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VeloViewer Takes Your Strava Results to the Next Level

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Velo-Viewer-Segment-View

Most enthusiasts and racers alike have, for the most part, become comfortable with Strava.  And like it or hate it, it dominates the way cyclists track their efforts.  It has set the standard on how we track our performance as well as our mortal enemy’s.  Velo Viewer takes your existing Strava data straight from the source, then charts it with a much wider view of your efforts as well as those of others.

As overwhelming as it may seem at first, it ends up making your training and ride data so much simpler to understand.  For instance, it shows you your previous efforts on a segment so you can monitor how much you have improved, (or how much more work you need to do coming off that Winter break), a 3D Route viewer that really puts your ride into perspective. They even have their own “Veloviewer Score” that rates your performance based on your best results within individual and combined segments.  And that’s only the beginning…

From Velo Viewer’s Site:

VeloViewer (formally StravaViewer) started life as a Windows Phone application to allow me to view my Strava data on my not quite so popular model of phone and to try and plug some of the holes in Strava’s own excellent website. Hopefully at some point Strava will plug these holes (and give some more nice summary api’s) and make this website obsolete. As well as showing a history of rides I wanted to see a full, orderable list of my Strava segment placings.

The site is made up of six main pages: Summary, Segment List, Ride List, Charts, Update and Signature Image along with Ride Details and Segment Details pages. Also there is the Alternative Leaderboard and VeloFlow pages.

Velo-Viewer-ride-overview

Overall, yearly and weekly stats and charts including all your best climbing achievements.

Velo-Viewer-segments-overview

Here it is, your Strava segment history all in one place! Fully sortable list of all your segments ever uploaded and displayed with all the metrics you could want.

So what are all those fields?

  • Pos – your position on the segment the last time you updated. Note: there is currently a bug in the Strava API resulting in some more optimistic placings where it doesn’t add aditional placings for tied athletes ahead of you.
  • Prev – the position you had on your last effort in that segment.
  • Last change – the date your last placing change occurred. The colour reflects both whether that change was up or down (green or red) and also how long ago it happened (how saturated the colour is).
  • Total – total number of riders that have completed this segment.
  • Segment – Name of segment with main link to VeloViewer Segment Details page, also a direct link to the corresponding page in Strava.
  • Time – Your PR’s moving time (rather than elapsed time).
  • Behind KOM s – the time your personal best is currently behind the current KOM. Ordering by this column gives a good list of segments that you could potentially target for easy(ish) KOM wins.
  • Behind KOM % – percentage of time your personal best is currently behind the current KOM.
  • Pos Score – Out of 100, how this placing stacks up against other places.
  • VAM – or Mean Ascent Velocity is a good indicator of effort without accounting for wind/rolling resistance.
  • Relative Power – This attempts to also take into account wind/rolling resistance and displays it in Watts/Kg of body weight. Higher (longer) climbs produce more accurate results.
  • KOM RP – the relative power of the KOM, see if it’s within your limits or if you think they were driving a car at the time.

The other columns’ data is fairly obvious with the ride link taking you to the VeloViewer Ride Details page.

Velo-Viewer-ride-summary

Three of the last four columns are worth a closer look:

  • Overall Placings – This shows a list of your segment PR’s (Personal Records) that where acheived on this ride, basically, ordering by this column will show you your most successful Strava rides. The colour indicates the position (1-50) and the saturation of the colour indicates the number of riders for that segment.
  • Total Pos Score – This totals up your segment position scores for the PR’s on this ride.
  • Num Segs – the number of segments completed on this ride (not just yours).

Velo-Viewer-charts

If you like your graphs then you’ll like this. Pick and choose your variables it’ll graph them against each other for big fat visuals of  performance.

Velo-Viewer-segments-details

These two pages (above and below) show the potential for more visualization. Some items are sort of in beta and could change with ongoing upgrades.

