#tapiriik

Last week, I had 500 activities imported to Strava from RunKeeper and Garmin Connect by tapiriik. The most of them are from RunKeeper. Although I am satisfied, I have things to take care.

Things automation cannot handle

tapiriik is a great service to synchronize fitness activities between services. However, automated tools have some limits and tapiriik is not an exception.

My Strava activities are now inconsistently private or public because the original activities are inconsistent. RunKeeper activities are public with hidden map. Garmin Connect and Strava activities are private. As the result, my merged activities in Strava are inconsistent.

Some activities are duplicated. I have already imported some activities from RunKeeper to Strava or vise versa manually. That results duplicated activities.

All running activities are stored as if my current running shoes were used because I have set my shoes to the default running gear. I am planning to check the distance run with the shoes so that I purchase a new pair by the appropriate time. Same story applies to my bike too.

Note that nothing is wrong in tapiriik. My original data and configurations were dirty.

What I can do?

Bulk editing is desired. It will be fine if it involves some manual operations.

First, Strava's My Activities page (http://app.strava.com/athlete/training) offers a table of activities that allows you to edit. But...

But that's individually, right? I have 250 to edit individually. That will suck.

Looks like it. yuck. I did ~50 at once and that sucked too. (http://forum.slowtwitch.com/forum/Slowtwitch_Forums_C1/Lavender_Room_F4/Strava_question_P4234399/)

Yes, it does.

Then, I found a bulk updater.  This is a little program code to convert private activities to public. I could modify it to my own configuration.

Some discussion is held in reddit, and some ideas are suggested to create a script or semi automation procedures.

A complete solution does not exist yet. It is probably easier to edit manually than to build a tool. Besides, this kind of tools are not used after the first use. Such a situation does not incentivize people to develop a service or application.

Summary

Should you use multiple fitness tracking services, you might want the activities synchronized between services. It is nice to see all the activities in a single place. You may have different social networks in various services.

I have been using Garmin Connect, RunKeeper, Strava, Recon Engage and My ASICS. There are some options. Some services provide import/export feature, third-party sync services exist, I tried to create my own and, of course, I can export and import activities manually.

I recently found tapiriik; a synchronization service that satisfies my requirements.

Manually Trigger Synchronization

tapiriik synchronizes activities between multiple fitness activity tracking services. Tapiriik itself does not track activities at all.

It supports RunKeeper, Strava, Garmin Connect, SportTracks, Dropbox, Training Peaks, RIDE with GPS, endomondo, Motivato, Velo Hero and Trainer Road as of Jun 11th, 2015.

Dropbox is not a fitness application. tapiriik creates GPX or TCX files in a certain folder in your Dropbox account. It can be used for backup.

Tried tapiriik casually I messed things up. In this post, I will write down what I wish I had done.

Step 1: Connect services

Click a service logo button, authenticate and authorize and go back to tapiriik.

Repeat that for all services you want to synchronize.

DO NOT CLICK circular arrows button, yet!

Step 2: configure options

Mouse over a service logo button and “Reconfigure” label appears.

Click on it.

Select which services you want to send activities to.

Check “Sync private activities” if you want to do so.

Repeat 1-4 for all services you connect.

DO NOT CLICK circular arrows button, yet!

As noticed in tapiriik’s FAQ, “private” in a service does not mean the same concept in other service. For example, RunKeeper’s public activity can have hidden map so that only your activity summary is public. Strava does not have the same option, but it can hide path around your apartment.

Step 3: start with little data set

DO NOT CLICK circular arrows button, yet!

Click the gear button under the circular arrows and a little dialog appears that reads something like this;

Upload activities as soon as possible after they finish, but skip them if they happened before 16 Nov 1885.

You can change underlined phrases. Set the date to sometime close to today so that only few activities will be synchronized. I suggest it because you want to see how synchronized activities look like in each service before massive synchronization.

Now, press the circular arrows button, wait a few minutes until synchronization completes and check out each services have data synchronized.

If you don’t like something, delete the copied activity, reconfigure service(s) and trigger synchronization again.

Step 4: Go for all data

Once you determine your configuration, click the gear button, change the date as old as possible and start the synchronization. You will get all data synchronized.

Automatic Synchronization

By default, you need to visit tapiriik web site to trigger synchronization occasionally. tapiriik offers automatic synchronization for $2/year. I personally think it is very inexpensive. I paid a $2 fee and a little donation to configure automatic settings from the gear button. tapiriik now syncs every hour automatically.

Summary

tapiriik synchronizes activities between multiple fitness tracking services. Manual triggering is free of charge and automatic triggering costs $2/year.

Here is my configuration just in case you are interested in.

Strava is now (from today) my main service. All activities from other services are sent to Strava.

I use Recon Jet for outdoor running and cycling. The activities are stored in Recon Engage. I configure Recon Engage to send activities to Strava (by Recon Engage functionality, not tapiriik).

I use a Garmin 910XT GPS watch for indoor cycling and outdoor running/triathlon races. The activities tracked by the watch are stored in Garmin Connect. tapiriik synchronizes Garmin to Strava.

RunKeeper has been my main service and still some friends are there. tapiriik synchronizes Strava to RunKeeper, but not in the other direction.

Я очень люблю всяческие приложения для телефона, особенно, если это приложения для бега. 

За девять с небольшим месяцев я их перепробовала целую кучу, и остановилась в итоге на трёх —  Nike+ Running,   Endomondo и  Gip.is :) 

Если с Nike+ Running всё понятно — у меня есть часы Nike+ Sportwatch GPS, которые замеряют темп, пульс, дистанцию, вот это всё, — то с другим множеством приложений всё сложно. 

С самого начала я пользовалась Endomondo — там у меня ведётся статистика с 2010 года. Помимо ведения статистики Endo — это запасной вариант, если, например, часы разрядились или криво поймали GPS. Тогда я тренировку экспортирую через полезную плюшку (предварительно залив трек на Garmin).

Совсем недавно я перешла на планирование тренировок в Gip.is. Понравился он мне прежде всего тем, что ребята допиливают планирование практически на глазах: сделали возможность удалить фазу Building-Up, совсем недавно добавили возможность выбора длинного дня. Если план поначалу кажется слишком легким, то он адаптируется со временем к более интенсивным тренировкам. Приложение очень приятное, разработчики просто прекрасные и отзывчивые, и со временем я туда перейду целиком :-) 

Ну а пока я пользуюсь Endomondo, я использую непростую связку, чтобы трек попал из него в Gip.is: Tapiriik забирает трек из Endo, экспортирует его в  RunKeeper (и дублирует в Dropbox), откуда Gip.is сам этот трек забирает. 

Получается что-то вроде:

Endomondo -> Tapiriik -> RunKeeper -> Gip.is