Strava work around

[geekonabike]

To record a track on Ionic & upload to Strava: 

1 start exercise app

1a tap gear icon for activity setting. turn on GPS & autopause if necessary

2 choose activity type (exp: Run, Bike, Swim etc)

3 tap start arrow icon >

4 run, bike, swim or whatever

5 tap finish flag icon

6 move into wifi range & have phones bluetooth on running the ionic app

7 on a web browser goto www.fitbit.com (desktop computer, tablet or phone)

8 from dashboard click the activity you just recorded

9 above upper right hand side above map, find & click the encircled three dots (...) 

10 from resulting dropdown menu pick 'Export as TCX File '

11 Save file in folder & file name of your choice or accept defaults & note where that default file is located.

12 Open Strave.com in web browser, hover mouse over circled + sign, choose 'upload Activity' from dropdown menu.

13 On left side click 'File', the click 'Choose Files' box

14 Find the *.TCX you saved in step 11 & double click on it. (this take a few seconds in my chromebox so be patient grasshopper)

15 Once the 'Save and View' button appears click it & you are looking at the run, ride or whatever on Strava  🙂

[LMCCARROLL8110]

What was the issue before? Mine always says "record a run to see a list of your recorded activities here." 

I have never seen my Strava show anything or accurately sync up. I think I must be doing something wrong. I just tried to resync it so I am hoping it fixes my issue.

[geekonabike]

Not really sure it was an Issue because apparently the Strava app isn't supposed to do much. I had wrongly assumed Strave would record & post my rides/runs. I posted my method for getting activities onto Strava. Not a lot more step than required for getting a track out of a Garmin handheld or cycling computer & onto Strava's web page.

[bbarrera · Accepted solution]

@geekonabike the Ionic's Strava app will not push rides to Strava.

Instead you need to visit this Fitbit link:

https://strava.fitbit.com/

and give Fitbit permission to push rides/runs to Strava.

Confusing? Yes.

In my limited experience, and in posts on this forum and the 3rd party forum, the Fitbit-Strava sync has not been reliable. There have been outages and related issues, and its the Fitbit servers responsible for pushing the rides.

Still, I suggest you give it a try because Fitbit mostly has it working.

Meanwhile, over a 21 month period my bike computer (via Garmin Connect) has pushed over 1000 rides to Strava without fail.

[Jazzdaddy]

This resulted in "Unable to export the tcx file at this time, we are looking in to the issue" response.  My rides and runs are pushing through to Strava just fine. It's my swims that are only making it to the Fitbit app and not being pushed through to Strava.  Any help? 

[bbarrera]

@Jazzdaddy Fitbit only allows exporting of activities tracked with GPS, so that is one reason swims aren't pushed to Strava.

[geekonabike]

Thanks I'll give it a try. The simplest method will be when https://tapiriik.com/ adds support for Fitbit.com

[bbarrera]

@geekonabike I ride a lot, and to be honest what I've found to work best is to track with a bike computer and Garmin Connect syncs with Strava, Endomondo, TrainerRoad, TrainingPeaks, RideWithGPS, and MapMyFitness. Then Endomondo will auto create a manual activity in Fitbit. Years ago I setup my own tapiriik server, and these days its far easier using Garmin Connect as sync central.

If you really want to track with Ionic, then Fitbit's Strava export is working today - https://strava.fitbit.com/ - no need to wait for tapiriik support. And Fitbit's sync is getting more reliable, to be honest the entire Ionic experience is filled with growing pains. After tracking bike rides on the wrist (several Fitbit devices, and Apple Watch), I came to the conclusion its not worth it for several key reasons.

[geekonabike]

Just a shot in the dark here, I have no experience, but what if you do the activity as a run in ionic the change it to swim in Strava. your fitbit dashboard would be wrong so you could delete it from fitbit unless there is some way to change it there.

 Most of the swims I see on Strava are entered manually, I have seen a very few with tracks & I assumed they were hand drawn.

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@Jazzdaddy wrote:

This resulted in "Unable to export the tcx file at this time, we are looking in to the issue" response.  My rides and runs are pushing through to Strava just fine. It's my swims that are only making it to the Fitbit app and not being pushed through to Strava.  Any help? 

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[bbarrera]

Runs use steps for distance calculation, and without steps you'll get 0 yards of distance and no lap counting. For an open water swim, you could try tracking as bike ride because that will use gps for distance calculation.

[Jillccc]

I follow the above and the run syncs.... but problem is that it syncs twice.  Several hours after the first (real) run is recorded, a second similar (but not exactly the same) is added to a random time earlier in the day.  Result is essentially double-counting.