Good forward thinking by Strava. Knowing Ironman will probably charge people to race soon and use Strava for free.
'Dear IRONMAN VC Subscribers & Athletes,
We were informed by STRAVA this morning that STRAVA will now prohibit you from sharing your STRAVA activity data with your IRONMAN VC account.
You’ve trained hard to create data for the specific purpose of participating in IRONMAN VC platform activities. And, although IRONMAN VC athletes have requested and agreed to share such STRAVA activity data with the IRONMAN VC platform, STRAVA believes that STRAVA has the right to prevent you from doing so. We regret STRAVA’s decision and believe that it is wrong and short-sighted, especially in these challenging times.
Your hard work (and your data) belong to you, not STRAVA. You can continue to fully enjoy all the features of the IRONMAN VC platform and participate in the IRONMAN VR competitions by completing the following steps: Simply go to the dashboard section of the IRONMAN VC platform, then to the Settings menu. In the “Manage My Apps†section please connect the App of your connected device or tracker.
We are looking forward to having you participate in the IRONMAN VR3 event."
This is the first I’ve ever heard of “Ironman VC,” but upon reading the front page, it does sound like a clone of Strava, just for Ironman-branded stuff. I could see how Strava might see that as competition rather than partnership.
Though I’m no fan of Strava’s ever-increasing exclusionary behavior.
Strava’s main value is as an aggregator. My run recorded on my Fenix, my ride on a Lezyne head unit, my Zwift session: all go to Strava. If Strava then hands that over to another platform, they get no benefit (and little chance that you’ll subscribe to their premium features); they just become a free middleware provider. IM provides no value to Strava, so Strava probably sees them more as a parasite than partner…
Strava’s main value is as an aggregator. My run recorded on my Fenix, my ride on a Lezyne head unit, my Zwift session: all go to Strava. If Strava then hands that over to another platform, they get no benefit (and little chance that you’ll subscribe to their premium features); they just become a free middleware provider. IM provides no value to Strava, so Strava probably sees them more as a parasite than partner…
Well what value to Trainnerroad or Zwift provide to Strava? Probably even less. Every time someone posts a Strava workout to IM VC, the Strava brand is advertised. When I pull a workout from Strava to Trainnerroad, no one ever knows.
I think the problem is just a fight over who wants to be the go-to social hub for endurance athletes, and Strava seens Ironman as a competitor.
My peanut-gallery impression is Strava itself has done kind of a poor job at being an athlete’s social media hub. Whenever I want to organize group rides, etc, I still use Facebook. (or used to prior to the apocalypse :)) I just link back to Strava for the route. Strava has done zero work for making the equivalent of a Facebook Event, which is crazy.
Strava’s main value is as an aggregator. My run recorded on my Fenix, my ride on a Lezyne head unit, my Zwift session: all go to Strava. If Strava then hands that over to another platform, they get no benefit (and little chance that you’ll subscribe to their premium features); they just become a free middleware provider. IM provides no value to Strava, so Strava probably sees them more as a parasite than partner…
In various business discussions involving Strava over the years, it’s clear that they’ve struggled with their business model. The percentage of premium subscribers hasn’t seemed to vary much as a function of features, so they’ve focused on just growing the base, which means that as long as the premium rate holds their number of premium subscribers goes up.
I’m a premium subscriber, and their value to me as a customer is mainly as an aggregator, which is why these kinds of moves with Ironman (and Relive before that) annoy the hell out of me. They’re also not very good at listening to customers: I can show you a thread on their support site that started in 2013 to enable custom club challenges (e.g., the 100-day challenge is Slowtwitch were a club); they kept promising it was on the roadmap, said for sure it would be released by the end of 2017, and now it’s 2020 and they don’t even respond to the thread anymore, even though users keep adding their +1 to the ask. What do their product people do all day?!
If there were a decent alternative to them, I’d switch in a heartbeat and stop sending my data to Strava. In any case, for Ironman it’s easy to just switch to my Garmin Connect account - everything goes there anyway, so Strava is redundant in that sense but more “social.”
This doesn’t actually seem to be a Strava V Ironman issue like people are thinking. Sport heroes whose platform underpins the Ironman VC page has a tonne of data from a variety of platforms and apparently Strava are not satisfied with the commitment to security of that that data, and have withdrawn the ability to upload to Sport Heroes. It seems like Strava are actually doing the right thing, and will be made to look like the bad guy here. they have stated that when those concerns are sorted they will allow the data to flow again.
