There is another feature update today for STRYDers and everyone is recommended to upgrade their pod firmware. This follows on the back of several platform and pod changes over the last few weeks or so. I think I’d covered one of those changes but here they all are in one place.
- AIR POWER CONTRIBUTION for Polar & Suunto users: OK, you can’t see ‘air power’ on the watch but that data IS stored in the pod and now if you sync everything back to STRYD’s powercenter you will be able to see the airpower contribution there after your workout.
- Then we have auto-naming. This is only on iOS right now and is neat in two related respects. Firstly you can TAG your workouts based on Run Type, Effort/Feel, Surface and Feeling and those tags can then be used to select and find similar runs at some point in the future. Secondly, those tags are then automatically used to name your run and that
- Then you get the iOS/Android Running Stress Balance Summary/indicator building on the load data in PowerCenter.
Opinion
STRYD seem to be investing much more in platform development on iOS/Android/WatchOS now that the new pod is well and truly bedded in. I expect we shall see more of these new, incremantal features over the next year
Now, if only they could include form power, VOSC, and GCT, as well as their Improve tab to the app, so I don’t have to sit down at my desktop and go through Powercenter for analysis.
Also, when will Garmin fix GCM so we can look at graphs from Stryd IQ other than Power IQ? This is buggy since the release of the Stryd field more than a year ago!
hey, at least you have iOS 🙁
I like the idea of “Running Stress Balance” but in practice it’s only useful if you do not cross train. I would really like to see Stryd incorporate the training effect of all activities rather than just runs with the Stryd pod. In practice the “Running Stress Balance” isn’t very useful and even gives silly results sometimes if your running load is lower than other disciplines. I find the usefulness of the Stryd analytics to be limited by their failure to incorporate the entire training load as an input.
Also, I just realized that the Polar Vantage has a huge bezel around the display which is totally obscured by their press photos in favorable lighting at oblique angles.
i agree
that’s the holy grail
i hope xert are working on that too.
On a couple occasions, Stryd (i.e. the people behind it) explicitly said that PowerCenter is NOT meant as a training platform but to be seen as a running specific supplement to whatever service you prefer. And pretty much every service out there, be it GC, Flow, TrainingPeaks, what have you, incorporates all activities into their training load/ stress models anyway. So I don’t quite get your criticism.
If that is the case they should not have things like the “running stress balance” gauge that attempt indicate your overall training load but is really only valid for road, track, and treadmill running with Stryd. And also the entire “Improve” tab which scores your fitness across three axes, fitness for a particular load, and recommends workouts. None of that can be valid if a significant part of your training is something other than running.
It’s actually dangerous as an input to the type of person who has an overtraining, overachieving mentality.
I like Stryd a lot but some of this stuff is clearly nonsense in the real world as currently configured.
Also, I have been disappointed Stryd for Trail Running. It is ok for groomed trails but useless for technical stuff and especially useless for really steep vert and scrambling that involves your arms. It’s not their fault in retrospect because that technology just can’t take whole body input or deal with really uneven surfaces. It’s just disappointing and it accentuated for me how weird the metrics are in the app and website.