Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Strava - Part 2 - Setup and Security

In my last post I mentioned some setup and security things that I do.

In general I don't worry too much about security, but I thought as I run more and people knowing exactly where I live probably wouldn't be the best thing in the world.

Under Settings -> Privacy you can set up a "hidden location" for both your office and your home.  This really just moves the start of your run out about half a mile from your house.  Nothing extensive but I guess better than nothing.

One sure way if you worry about this, and I would suggest some folks doing this is change the enhanced privacy mode to ON, within this same screen.  You can approve your followers and only approved people can see and download your activities.  Especially as you start to meet people on the trail and within clubs.

I would also suggest if you are uncomfortable with people knowing your habits to some degree (you always run at 6am from x parking lot), then you should change your setting to have people "request to follow".  That way you can pre-screen to some degree.

Now lets move on to a few more fun items;

Gear - Make sure you setup your shoes and your bikes here, you can retire them later but as you start going through shoes it sure does help to keep track of all of your gear and how many miles you have on them.  I wish I had started this earlier, because I have this pair of road shoes I have tried to replace but any new ones, just don't feel the same - damn you Nike for updating models all the time!

Email Notifications - so if you signed up and have joined any clubs, you probably start getting a few too many emails from strava, this is a great place to slow those down.  I used to like getting a daily digest, but I follow a few too many folks that I don't read it now :(

My Performance - again another place you should take a few minutes to setup as it helps all of the other data screens - your Max HR you can just calculate based off of your age.  There was a great article by Ann Trason in Ultrarunner Magazine - Ask Ann: Heart Rate Homework about getting your max heart rate.  Worth a read.
Pace Zones are a bit different and they kinda bug me - but it is what it is.  I ran a pretty good (for me) half marathon - a 1:46:00, so when it shows my pace information 99% of the time I am in endurance, and I guess that is what I am doing when I am in the hills trotting up the hill.  I just don't find that as useful.

Under my profile you can also setup your "social connections" Facebook, Twitter, Intstagram, etc..., I don't do a lot of sharing unless it is a race really that some folks are watching, but it is nice to be able to share.  The best one here is Instagram - Half the fun of our trail running is the view sometimes!  Going for a run in the hills and tossing it out on Instagram (create an account if you don't have one - it is free), it will automatically look for pictures taken during your activity and a 45 minute window.  If you are out in the middle of no place with no cell coverage, you can take pictures and just let them fail and have a few queue'd up when you do get to cell coverage.  Here is Strava's blog post on it - http://blog.strava.com/strava-instagram-5584/  One other note - you can disassociate a picture from an activity also - I noticed I had a picture of my daughter and I out for a walk because it was within the upload window you just click the button "unlink" the picture.

I think I hit all the high points - really nothing too earth shattering, just wanted to encourage more people to use it.  I think I will hit on some of the "hidden" features or just not well used features of Strava next.







2 comments:

  1. Good info, thanks Jeff. I'm still using iSmoothRun and enjoy it. I finally deleted the Nike running app yesterday, on trail, as it just can no longer get a GPS signal where other apps do.

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    1. Hey Tony - Yeah iSmoothRun is the best iphone / android app. So nice that it can upload to any service or save in Dropbox for archiving and uploading to which ever service you end up with! I think you can upload to Nike (it was broken for awhile). So you don't need Nike but it will just auto upload. You should add a Strava account iSmoothRun will auto upload after a run / hike.

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