Ascent replacement? Strava?

[Mick F]

Tried Rubitrack. Too complicated and too much information. I'll delete it.
Tried Endomondo. Didn't like it.

Yet to have another go at Garmin Connect.
Yet to have another go at Strava.

TBH, I'm not best impressed so far, as Ascent is marvellous and a tough act to follow. Maybe it's old fashioned, but it does exactly what I want ....... and nothing more.

[Mick F]

Tried Garmin Connect and Strava.
Don't like or want either of them, so deleted my accounts.

Only one I've looked at that is sort of what I want is Plotaroute. Trouble is, I can't store many files unless I go Public.

[Mick F]

Sent an email to Rob Boyer who designed and marketed Ascent. rob_boyer@mac.com
Found his email address when checking on my Ascent account details and passwords.
Hopefully, I'll get an optimistic reply.

Hi Rob,

I have been in contact with you on and off over the years regarding one issue or another.
I absolutely love Ascent, and nothing I’ve tried comes anywhere near the functionality and simplicity of the program. I have tracks on Ascent going back for years and years.

My MacBook is at Sierra 10.12.6 and if I upgrade to High Sierra, Ascent doesn’t work so well, so I downgraded back to Sierra to keep Ascent running properly. As far as I know, it won’t work at all with Mojave.

My Ascent version is 1.11.9

Is there another version, or anything I can do that will keep me going if I upgrade my Mac?

Best wishes from UK.

Mick.

[AndyK]

Perhaps if you told us what features you are looking for, or at least what specifically was wrong with the ones you've rejected...?

I find Strava the easiest to use when I'm checking back to see what I did where and when, exactly how I got from Bath to Salisbury last October, how many miles I've done on the touring bike since I put the new wheels on, that kind of thing. And the fact that rides can be uploaded automatically from the app on my phone or from the GPS is a big bonus. But then I also like sharing my rides with my friends, as I find it interesting to see where they've been riding and some of them seem to like seeing where I've been, as it sometimes gives ideas for new routes. There's more to Strava than competing to be King of the Mountains.

RideWithGPS has a perfectly competent rides record and again can be set to make all your rides private by default. Maybe worth a try.

The only other one I've used extensively for logging rides is Viewranger, which frankly is a bit of a mess (the list of "my tracks" doesn't even have a search function, for starters).

[edited for typo]

[thelawnet]

Strava has lots of functions. The heatmap is one, for example.

There's a global one.

https://www.strava.com/heatmap (there's also a personal one)

It's quite interesting in that the MTB trails stick out instantly.

[Cugel]

Thanks guys.
I'll check plotaroute and have another shufti at Strava.

But I'd like to know why you collect all those cycling stats and how you employ them.

As context, it would be interesting to know if you collect historical parameters and data describing other of your life activities. Now many dinner plates have you washed? How many feet have you ascended when walking about here or there? What is the count of hairs on your head, through the ages, not to mention the average length. Etcetera.

By now you will realise I am being facetious. But there is a serious underlying question: if you're not sharing this ride data with other cyclists a la Strava, why do you collect it; and why not other sorts of activity data?

Have a read at this thread.
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=78276
I'm getting worse.
Scored 48 the other day.

Ah.

Still, perhaps it's possible to manipulate one's predilections to achieve a different overall behaviour? Rather than being obsessed with numbers describing your bike rides you could become obsessed with achieving a state of not-knowing any of your bike riding data .....?

Well, I jest perhaps. I do recognise the power and the advantages of obsession. Although I'm generally not obsessive in the way you describe, I am-so when it comes to achieving competence at some practice or other. It worked for me with cabinet-making, bike-racing, photography, archery and some other things that I got reasonably good at through the persistence underpinned by obsession. But it's driving me mad trying to learn the classical guitar - persistently bad I am, no matter how obsessed I become with the finger plucking and pressing techniques.

Still, perhaps if you can notice that your obsession with the bike riding data is just an obsession with some numbers, rather than with bike riding, you could school yourself to give up the numbers.....? But I suppose it doesn't work like that. I gave up the bike-riding numbers myself a long time ago and enjoy cycling far more. No slave-driver hortator beating on the bicycle galley drum, see?

Cugel

[Mick F]

Perhaps if you told us what features you are looking for, or at least what specifically was wrong with the ones you're rejected...?

I'll try.

In the past, I had a Garmin Edge 305 and then a 705 plus the HR monitor and the Speed/cadence device. Lots of stats.
I got tired of all that, and sold the lot, and bought a do-everything-Garmin Montana.
Absolutely excellent bit of kit, and I added a Tempe unit to see the temperature. As for the rest of the "stuff" I couldn't be bothered.

I have OS mapping on the huge screen and Garmin City Navigator too, plus any free maps I may like. I can see where I am, upload routes to follow, take it in the car for satnav, take it on the trains boats and planes. It's a go anywhere unit.

I record my rides. Routes, times of day, average speeds, total ascent all get looked at on my computer and they are all stored on a separate hard drive and often on a backup DVD. I have two obsessions at the moment: visiting every parish church in Cornwall and riding all the roads in Cornwall. Past obsessions were crossing all the bridges of the River Tamar (23), crossing all the bridges over the A30 from Exeter to LE (79) not to mention LEJOG and Back, a Grand Tour, and JOGLE on a Raleigh Chopper. I have it all recorded for posterity.

