark TCX files generated by our training software Virtual as well. As for training log people at Strava from my experience are very receptive to input. So why don’t you email them and tell what you want.
