Garmin/Strava question.

[Andrew G]

Finally got around to registering on Strava and uploaded the first ride, is every inch of road a segment and sub segment of a longer segment!

Quick question, do you need to delete previously uploaded rides from the Garmin before new uploads or does it active sync and just pick up new activity, whether that's one ride or twenty since you last uploaded? I'm presuming it would upload multiple rides as separate activity logs. I'll probably delete them once uploaded anyway but just wanted to check if it was a must.

[Lesley]

Yes Andrew it will upload automatically. If you delete the older ride off your Garmin, it will upload quicker.

[Andrew G]

Great, thanks.

[MattR]

Hi Andrew, Garmin Express is all our new friend. Was a wonder when they introduced it in the second half of last year. It links your Garmin account to your Strava account, so when you upload to Garmin, it will within a few minutes be on Strava.

Lesley is right, if you delete the old rides it will upload quicker but only marginally, but personally I don't bother, I would rather not risk accidently deleting an un-synced ride/run.

What device have you got? The techniques for uploading can be a bit different dependent upon the device.

Segments on Strava (and now Garmin) aren't everywhere on every inch of road or trail. They are where people have created them from their own rides/runs and yes some of them overlap and a lot of them in popular places are exactly the same thing, Box Hill is a prime example. Not everywhere is covered, and you can create your own if you would like to.

[Andrew G]

I just have the basic 200 Matt. I'm not a Garmin/Strava junkie and never bothered recording mileages etc previously, just looked at the computer when I got home as a simple time & distance done.

I got the 200 as a couple of computers needing replacing and a deal made it cost effective and easy to now just take one machine across bikes. I haven't set up a Garmin account, just a Strava one and downloaded the plugin it told me to. I just plug the 200 in to the PC upload and that's it.

I doubt I'll do anything particular with the data, just upload it and use Strava as a simple data logger. The blind spot thingy for near your house is handy to save start/stopping down the road. It shows the full route on my machine but presumably blocks off the ends if someone else views the ride, not I think they can as I marked the account as private.

[MattR]

Yeah, the 200 I guess you just get the files off it as a USB device? Garmin Express probably doesn't work with it and like you say you need a Garmin account anyway.

Just stick with Strava it's much better from a social and achievement perspective, although Garmin Connect does have better graphs and analysis if you ever want to get into that.

Yeah the privacy zones are excellent in Strava. I don't have my account private on Strava because of this feature although it does still give away your general habits like when and where I go for work etc, but oh well. I do have it private account on Garmin though.