STRAVISTIX – ELEVATE – Deeper Analysis with ELEVATE for STRAVA aka STRAVISTIX

ELEVATE is a browser plugin that provides deeper insight into your workout data that resides in STRAVA. It used to be called STRAVISTIX but the developer ThomasC, recently decided to re-brand it to ELEVATE FOR STRAVA. It’s currently only available on Chrome & Opera but the Firefox plugin is also imminent.

It takes a while to sync your STRAVA data to ELEVATE but that’s a one-off initial task. It’s worth it though, ELEVATE is FREE.

There are some similarities to STRAVA’s own SUMMIT Analysis pack that I talked a bit about last week. But the main difference, apart from the lack of cost, is that ELEVATE is separate software to STRAVA but which offers more in-depth analysis and a few more options that you can tinker with. If you don’t like tinkering and just like STRAVA, but want only a little more than the standard STRAVA, then first try out the paid-for SUMMIT Analysis pack. I do like ELEVATE for STRAVA though and it probably marks a nice step down the road towards you starting to interrogate your workout data in a lot more detail.

Here are the main areas that ELEVATE for STRAVA covers

Thanks to: BRIANB for the inspiration

Summary & Extended Stats

The Extended stats are superficially like your normal STRAVA activity view but you see several modified stats like BEST 20 MINUTE SPEED rather than the usual AVERAGE SPEED as well as some wholly new stats like TIME CLIMBING.

Further down the workout view, rather than STRAVA’s usual list of your performances on each segment that you crossed, you instead get some more segment details as shown below.

Then you also see this link to the EXTENDED STATS where you can drill through into even more detail for the workout as a whole.

And that really does go to a wealth of information and insights. The following image shows the example of the extra detail you get for CADENCE and ELEVATION.

Pretty cool!

Fitness, Fatigue and Form – covered in your FITNESS TREND

The Fitness, Form and Fatigue chart is fairly standard across analysis packages. It looks complex at first but you may well soon find this kind of chart influential in you deciding exactly what your next workout will be like.

 

 

Compare that to STRAVA’s Summit chart…they have a very similar look, feel and functionality

Year Progressions

ELEVATE produces interesting charts to compare your totals from one year to any other year

Here you can see that I am supposedly off to a good start this year (green) with my RIDE mileage and that last year I only managed to get past 2017’s cumulative mileage in late October. You can change the time periods and sport to give you a sense of the time you are putting into your fitness. Again these data sets of mine are not complete so don’t read anything into the data, they’re just there to give you a steer on what to expect.

Here is a similar view that I’ve switched from night mode and also changed to ROLLING PROGRESSIONS. Rolling Progression is customisable, moving totals. It’s a simple measure but, for endurance athletes, this is a GREAT way to check you are continuously and progressively stressing your body.

Q: Do I need a power meter or heart rate monitor?

A: No.

Nevertheless, the more sensors you have, ‘the merrier’ will be the time you can invest in looking at your performances.

Q: What’s the cost?

A: Absolutely nothing. You even use the free version of STRAVA

Opinion

It’s nice. Go on…you know you want to try ELEVATE for STRAVA.

If you do not currently have a view of your fitness, form and readiness to race in general then…you ought to have. ELEVATE for STRAVA is as good a tool as any to start understanding if you are overloading yourself as well as how well you are tapering for races.

You can spot trends that you need to rectify and you can also perform some pretty clever analyses by using some of the settings such as, for example, the ability to set different FTP value to apply from a different date. Once you get to understand some of the more complex data a bit better you’ll understand why that is important.

The only thing that I couldn’t find was the critical power charts and, in my opinion, CP charts are very useful for those of us training with power. I didn’t find the interface super-intuitive (though it was fine) so it perhaps is hidden away somewhere. Ping me and I ‘ll add it in.

I suspect that, for most people wedded to STRAVA, then ELEVATE will give you lots of fun stuff and lots of useful stuff to help in the analysis of your performances. You probably do not need to look much further afield. It’s tools like this that will keep a LOT of you hooked into STRAVA and, whilst it’s not TRAININGPEAKS, I’d find it hard to convince all of you to pay extra for TRAININGPEAKS over ELEVATE. (Obviously, TP is very important for more serious athletes)

More Info?

If you want to learn more and perhaps join the existing 140,000 unique users OVER THE LAST 7 DAYS then go here.