Garmin Edge (via Connect) map indicators, plus Strava community surface reporting

I hadn’t noticed the details of either of these until today.

If you are recording a ride with a Garmin Edge 540 then the hills that pop up on your device with Garmin ClimbPro in FreeRide also get separately highlighted on your post-ride stats in Garmin Connect. You won’t see this when following a route or using another recording device like a Forerunner 965. At least, I don’t see that.

Here are two examples with the first one from a ride on the Isle of Wight last month and another from Madeira a couple of weeks ago.

As you can see there are 7 hill icons on the first map and each of these hills are summarised and described on a linked ‘Climbs’ page (2nd image). You can then click any of those climbs for more details and your performance on it. I assume that the hills that are shown reflect your >ClimbPro> Climb Detection setting.

Thoughts: Although some detailed performance stats like VAM, NP and Avg Power are shown, it would be nice to have a Strava-like feature here where I can see how this particular performance ranks compared to my best effort and the ability to click through to it. That said, this is a nice feature which is similar in ‘interest’ to many other recent additions from Garmin, that is to say that Garmin keeps giving us more and more reasons to spend more and more time in Garmin Connect. It’s really a much-improved app compared to 5 years ago.

Strava Segment – Ride Conditions

I’d not noticed this one either. Maybe it’s new?

I had mused to myself about this kind of feature quite some time ago. Wouldn’t it be great to have a community-built feature that lets us know if a road is in good condition or not? I for one would favour good quality surfaces when planning a route for a training ride, especially if I am on a TT bike where bumpy roads make riding unpleasant.

Well, it seems that Strava is already gathering that kind of information including the speed limit. In the UK my understanding is that speed limits usually only apply to motorised vehicles but I would imagine speed information is being gathered so that cyclists can better assess the speed of vehicles sharing the same road.

Thoughts: Yeah, I like this too. The example above is for Box Hill in the UK which is very heavily cycled by Strava users yet only 46 (+me) have bothered to submit a surface-type report. To be useful this feature needs wider and more frequent feedback. Perhaps Strava could get speed information from existing overlays? and thus it might be useful for us to report the actual speed that vehicles usually travel at.