Okay so I think I figured out a real life hack and a way to use SYSTM outdoors! Some of you may remember how disappointed I was when Sufferfest rebranded to SYSTM with a lot of hype, a website makeover, and apps for Android and Apple but still no way to take a ride outdoors, plus they seem to have broke whatever arrangement they had with Training Peaks, making it more difficult than ever to upload a workout to a head unit… Well, I finally figured it out I think!
Running my Motorola G Power Android mounted on my handlebars, (plenty of battery life for rides), I can run the SYSTM app and it connects to my Cycleops crank Power meter, and although it wouldn’t connect to my Garmin ANT+ heart rate monitor, (my phone’s fault), it does connect to a cheap LivLov Bluetooth heart rate monitor I got from Amazon for about $25.
I still run my Lezyne head unit which is picking up the power meter via ANT+ and I wear my Garmin heart rate monitor with ANT+ (so two heart rate monitors). At the end of the ride I let my Lezyne upload data to Strava and Training Peaks, but the SYSTM data I just let SYSTM log the results and uncheck the uploads to Strava and Training Peaks, so I’m not showing double workouts.
It’s a little clunky and although it’s not perfect in terms of really nailing targets perfectly, it’s close enough to get a really enjoyable outdoor workout, while benefiting from the structured training plan. It’s amazing how much quicker and less suffering there is outdoors. Honestly if SYSTM had a training plan for outdoors consisting of strategically selected no vid rides, it would be great, set them to music and it would be even better.
Anyway just thought others might like to know it’s possible to bring SYSTM outdoors.
