This afternoon was glorious. The sun was shining and, even though it was a work day, the company I work for had arranged an afternoon out for staff at Cannock Chase (Go Ape). High ropes, Forest Segway, or Mountain biking activities were all available – right up my street!
I decided I’d like to Segway but I was in the second group (which meant waiting around for an hour or so), so I took a bike out for a little ride whilst I was waiting. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my Garmin with me and my iPhone’s attempts to capture my movements on Strava were woeful.
Shortly after setting off on “Follow The Dog“, I lost the rest of the group (whilst messing around with Strava!) and decided that I would rather come back and ride another day with my son than ride on my own and (potentially) miss the Segway opportunity. But I still wanted to capture the details of the (admittedly short) ride…
Generating a GPX file to upload to Strava is straightforward enough – I used Mapometer for that. Unfortunately though, Strava won’t allow GPX files without time information to be uploaded.
The workaround is to estimate some time data and insert it in the file – which is where the excellent Gotoes site helped! Goetoes has several utilities for Strava and Garmin Connect including:
- Combining FIT, GPX or TCX files
- Merging heart rate and position files (FIT/TCX)
- A bookmarklet to export GPX from Garmin Connect
- The ability to upload to Strava via email
and…
Using this with an estimate of my time, a known distance (so an estimated speed) and Gotoes’ ability to work out what my speed might have been at different points on the route came up with something approximate to put into Strava. I’ve hidden it from leaderboards – because it’s “fake data” – but it’s enough for me to track the distance and the fact I did go for a little bimble.
Strangely, the iPhone’s GPS performed OK for the Segway ride (which I’ve recorded as an eBike and alse hidden from leaderboards):
Thanks!