Velo-Viewer-segments-details2

All of the data is worked up to create your VeloViewer score, which goes far beyond just comparing your position on a segment. It takes your position for the top 25% of your segments and puts your overall effort into perspective by scoring it based on the number of other riders who’ve also done that segments. It even weighs the number of folks who’ve done each segment, putting more emphasis on segments with more completions than those with fewer. After all, it’s a bit more meaningful when you’re holding the record over a 1,000 riders than a segment with only three.

VeloViewer.com

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13 Comments
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Bas
Bas
10 years ago

great website. i really like it and props for their work. it’s only very slow when updating, so i’m not sure whether they can handle this extra PR on their servers 🙂

Ben Lowe
10 years ago

Thanks for the write up Trey. The VeloViewer servers are all cloud based so automatically extend to cope with this kind of thing. I actually purposefully throttle the updating/syncing of data as I have to stay within the API limits imposed by Strava. There is a day limit but it is the 15 minute limit they use that makes me need this throttle. I could remove it but then the first few users would get a blisteringly fast update but then all the API calls for the next 15 minutes will be used up and nobody else will be able to do any updates at all. Hopefully, how it runs at the moment is the best compromise to get the most people getting through their updates first time, even if it does take a bit of time. An interesting coding challenge trying to find the right balance!

Timojhen
10 years ago

Awesome site, great insights.

Mateo Ortega
10 years ago

Awesome write up. Ben has done some amazing work*!!!!

*slightly biased as I work for Strava

BEERTECH
BEERTECH
10 years ago

Just tried and API Limit has been hit.

BEERTECH
BEERTECH
10 years ago

Nevermind. Working now. Looks great.

true
true
10 years ago

I have never seen so many adults being video games. Is this a lan party?!

Trond Vidar
Trond Vidar
10 years ago

Most awesome service om the web. It really rocks. I use it daily to nerd over my training.

I think there are some issues related to retired bikes and statistics, but those are minor niggles.

Murphy
Murphy
10 years ago

Oh hell yeah Blanket’s Creek in the first screenshot. I seriously love veloviewer, I’ve been using it and RaceShape for a while, great for post-ride analysis as a numbers geek. It’s really hepful to see where you’re stronger or weaker on courses.

peter
peter
10 years ago

It was a great site, good luck connecting to it now. Needs a few changes, like the ability to pull partial Strava data with date ranges. Right now it can’t even connect because of API timeouts.

I’ve been thinking about doing something similar with an App that can hold its’ cache.

Ben Lowe
10 years ago

The initial spike in new users from this article has now subsided so the Strava API rate limits shouldn’t be as much of a problem.
I do cache all the data I need on my site (I also cache as much as possible at the lient as well to reduce downloads and improve speed for users) to try and alleviate the API usage but when you get an influx of 1st time users then you can’t help but batter the API. Life was much easier when there were just 30 users!

Strava is Lame
Strava is Lame
10 years ago

Until phones are no longer supported by Strava, it has zero validity if you’re the type chasing KOM / QOMs. What’s to stop someone with a phone sitting in the back of a car to get a segment KOM / QOM? Heart rate data makes it a little more valid; you can at least see if the rider was working hard, or not. Then, there are group rides. Riders who sit in, then sprint just to get the KOM / QOM on a segment? Then, there are the Strava “doping” websites, which manipulate workout files to one’s advantage. Upload, and you’re a KOM / QOM!

In certain circumstances, Strava has totally f’d up the group ride dynamic. I have no need to share or contribute to Strava.

I hope the Strava fad goes away, and dies of natural causes.

Flavio
Flavio
10 years ago

Firstly, i’m not a biker at all. I’m a runner. But i to like to record my trainning and races. I used runkeeper in the past, then garmin connect, and for a couple of months I was introduced to Strava. I just think it is amazing. As Most of the time I run alone, it worked in a way that I could meet a lot of people with similar profile. And I really enjoy checking my data and compare performances, remember old routes, plan new ones. The first thing I do when I know that I have a trip is to check in the strava heatmap about the most populat running places of the city i will visit. And the way data is managed and presented in veloviewer is just a masterpiece! The way it finds our “rivals” ( or maybe potential trainning partners) is amazing.

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