I’m working on a new version of the LifeMap that manages data differently.
This version is way faster, and fixes an issue with some people’s LifeMap being blank (you all run too much ).
This is only available to active subscribers: anyone with a monthly contribution or an active one-time contribution. This page has all those details: CityStrides
The LifeMap beta is at https://citystrides.com/users/YOUR_USER_ID/map_beta (it’s the LifeMap URL with _beta added).
Click through and zoom way in, zoom way out, drag around … Let me know here if/how it works for you.
Roadmap:
I’m unsure if this will become the default LifeMap or if it will only be available to subscribers. I need to see what extra costs this adds before I can make that decision: I’ll have extra storage costs for this feature, and extra costs around usage - I have no idea what these will be, so I really need you to click around.
Similarly, building out this data takes a decent amount of time (two 4 hour processes to completely build all subscriber data, on a not-incredibly-powerful server). So I need to decide how frequently to rebuild it. Maybe if this become the default LifeMap, then regular users update weekly & subscribers update after each new activity.
I checked it out and so far it looks exactly the same as what I’ve been seeing. Maybe the improvements are regional? I will say that your recent updates make my runs show up within minutes once it loads to Strava!
It’s mainly an improvement on performance - sometimes I see the activity tracks appear before the map itself. Also, some people have so many activities that the map is blank or the browser crashes with the existing version of LifeMap.
Worked for me on Firefox on desktop (but not Chrome).
Okay, so as the designated devil’s advocate and party pooper, I have to ask: what is the purpose of showing your past runs on the map? It seems to me that 1) Strava already does this in their “heat map” feature, and 2) the “node hunter” accomplishes the task of showing me which streets I still need to run. If that feature is sucking up your bandwidth (both personally and in electrons), you may want to reconsider what value it actually adds.
If this is turning into a poll about the value of the lifemap, I’ll throw my strong support in keeping it (esp. since I’d rather spend my money on citystrides instead of Strava Premium to have the “heatmap”). Also, I love the speed of the new updated lifemap. Nice work!
Strava only accounts for ~half the CityStrides population. Neither Runkeeper nor MapMyFitness have a full lifetime map view. So even if it boils down to “this feature isn’t directed at Strava users”, I’m ok with that.
Bummer that the beta isn’t working in Chrome for you. Your map works for me in Chrome, but there are two different datasets at play - each person has “personal” (when you’re viewing your map) and a “public” (when someone else is viewing your map) data. So it could be that there’s something up with the private data.
Would you be willing to dive into Chrome’s developer console to see if any errors are displayed? I see some 403 Forbidden errors on some of your public tiles - not sure what’s going on there, yet. Are you seeing anything else?
No change on the laptop with Firefox. Definitely faster with Safari on the iphone. But I’s still rather have the old version back that had the cities I am trying to run. Faster doesn’t really help when I can’t see nodes or what streets count for city completion.
Oh! Right! Having knowledge retention issues
Ah! I think I also see the reason the beta isn’t working … I’ll message you directly when (I think) that’s fixed.
It’s really weird how there are a pile of tile levels (the url works out in this z/x/y path style) that result in no tile found (that’s the “forbidden” error - there’s actually no tile for what Mapbox is requesting).
So, with my new phone (iPhone 11 Pro) and the latest iOS, I can see both the legacy and beta lifemap. I was not able to get either one to crash with Safari or Chrome. Loving it!
Both work for me, on desktop and mobile (Android). On mobile the beta version seemed a lot quicker, but that could be because I visited the normal map first, and things were cached.
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Having knowledge retention issues 
