Would it help CityStrides’ Strava API problems if there were a manual import option?
For example, when first signing up instead of waiting for CityStrides to work through my Strava account’s history, I could download my history from Strava and upload it to CityStrides.
When I complete a run, instead of waiting for Strava sync to occur I could upload a GPX of the activity. I could provide the Strava URL too.
The link back to Strava might not work in the batch upload case? Don’t know, maybe the activity number is stored in the Strava export? If that were the case you would know the Strava link to the activity.
I would definitely appreciate a feature to upload a GPX file. The app I use to track my runs already just sends one to Strava and Smashrun, would be nice if I could just send it here too.
Good point. My runs originate in my Garmin watch. That syncs to Garmin Connect, which in turns syncs to Training Peaks and Strava. CityStrides could receive the activity from Garmin Connect directly.
GPX import would be a valuable feature on its own, plus would be a valuable backup for when any server hiccup causes a sync to fail (once in a while a Garmin->Strava sync fails).
I also wish there was a manual upload option. I’d MUCH prefer to take the 2 minutes to upload the file myself, compared to waiting says for Strava to sync.
Really I think people are just looking for any option to not have to wait 48+ hours. You can sign up for one of the non-strava services and load your GPX file into that which basically accomplishes the same thing I believe.
If I had the choice, I wouldn’t be using any of the services available to be linked to the site. My preferred site is pretty small and not widely used so I’d imagine there’s little to no benefit to it being added (although it does have a totally open API).
As such if I could upload a manual GPX, I could only use the two services I like - Smashrun and CityStrides.
I know in Scandinavia a lot of people are using Endomondo.
Was the first one i used and i still have it connected to Garmin, so that would work for me too.
I personally love Smashrun. Their API looks pretty open and has no published limits as long as you use OAuth instead of user level authentication (which you’d have to anyways). I’ve used the user level authentication myself for some scripts that pull some of my data and it’s worked very well.
If you want, I’d be happy to submit this in another thread (or you can split it) to keep this one about manual uploading.
Manual GPX import is my preference over integrating another service.
Dallas is right in that my motivation is not waiting many days to see the life map update. Today is Monday and neither Saturday nor Sunday’s runs have made it into CityStrides yet.
Like Jack said, it would take me no time to get the GPX and upload to CityStrides. Then I can get an updated lifemap and plan tomorrow’s run.
I use Strava for my social sharing of my training. It is my primary public record of my activities, so despite the problems, I still prefer it to be my source if possible.
My history does go into Garmin, but only as a clearinghouse to get it into those other sites. I COULD switch to Garmin, but I never actually do anything with that data - no information about the run, no titles, just raw data. I look at it as my cloud backup of my watch data.
I think a lot of people use Strava as their primary source fed by Garmin etc. I’ll always use Strava because its the system I decided to use for my run tracking. Garmin has most of it but it also has a lot of things I deleted or changed in Strava and didn’t bother to touch there. I think that affects new users more than anything during their initial import. For my new activities in CityStrides I could care less about Strava, Garmin works just fine. I just connected MapMyFitness and manually uploaded there to get around the current lag and it worked almost immediately. Frankly that can function as a manual upload option until Garmin is connected, at least thats my plan.
Does that mean i can connect 2 sources here in citystirdes? i have a runkeeper account and syncing to strava and runkeeper would be a small effort to get my lifemap updated sooner. Does uploading a run in both and syncing both, give duplicates in CS?
It is possible, but for those who only use Strava as a conduit for CS (and not as their primary tracking tool) I would suggest removing the Garmin → Strava connection, otherwise this doesn’t reduce system load.
And maybe drop a vote here as well
At least right now, yes, connecting both and uploading both would result in duplicates in CityStrides. There is not yet any function to determine if an activity is the same as another one.
So, as a workaround, i could connect runkeeper besides my strava, and upload to runkeeper untill the sync from strava comes through, and later delete the duplicate in runkeeper… I guess the calculation of the original run, that is then removed, will have some strange side effects?
I think you should be OK - I can’t think of any strange side effects from deleting the old activity. It might mess a bit with what streets were completed on that particular run, but I am not sure
