May 25th 2018 sees the introduction of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) around personal data protection and privacy and in order to comply there are a few changes I’ve needed to make to VeloViewer, mainly around the public leaderboards, which are detailed below. Basically there shouldn’t be any personally identifiable data shown on the site for other people to see unless you have specifically opted-in to expose it.
Adding Photos to Strava Activities from the Desktop
I’ve had numerous requests to build-in the ability to add images to activities from the browser rather than having to use the native phone/tablet app. It can often be a pain having to transfer photos to the phone before adding them to the activity or a complete blocker for people that don’t use an iOS or Android device at all. A while back I added the ability to add your 3D and 2D profile images direct to your activities using the button on your Activity Details page so I thought it was about time to open it up a little further.
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Give VeloViewer PRO as a Gift
You love using VeloViewer PRO so why not give your friends and family the same fun by gifting them a year’s PRO or PRO+ membership? Perhaps a Christmas or birthday present or just a way to help motivate a friend to get out there and explore the roads/trails. Drop me an email for details.
Don’t forget that until the end of January 2018 VeloViewer PRO users can get 60 days free of The Sufferfest!
60 Days of The Sufferfest for Free with VeloViewer PRO
Yep, you read that right, new and existing VeloViewer PRO (or PRO+) users get 60 days full access to The Sufferfest! A great opportunity for you to thoroughly try out their new 4DP workouts and training plans. As well as being able to use The Sufferfest workout videos, optionally controlling the ERG of your smart trainer, you also get to treat your body and mind to the integrated yoga and mental training programmes. With The Sufferfest’s usual price of $10 per month, this is a great offer for just a £10 VeloViewer PRO (or £20 PRO+) membership! Not to mention having a year of access to VeloViewer of course.
Strava Segment/Climb Comparison and VVOM
We’ve all seen profiles of many climbs over the years and when looked at individually, taking note of the elevation gain and distance, you can get a good idea of the severity of the climb, especially when they are coloured by the gradient. If you show two of these profiles next to each other then because the elevation and distance scales are usually very different it is very hard to get a feel for how one compares to the other. Last year I tweeted out images of a few climbs sharing the same scales but had to do lots of manually resizing to get them to be correct. Now we have a built in way to compare any segment/climb with any other.
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British Nationals 2017 Course Details
2017 sees the British Road Race and Time Trial champs head into the Irish Sea to tackle the very famous roads of the Isle of Man with the road races taking on the classic IOM TT motorbike circuit (twice for the men) before a number of laps of a smaller circuit just outside of Douglas. The time trial tackles a lumpy circuit with a couple of stiff pulls and next to no flat road.
Introducing the Explorer Cluster (and configurable explorer visuals)
Since the introduction of the Explorer Score and Explorer Max Square there have been requests for some sort of metric to represent the maximum number of connected Explorer tiles. The recent improvement in the calculation of completed Explorer tiles sparked a very active discussion which resulted in the refinement of the concept and the creation of the Explorer Cluster. The Explorer Max Square provides a hard-core challenge but can be tricky for people who live in geographically challenging areas or have key tiles which are completely inaccessible. This is where the Explorer Cluster looks to provided a more level playing field.
Explorer Tile Calculation Updates
The way that completed Explorer tiles are calculated has remained pretty static since its inception in March 2015 which included some, less than precise code to try to get around some of its known limitations (detailed below). I’ve now refined that code to improve the accuracy and also speed up the processing quite considerably and also introduced a method to get a definitive list of tiles for an Activity. This improved accuracy will of course result in a number of tiles that were previously marked as ticked now showing up as unticked (and potentially affecting your max square size) but only tiles that you never actually visited in the first place 🙂
Turns out having a coach helps, a lot!
Some of you may have read my previous post about my use over the winter months of a coach for some structured training to see how effective it really is. This is my first experience with proper training having previously just free-style “trained” by trying to beast myself on Strava hill segments. The goal of my training was the Strade Bianche Gran Fondo in early march which unfortunately ended with a puncture and a near hypothermic brother which combined to result in a DNF at around the halfway mark, but the more measurable gains had already been recorded – at 12% increase in FTP.
Tour de Yorkshire 2017 – Men’s and Women’s Race Routes and Sportive
The 2017 edition of the Tour de Yorkshire very kindly finishes in VeloViewer’s global HQ of Sheffield taking in some of my personal, favourite cycling roads in the process. Here are the details of the 3 stages with the 2nd stage (Tadcaster / Harrogate) also being tackled by the Women’s peloton before the men’s race on the Saturday.