What's with all the complaints about Strava not giving it for free?

Strava Broke My Stryd wrote:

I sent an email to Strava tech support asking if it was possible to tell Strava to use my Stryd footpod data rather than the GPS data

I have an idea. I haven't done this specific thing, but I wonder if it'll work.

You can re-export the file from Garmin (I think .fit or .tcx would be good), and then edit the file to remove the bad data streams before re-uploading the file to Strava. Without checking, I'm sure you can google a 3rd party file editor.

I would start with removing the inaccurate "distance" data, because that is most likely what Strava is using. If you force Strava to figure out distance another way, it might calculate distance by GPS, and then it might snap your GPS coordinates to the race course (I don't know, I haven't used a real course before).

If that doesn't work, I would then try deleting the GPS data stream (lat/lon). Then, Strava would probably be looking for ANY kind of distance data, and it would accept your Stryd.

Again, not sure, just a hunch.

Thanks for the suggestions!

It would definitely be possible to do those things, but I was shocked that a platform like Strava did not have those features built in. Especially on a known course like Chicago, Strava could easily determine that the footpod data was most accurate data track or at least give me the option to choose one. I tried a third party plugin (I'm pretty sure it was Stravistics), and I wasn't very impressed with that, either.

Garmin Connect uses the Stryd data rather than the GPS data when I have the Stryd connected, which is actually what I want, so I saw no reason for Strava (I don't care about leader boards and segments and all that).

I'm using SportTracks, which is an obsolete desktop based product, for reporting, etc., so I will have to come up with a solution when this unsupported product becomes unusable due to some Windows update.

Thanks. Ive been doing manual upload for the last few days. Takes the convenience out of it all. Hope they figure it out.

Totally agree. It just has always felt like Strava's development priorities are on the flashy social features, the ones with a huge wow factor. So now it's mostly those things, and the no-brainer functionalities are missing. The irony: the flashy stuff is great for attracting free users who have no loyalty to one service or another, but to rope people into a subscription, the structure of Strava's platform can't have so many limitations.

At first, when they took away features from free users, I missed the GAP data, training log and being able to see my past results on segments.

I'm ok with the training log being gone as I can get that info from Garmin Connect. After just a few weeks I don't seem to care about the others.

I like the seeing what others are doing but realized there are only 5 or 6 people who I am interested in . Then, I had an epiphany. Instead of watching them on Strava, why don't I actually connect with those people in real life instead of online! Make plans to go for a run like I used to.

Goodbye Strava!