I’ve got a bit of a bug bear with Strava, no real reason, it’s just built up over the years. I’m looking to go full Trail Forks. Has anyone ditched Strava and moved over?
I have two considerations:
does Strava make data freely available to trail and other development groups? Or is it reasonably priced? If theres some collective benefit I can run it in the background.
can Trailforks be set up as an automated service with Garmin 520? I just switch the Garmin on ride then turn it off and rarely look back on the data. I already run Trailforks maps on it.
Strava does not make any data freely available. And when they do sell, it is to large municipal-level accounts (and budgets). The only collective benefit I can see is if HRM purchases strava data, but doubt that is in the cards.
Yes, you can automatically pump Garmin activities to Trailforks. You can even leave them ‘private’ if you desire, and anonymized trail check-in data is provided to the trail association (be sure to set ‘Generate check-ins’ in the settings).
EDIT: once you have a Trailforks account, you should be able to use this URL to set up import.
I also jumped to Trailforks this past weekend and no complaints thus far. Just need to decide on whether to keep tracking with my phone or invest in a GPS watch or cycling computer.
I switched to a gps watch in 2014 then a Garmin 520 in 2016. The GPS track is much more accurate than a phone and it’s good to have a map and stats in front of me. Also no notifications interrupting. Definitely worth the shift.
For people who want to record or share on a lot of apps, it might be useful. For most, redundant I agree.
One use case I’ve heard of is Garmin–>Trailforks as the main record keeping, then selectively send activities from TF to Strava if you were gunning for a KOM on that day…