All I want to see, is where I've been, how far I've been, and bits and bobs of minor stats about the ride. Nothing about me, no HR, no cadence no weights and BMI or fitness or comparisons with other people or my past. I want it on my computer and not on a website I have to pay £15 a year for the privilege on pain of losing the lot. I don't want Facebook or Strava (which I see as similar/same things).

Ascent does it for me.
I can't show you a website of it, as it doesn't exist any more.
I can show you a screenshot of this year so far though.

[RickH]

I use Garmin Connect & Strava, both set to keep all activities private, unless I choose to make individual ones public. The 2 are linked so activities automatically load to Connect & Strava.

I pretty much ignore Strava's segments, I think there's only 1 locally that I actually could tell you where it starts & finishes (& that's really only because it is the full length of a road with a t junction at each end). The only "benefit" I derive from segments is that doing well on them gives me an indication that I'm riding OK.

I like Strava's tallies - weekly, monthly & annual as well as totals for each bike (you can only have 1 default & have to change it manually for each ride for others). The only thing I would like to know but I've not found a way to do (I've not tried very hard though) is getting a total for the year for a particular bike.

You can set weekly & annual mileage targets in Strava & they don't have to match (I've got 50 mile per week & 3650 per year set in mine).

Strava Tallies

Where Strava works to the calendar, Connect uses rolling periods - 7 days/4 weeks/12 months chunks.

Some things I like better in Strava some I prefer in Garmin Connect, plus the Web versions of each have different capabilities compared to the mobile versions.

[Mick F]

The only thing I would like to know but I've not found a way to do (I've not tried very hard though) is getting a total for the year for a particular bike.

With Ascent, you have as many separate "browsers" as you wish.

This is my Bike Rides folder. Some folders in the main folder have separate browsers in them too.

[freiston]

I might be miles off the mark, but how about dragging and dropping the gpx/kml files directly into google earth?

Here's one I made earlier (using Osmand on my phone to record the track as a gpx file and creating kml file with line strings when dropping into google earth):

[iandriver]

Looking at my Strava, I get lists of rides like this


Click on and individual ride I get this


Isn't that pretty much what you want?

[Mick F]

Does it differentiate with years/month/days on two or three different bikes so you have a few different pages one for each?
Can you store years and years of data?
Can you upload years and years of past data?
Are they catalogued so you can find a specific ride on a specific day?

Here's a ride of mine - picked at random from 2006. Screenshot on my computer.

[iandriver]

You can certainly find rides by date by clicking on a month or week. As for different bikes, I think it will only give a milage total. You do get to select which bike on each ride. You can certainly upload batches of gpx files. My rides go back about 3 or 4 years since I joined it. I'd maybe try uploading a smaller batch perhaps 40 or 50 and see how it goes from there. I know it's frustrating when your old SW stops working, share your pain.

[thelawnet]

Does it differentiate with years/month/days on two or three different bikes so you have a few different pages one for each?
Can you store years and years of data?
Can you upload years and years of past data?
Are they catalogued so you can find a specific ride on a specific day?

Here's a ride of mine - picked at random from 2006. Screenshot on my computer.Screen Shot 2019-03-13 at 14.32.58.png

Yes you can store years and years of data.

Yes you can filter by bike, you need to go to

https://www.strava.com/athlete/training

choose the Sport ('ride') and then you can filter by Bike.

What you will get is a grid which is sortable by distance, date, duration, distance, and elevation gain. But there's no date filter there.

There is a search function which searches the ride name.

You can filter by date from here https://www.strava.com/athlete/training/log but there's no bike filter there, though if you click on the ride it will tell you what bike you used

Strava has a catalogue of 'apps'

https://www.strava.com/apps

I think the best one for you is Veloviewer

They have lots of visualizations, e.g., this 'Wheel'

Veloviewer ask £10/year for the various features.

I imagine it will do everything you want.

(You can also pay Strava for 'Summit', but you don't need to do that for Veloviewer to work.

Summit costs £19/year per 'pack', or £47 for three packs.
'Analysis' gives you effort scores and exposes your heart rate (if you're using a HRM) and such like
'Safety' gives you a Beacon feature (for telling your loved ones where you are) and a 'Heat map' of where you have ridden.
'Training' is similar to Analysis really - it's for analysing relative effort etc.)

[Mick F]

That sounds good ......... except for the price per YEAR.
What happens to your data if you cancel or stop paying?

I would like to pay for some software onto my computer(s) in perpetuity.
I own my copy of Ascent and I can transfer it to any or all Mac's I want providing I have the necessary login details.
If you wanted a copy of it (if you had a Mac) I could give you my login details and you could use it too.

I paid 41USD for it in Feb 2008. It's mine for life, and it can be accessed on any Mac computer I want so long as it's not too modern ........... hence my thread.

I uploaded years of data onto it going back to 2004 and even if I didn't have GPS in those days, I kept a manual log and recreated my rides on BikeHikeUk and put the resultant GPX files onto it.