It’s interesting that when I first learned about the Ironman virtual competitions my reaction was “Oh, so Strava with rankings for Ironman.”
Given the HUGE and understandable disparities in how athletes will complete the events of the Ironman virtual challenges, I cannot see how the ranking is motivating or meaningful in any way. And since I have Strava already (for free), I haven’t bothered with virtual Ironman.
If anything, Zwift seems the more likely platform for what Ironman is trying to do in the virtual space as at least the biking conditions could be somewhat more equal…at least in terms of the course elevation profile, group ride vs solo, but of course, you have the normal Zwift opportunities for cheating for those inclined to do that. So in the end…still meaningless unless we are all out on the same course on the same day and doing our best.
Training to me is to have fun, support each other, stay healthy and fit. And anything aside from a real race with rules and enforcement, is just another form of training and so it’s still all about the fun!
Ironman wants all the money that these companies who are profiting off individuals training for their races are getting.
Running races is expensive and difficult, but training plans…tracking devices…monthly access to a training/tracking platform…all that stuff is owned by companies that aren’t Ironman and it’s just software.
Now Ironman is gonna try and be the one-stop shop. Buy their race. Buy their “Pro Coach” Training Plan. Buy their version of Training Peaks/Strava. It will all sync up. Soon the virtual races will cost money.
I’m happy to see these companies fighting. Competition and innovation will be good for the market.
I wonder how long before Trainerroad, zwift, garmin, etc follow suit. Sport Heroes sounds dodgy.
After reading the DC Rainmaker article, and from what I know about similar software issues:
Sport Heroes is wrong.
Strava is right.
Ironman is an unfortunate casualty.
Without the separate API keys, it’s very problematic for Strava to comply with GDPR and the right to erase personal data. Sport Heroes use of a single API key means that once that data goes downstream, Strava can no longer tell what belongs to each platform under them.
Now DC Rainmaker points out that this was never a problem before, between Sport Heroes and Strava. But I’m willing to bet that their software engineers just ignored it / overlooked it, until some Strava legal person raised the red flag.
I got this e-mail too and switched the IM VC account to use my Garmin Connect account which works fine for my runs. But, I’m using a Wahoo on the bike and I didn’t see an option for this. What solution are people using? Is there an easy way to get Wahoo data into Connect or ???
This doesn’t actually seem to be a Strava V Ironman issue like people are thinking. Sport heroes whose platform underpins the Ironman VC page has a tonne of data from a variety of platforms and apparently Strava are not satisfied with the commitment to security of that that data, and have withdrawn the ability to upload to Sport Heroes. It seems like Strava are actually doing the right thing, and will be made to look like the bad guy here. they have stated that when those concerns are sorted they will allow the data to flow again.
Thanks for that. I’ll cut Strava some slack then, but not on the club challenges issue.
Let’s be honest,
Ray said it very well. Basically, this was all thrown together in last minute. The whole IMVR thing looks like 3 kids have programmed something last minute in their garage. I understand corona came out of the blue but c’mon, IM missed the boat of VR activities years ago! I mean, you got to give them credit. The 2 challenges where cool and of course, they have the athletes and fan base to make some noice. But I feel like Zwift, Garmin and Strava - all of themselves have WAY better Apps and virtual presence. The IMVR is MILES AWAY from that. And if Strava sees a reason with security certificates and IM says “fuggyou, we are the greatest†I kinda think this is quite funny and I give Strava thumbs up for having the balls to stand up!
Ok so what does this mean for the user. Right now my Zwift workouts go to strava. Can they go directly to Ironman VC so I can do the VR events?
I’ve just been playing with a workaround, as zwift won’t upload to Garmin.
What I will be doing (for both run and ride, as I do both in zwift) is finish my session as per normal, and my zwift file will upload to strava automatically. I then go into strava, save the .fit file to my computer.
Open up Garmin connect, import the .fit file, and whamo, this will then upload automatically to Ironman VC.
Ok so what does this mean for the user. Right now my Zwift workouts go to strava. Can they go directly to Ironman VC so I can do the VR events?
it seems to me that you need another middle man application (Garmin connect, Fitbit, mapmyrun/ride) that connects with both applications to share your data between Zwift and Ironman VC. I do not see a direct connection.
