Elevation integration to Strava

Having originally started this thread I have to agree… elevation would be a bit of a meaningless number. While in someways a nice to have for strava (if it meant something from onlocation rides etc), there are other priority things the team should focus on building.

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Agree that we disagree :grin:

if you are on “just” a workout I agree, however if you take the location rides your assumption is wrong. the real constant is distance and ascend. speed and time is just a result of power. and i agree, the guy on the video might ride twice as powerful as I do and since the workout is time bound the system itself turns it around.

But I again absolutely understand your.view too.

Simple workaround for this content would be to put distance and ascend into the description. Then everyone is free to take it and enter manually. No harm for anybody.

But, but, but what you’re proposing is to just let people type in an elevation that they “did” because they want to say so, even though they didn’t actually do it?

To get an accurate number while not breaking the original aim of the video would take more work than it’s worth.
I still really don’t get why people want this from Sufferfest, which is a training platform and not a cycling simulator.

As has been said elsewhere, I’d be okay with it if there was an entire category of videos where the whole thing was focused on climbing and riding elevation was the entire point, so the gradients and resistance could be made to work, but it would break more than it would add in the context of the current videos.

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This time i fully agree and maybe I am too much of a Zwift guy even I don’t like this gaming/comic kind of style.

But you nailed it - the “problem” is that each workout and therefore also the videos are time bound and from this angle elevation makes no sense.

However, was just giving my personal feedback and maybe it would make sense to offer workouts which are not time bound but ascend and distance bound. The one rides it in an hour the other one in 3 hours … and without video for sure for simplicity (even though this would work with different play speed)

This would just add an additional aspect to grow the platform and get some Zifties like me over.

Actually, doing climbs based on how long it takes you is nearly impossible, though, because Sufferfest uses actual video rather than computer generated and, as is the nature with humans, if you simply slowed down or sped up the video it would look super odd.

If they chose to make elevation a metric then I would suggest that it should be part of a 5DP (though it could be based on MAP), where certain climbing specific sessions tailored the gradient so it was appropriate for your achievable power output. That way the speed of the video and your ascent rate are realistic. The angle shown in the video is immaterial because we are utterly useless at judging gradient on a 2 dimensional screen in front of us, so in this instance on person could be riding 2% for 5 minutes while someone else was riding 10% for 5 minutes and the whole thing now works.

For it to be viable, though, for me and within the context of Sufferfest, the gradient is what needs to change on a per-user basis, not the time.
Obviously you have limited numbers of whole percentages, so you then group power ratings and use that for the speed calculation, so if a MAP window of 280-320 equated to a gradient of 6% then everyone with a MAP in that window rides 6% at their MAP and the distance (and therefore altitude) gained is calculated from that.

I could see it in it’s own section, or even as an adjustment to how gradients are used in the package, but it’s a lot of work just to add a Strava number.

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This phenomenon is definitely observable on the occasions I ride Rouvy and the video goes past pedestrians or other cyclists that were on the road at the time the video was shot. As I’m clearly cycling slower (or faster!) than the car that shot the video, the aforementioned pedestrian looks very odd.

Although I would argue that this does not affect my enjoyment of doing the ride, it’s just a strange visual artifact.

I think your assumption is wrong, the real constant there is time (and Mike’s speed), Mike rides up in his pace and most of us are allong for the ride on an e-bike :wink:
We put out a lost less w/kg so in the real world we would be going (a lot) slower. So why would you deserve the extra altimeters in your Strava? You really don’t.

In Zwift when you climb Alpe du Zwift, it would take you twice as long compared to Mike in On location, so then you could make a case for the altimeters being pushed to Strava.

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Thats what I exactly wrote in my post.

Altitude makes sense if you move away from time as the primary factor and use distance and ALT instead.

I know on the video I would not see hima anymore as he would be gone after the first kilometer :slight_smile:
Thats why for those rides I would not expect any video at all as everyone of us would have different speed.

Then we do agree :smiley:

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You can probably remove (at least) one zero from that :joy:

(Comment aimed at all of us, not just walex)

I would give all at my first one :grinning:

As an alternative to ERG mode I think it would be useful to have an optional gradient ‘target’ in the SYSTM workouts that if enabled uses the RGT algorithm to calculate speed and elevation gain using power, weight and elevation data. The gradient targets could scale based the power to weight ratio of the rider and be adjustable similar to the 4DP targets. This would allow smart trainer resistance and incline to auto adjust based on the gradient target for each interval for the workout.

While I agree thay indoor training is not a realistic simulation for riding outdoors, there is some benefit in being able to somewhat comparatively measure distance and elevation between indoor and outdoor sessions. Personally I also like the idea of indoor climbing sessions auto adjusting resistance and incline and such a feature on SYSTM would also play into the KICKR Climb and Bike.

I raised this as a possibility with Wahoo support when I joined SYSTM, as I would prefer elevation to count. Is it something that you are actively looking into?

He no longer works at Wahoo.