Update on Strava API use and the implications for VeloViewer

Thank you once again for all the support you have shown recently, we know we are incredibly lucky to have such loyal users.

We have been working closely with the team at Strava and are appreciative of their partnership. At this time, we fully understand the implications and will be making a subtle adjustment to make sure that we continue to uphold the highest standards of data security and to ensure that we fully align with Strava’s API agreement.

The single change is that users who choose to share their data publicly within VeloViewer will now be asked to confirm consent regularly. Visibility will default back to ‘private’ if consent is not reconfirmed.  Previously, it was a ‘one & done’ consent process, this change will help users to be fully aware of the data sharing that they have agreed to.

This change will be released in the next couple of weeks and all other functionality will remain unchanged. We hope that you will continue to enjoy exploring your data and planning your adventures with VeloViewer.

VeloViewer Update 3rd December 2024:

Your options for sharing data in VeloViewer have now been updated.  This gives you more control over the privacy of your data.

Previously, when you synced your Strava data to VeloViewer, your data was visible only to you, across the whole site.  You could then check a box to opt-in to make your Strava data public within VeloViewer (note this only relates to your public/non-private Strava data, VeloViewer has never allowed private Strava data to be shared). This option made your data visible until, either, your PRO subscription expired, or until you unchecked the box.  

This has now been improved; when you opt-in to make your Strava data public in VeloViewer, it will only remain public for 7 days, after which it defaults back to private.  On your Update page you can press a button each week, when you update your data, to keep it public, if that is your wish. We have tried to make this process as quick and easy as possible.

If you opt-in to show your information in the overall, and Zwift-Insider/100 Climbs leaderboards, as well as your public VeloViewer Explorer Tiles in the Explorer Global Heatmap, then those continue to be indefinite, no need to renew.

The place to initially share your data is in the Options section of your Update page:

If you check the box to make your data public, then the next time you visit your Update page you will see when your data is public until, along with buttons to reset the data visibility for 7-days from when you press the button, so in effect, you have the option to reset the clock.  You will also see an alternate option to make your data private:

Why the change and why now?

Giving users choice and control of their data privacy is very important to us.  We wanted to move to a system that makes data sharing as transparent as possible. The new system prompts users to consider whether their data sharing preferences have changed, rather than assuming that they haven’t.

This update was prompted by conversations with Strava and we believe it is a positive move for our users.

Opting-in to Leaderboards and other things GDPR

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.

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Activity/Route/Segment Direction/Gradient Breakdown

A while ago I built a visualisation to display the orientation of roads in a defined area and had requests to have a similar view for activities.  Well, two years on (I know!) and here it is, with the added breakdown by the gradient of the roads/trails.  Just head to the “Breakdown” tab on any Activity, Route or Segment Details page.  Filtering the selection in the top profile (Activity & Routes) updates the visualisation appropriately.

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Summary View of Heart Rate Zones, Power Zones (& now Pace Zones) and General Suffering

Viewing your heart rate, pace zone and power zone distributions (i.e. how much time spent in each zone) along with Suffer Scores for individual activities is very straightforward, but only once we see that data represented over longer periods of time do we get a clearer view of how well our training has been going.  On your VeloViewer Summary page each of these metrics can now be viewed with the distributions clearly displayed with the data grouped over whichever time period you need.

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GPS Device Elevation Comparison from Giro 2015 Stage 16

RainRecording movement using GPS devices is always subject to error but when it comes to elevation data the difference in recorded values between two or more people on an identical ride can be rather dramatic.  This difference can become even more extreme if the there is some rain in the air when some devices carry on unaffected whilst others hang up their barometers in disgust.  Here I’ll present a small comparison of various recordings of elevation from Stage 16 of the 2015 Giro d’Italia which although not a typical ride for the most of us, was affected by fairly typical weather.

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Getting your Power/Heart Rate FTP and Normalised Power from your Strava data

FTP and Normalised PowerFinding your FTP (Functional Threshold Power/Performance) is a unavoidably painful experience but getting a number out the other end shouldn’t be, which is why I’ve tried to make that part of the process as simple and versatile as possible. Just sync your data from Strava over to VeloViewer and let VeloViewer do all the number crunching on your behalf. Instantly see your power, normalised power and heart rate based FTPs against all your segments or over any part of any of your activities including your best splits.
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Déjà vu? Finding out if you’ve been there before

Activity OverlapsSegments are a great way to see how many times you’ve covered certain sections of road/track, but what if there are no segments set up for the stretch you are interested in? Say hello to the Activity Overlaps tab! OK, probably not the most sexy of names, but what it lacks in title it makes up for in functionality – select any section of any activity and it will search through all your activities and provide a list and map of any that overlap. Neat!

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Interactive Road Orientation Distributions – How Ordered is Your Town?

San Francisco Road Orientation DistributionsAn image created by Seth Kadish at Vizual Statistix caught my eye in my Twitter timeline yesterday showing road orientation distributions (i.e. what directions the roads go in) for a number of US cities.  Being British, the idea of roads forming a nice, thought-out pattern is completely alien to me and takes all the fun out of trying to get lost but the visualisations intrigued me none the less.  The calculations used by Seth had a few limitations as the length of each street didn’t influence the plot and a twisty street would only register in a single orientation rather than being split appropriately.  So time to step up to the plate to see if I can find a more interactive and representative way of doing the same thing.

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Delving into The Sufferfest Rubber Glove with VeloViewer to find your FTP

The Sufferfest - Rubber GloveMost of you by now will have tried out the new activity details page on VeloViewer but in the depths of a northern hemisphere winter, here’s how you can use it to find your Functional Threshold Performance (FTP) in conjunction with The Sufferfest’s Rubber Glove video from the comfort of your own kitchen/garage/cellar/gym.

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3D Strava/Garmin Connect/Ride With GPS Courses, Activities, Routes and Segments

3D BookmarkletBack in July I had my first experience with bookmarklets when playing with Marc Durdin’s excellent bit of code that provides his funky elevation profiles for Activities and Segments right there, in amongst Strava’s own page contents.  I might have been a bit naive but I just didn’t realise that this thing was so easy to do, so time for a quick play and see what I could come up with.  First off I wanted to get an interactive 3D view of the new Strava Routes, the other thing that sprung to mind was to see if I could swap out the Google Maps view for the more detailed (at least here in the UK) Open Street/Cycle Maps which I’ll go into in my next blog post.

Update: unfortunately this approach to getting data for the 3D viewer is remarkably unstable due to the ever changing code at each of the sites mentioned above. Currently I think all of the sites listed have changed their code sufficiently for my code to no longer work and I’m not going to attempt to maintain it.  Instead I’ve added a GPX import option on the 3D routes page but it does rely on the GPX file including elevation data. The GPX export from Strava doesn’t so that won’t work so the best site I’ve found so far to create your GPX files is Ride With GPS. The elevation data isn’t the best though so don’t expect very good profiles (Garmin Connect appears to have the best elevation data right now but there is no GPX export!). Of course if you’ve ridden the route then just view your activity on VeloViewer and you’ll see a 3D view there.

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