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Pucci

Speeding Up
Jul 12, 2006
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I finally broke down an bought a Garmin 500 (read overpriced but entertaining motivational tool.)

So far it's doing its job well by both draining my wallet and motivating me to go out and map rides. I'll be in Portugal for all of August and am looking forward to mapping all the hills in my area.

I also snagged a 3-month trial membership to www.strava.com and have been uploading my rides to both Garmin Connect and Strava. Strava seems much better overall, and has really nice features that allow riders to "compete" on-line based on their uploaded data for known climbs.

I Haven't decided whether it is worth the $6/month charge though. It might be if there were a bunch of TCC'ers there, but I seem to be alone.

Anyone else had any experiences with Strava?

Aaron
 
Pete got me in to "Ride with GPS" and I have to say its one of the best out there~!
 
I Haven't decided whether it is worth the $6/month charge though. It might be if there were a bunch of TCC'ers there, but I seem to be alone.

Anyone else had any experiences with Strava?

I has been a while since the original post, but the number of TCC'ers on Strava is increasing (in general it seems to pick up also among Japanese riders).

I love the Segment Explorer which basically gives you a Google Map with Climbs (or TT Segments) that others have ridden. I found many loops and climbs in the Tama area using this tool (e.g do you know about the 小山田周回??).

Then for every Segment, Stava maintains a KOM List (King of Mountain). You don't need to stop manually your time anymore it's automatically extracted from your GPS log (something that could be used for TCC Hall of Fame?). You then can compare your previous rides or compare with other riders which is a fun and motivational thing to do :angel:.

You can also follow other riders and see what they are doing (social aspect). You learn about other riders either by knowing them personally or finding them on the KOM list of your favorite climb. I found out about cyclecross-races or tomodachi-races just by looking what other cyclist have been doing on the weekend, then searched their (japanese) website and joined the following week.

Stava also calculates Power based on your GPS and elevation data. For flat segments and group rides it's way off sometimes but for climbs it is claimed to be pretty accurate. When signing up for a paid account you get additional power evaluations but I haven't found the need for that so far.

I can recommend it. It's a lot of fun and helps with my motivation.
 
Then for every Segment, Stava maintains a KOM List (King of Mountain). You don't need to stop manually your time anymore it's automatically extracted from your GPS log (something that could be used for TCC Hall of Fame?). You then can compare your previous rides or compare with other riders which is a fun and motivational thing to do :angel:..

...does that mean no more cheating? :D:(:confused:
 
I found many loops and climbs in the Tama area using this tool (e.g do you know about the 小山田周回??).

Ooh, that looks like a nice loop. I've been on some of those roads, but never that circuit. Thanks for sharing that, Malte.

And Tom, don't worry, you can still cheat if it makes you feel better. :D

Deej
 
Strava adds your stopped time though. I was feeling all chuffed about a fast lap of the palace, when I got home and uploaded it to strava it had me stopped at the top of the hill for 1 minute while the KOM rode off into the sunset!!:confused:
 
Strava adds your stopped time though. I was feeling all chuffed about a fast lap of the palace, when I got home and uploaded it to strava it had me stopped at the top of the hill for 1 minute while the KOM rode off into the sunset!!:confused:

of course, it' not like you can take a 30min break in the middle of Yabitsu ... you need to complete the segment in one :rolleyes:
 
ha ha ha! right, the problem for me was that I had moved over the start of the segment by about 1 meter so my time had started. just not me or my bicycle!:D
 
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