So I'm sitting in Florida on business, about 3000 miles away from home, wanting to analyze last weekend's race. Before I left I took the time to upload from my Garmin Edge 800 using SportTracks 3.1 on my laptop which in turn used a feature named Cloud Sync to send my race data to SportTracks.mobi. I already liked SportTracks (see Cycling Data Analysis article) so the synchronization feature is a nice bonus.
The ride detail shows basic stats like distance, time, ride map, and a speed chart. I can use the chart to show my heart rate over the duration of the race, and I can also highlight a section of the ride to zoom in to that section. Last race I didn't feel I elevated my heart rate as much as I could at the finish, so this race I want to see the end effort. Looks better this time.
I really like the similar workouts feature on SportTracks.mobi. It's cool to see rides about the same duration and about the same mileage to compare quick stats, especially when comparing races across seasons. I think it's unfortunate that feature is unavailable on the desktop version of SportTracks.
I mainly use the Cloud Sync feature to get my activities on SportTrack.mobi but there are also options to upload from devices or files as well as edit, delete, and define ride visibility. There is a whole social media component to the product, which appears to be required these days for any software, although I haven't played with it. The usual Share, connect to friends, privacy options to only make visible to friends are available. I hope this feature doesn't mean another sh**load of ever-evolving security settings to deal with on a regular basis similar to some other blue social media software.
The long term analysis is the most promising part of the product to me. The running weekly and monthly totals on the Dashboard give a nice quick overview of what's going on, the month view does a great job displaying all the activities again with totals, and the pages of charts are polished and render quickly even for the 3-4 years of data I have loaded. The ability to customize and save the charts and pages is a great preparation for some serious analysis. I hope to get more sophisticated charts such as trending of TRIMP over a season overlaying fatigue, fitness, and RPE. Hey, I can dream.
Oh yeah, this is a .mobi site, meaning the .mobi top-level domain is meant to be optimized for a mobile device. My Android 4.1 (jelly bean) phone's browser displays it mostly ok although a few things don't quite fit. I haven't been able to do things like zoom into a chart but this product is relatively immature and these advanced features may be coming soon.
As a fellow geek, I am impressed with the group @ ZoneFiveSoftware for their SportTracks product line. They're playing in both a well-established vertical market owned by the TrainingPeaks and Garmins of the world, and a hot, relatively new fitness and mobile space. I understand the time-to-market vs. killer app pressures and enjoy seeing features pop up at regular intevals. Well done overall; I'm a fan.
