I think, other than Strava, TrainerRoad currently only gets completed activities from Garmin Connect (if they’re recorded on a Garmin device) and from Hammerhead. They’re also working on syncing from Wahoo and Zwift:
Hopefully they add syncing with Polar, Coros, etc. to their roadmap so they don’t have to rely on Strava anymore.
Until a few months ago TR wasn’t taking any of my outdoor rides into account whatsoever, and it was fine, wasn’t it? This new feature is nice to have, but it’s not so crucial that I would throw money on new watch.
I’d even say that if something happens with my watch, I’ll definitely go buy another Suunto than switch brands. Having watch that I really like to wear 24/7 is way more important than TR integration.
But that’s just me 
Have you tried Komoot? I’ve never used Strava’s, so I don’t know how it compares to that, but I do like it better than Garmin’s.
Many years ago, but at the time it seemed more focused on Europe. I’ll give it a shot again!
Sadly, I don’t think anything comes close to Strava’s route planning tool. For better or for worse, the UI is top notch and the heatmap is a vastly underrated feature.
Use plotaroute?
Better than all of them imo.
There is a mobile version it will default to on your phone…
Wow, just goes to show its regionally based / personal experience. The worse route planning by some margin in my experience. I even put Garmin above it. Having said that I not used it since 2018, why would I when I prefer other options
For sure. For me the heatmap is invaluable for planning routes in places I’m not familiar with. For example, I’m traveling to Mexico City soon and it’s very easy to see what the popular running routes are:
They even have a night heatmap so you can see where people tend to run at night:
It’s the kind of feature you take for granted until you don’t have it.
I get it.
Looks much improved sincecI last used it tbf.
Garmin watch just delivered, connected to TR and disconnected Strava . Will see how everything goes but quite happy to be cancelling Strava sub if they are going to treat third parties so badly.
I haven’t checked out Strava’s mapping in a while, but at launch I found it really poor and greatly prefer RideWithGPS. RwGPS also seems like the de facto currency around here for rides, i.e. if someone is planning a group ride the route gets sent out as a RwGPS link. Good heat maps, tons of map options.
I can definitely see the appeal of Strava mapping/heatmaps for runners or other sports though. RwGPS is obviously biased toward cycling.
It has significantly improved since then…and with the inclusion of Heat Maps, it was a pretty damn good system.
But I’ll manage just fine with the other options…not paying Strava for anything at this point.
Heat maps generally tend to mean ‘commuting routes are very hot’, which is great if you’re trying to get to work, but not so much if doing a long rides passing through/close to various towns where you find yourself spending half the time on a cycle lane next to a busy road.
Just applied to cancel my Strava subscription via Apple. Straight forward enough and I’m currently in search of a replacement.
Who has moved to where and how are they getting on with their replacement.
I’ll probably end up with training peaks and their 25% discount offer but wanted to see if there were alternatives
I’ve set it up that both intervals and trainingpeaks sync everything…just in case!
I see the calendar now shows the Zwift logo on the map. I think that’s new, used to show the Strava one previously for Zwift activities? As the data was coming from there.
Guess TR have changed it to reflect where the activity happened rather than where the data was pushed to TR from? Funnily enough TR workouts show a Strava logo rather than a TR one.
No logo at all for outdoor ride which would have come from Garmin, maybe as it comes from Strava and Garmin, TR haven’t put a logo on it.
I found that there were sections of road that were perfectly legal, usable, & safe to cycle on that Strava flatly refused to draw a route on. Olinda Grove to Southern Outlet southbound at Mt Nelson, Tasmania is one example off the top of my head. Yeah you can draw it in freehand but I found it messed things up elsewhere in the route. And sometimes flicking between freehand & using waypoints caused Strava to ignore what I’d drawn freehand previously! 
So I just use the mymaps section of Google Maps, export to kml, & it’s pretty easy to convert in a text editor to a GPX.
I had a look at the other tools today, creating the same route in all of them, and for my use case, the Strava heat maps really make their tool much faster to use than the others. Do any of the other tools have cycling specific heat maps that differentiate surface type like Strava does? Since some tools seem to be better in different regions, I’m in the US.
If you’ve arrived in an area you don’t know, or know well, then I can see that heat maps have real utility.
But outside of that use case, they’re of no interest to me because what I want are quality routes, and in my experience “frequency of use” (ie. “heat”) doesn’t correlate with “quality”…
Or worse, it correlates with poor quality, because the routes most popular with bike riders also happen to be the most popular with vehicle drivers - probably because bike riders are nearly always also drivers, and generally are either not particularly imaginative in their route choices, or they are outsiders lacking local knowledge. As a result, the heat maps generally tell me where not to ride 
Although I’ve been a Strava subscriber for some time, I prefer Komoot for route planning as it gives me good control during the route creation process. Horses for courses - we’ve all got slightly different requirements and preferences.
This. Never understood the popularity of heatmaps for course creation. I live in a town a few miles outside a major city, with a main road going through it. Weekends are full of cyclists from the city ploughing straight down the main road to get to the countryside and more scenic / quieter roads beyond, totally ignorant to some of the far superior, quieter routes around the outskirts of my town.
And similarly there’s a big national park on my doorstep, which is great for running & cycling through in summer. In winter, it closes much earlier in the day and shuts entirely on some days. But it completely dominates the heatmap due to the lack of local knowledge about whether it’s even available.
I’ve been using Footpath to do my routing - I’d never even heard of it until the kerfuffle about Strava stealing their ideas a few years back. I preferred it over Strava to the point where it was the catalyst for me to cancel my Strava premium sub and subscribe to Footpath instead.
