SportTracks – Significant New Compatibilities For New Data Types

The last few months have seen several Polar- and Garmin-led bits of data being introduced; the latter into the ANT+ specification. We’ve also seen STRYD hit the road with power data from running and great support for that power environment from Suunto. We’ve also seen SmO2 data from Moxy for quite some time, I’ll just mention that as it is notable data IMO.

The native environments for new stuff tend to work first – as we’ve seen with the changes to the ANT+ specification made to accommodate HR caching. However the official publication to 3rd parties of how this new stuff exactly works takes ‘a while’.

Or put another way, 3rd parties can initially have no clue how to implement this totally new, undocumented stuff from Garmin.

Sporttracks (desktop) is about to be able to support all of them. Actually I hyping it a little as it could support most of the new data anyway – at least in some form or other!

I’m assuming you have the following sporttracks plugins: GARMIN FIT DEVICES, POOL SWIMMING & CUSTOM DATA TRACKS.

Let’s go through each new bits of data:

1. Running Power data – from STRYD

• Errr. It’s worked in SPORTRACKS for a LOOONG time.  So it should import from a Suunto .sml file (not tested)

2. Stride Length – from many vendors and recently from Garmin

• Stride Length has previously been a calculated field but is now directly imported from a Garmin FIT file.

3. Cached Heart Rate – from Garmin for swimming with HRM-SWIM and HRM-TRI

To properly show swimming HR data broken down by lap you will need the functionally awesome POOL SWIMMING plugin.

• Direct import from the Garmin FIT file is now in beta (and works!!).
• Swim HR data sort of worked already. I could import from a TCX file sent from WAHOO FITNESS that was created in a WAHOO TICKR-X, for example. Even when the HRM-TRI was introduced it was still possible to get the Garmin HR data into SPORTTRACKS by exporting a TCX file from Garmin Connect (not ideal).

Luckily this will all be in place for the Lake season and works now in beta.

4. Further ‘Advanced’ Running Dynamics from Garmin – Ground Contact Time Balance and Vertical Ratio

• Yep here they are. They also come through as a summary average for the whole FIT file.

Note that GCT and VO are standard tracks and the new ones only appear with the Custom Data Tracks Plugin.

5. Garmin Lactate Threshold and condition/performance related data from the 630

• This data is not in widespread yet and has not progressed much beyond the 630. I have not tested it but it appears to be imported with the FIT devices plugin.

6. SM02 data from MOXY

My understanding on this is a little vague, please correct me if this is wrong and don’t rely on it.

The SmO2 data fields are in sporttracks and can be populated by appropriately compatible sensors that link directly to sporttracks (via the liverecording plugin).

The SmO2 monitor can link to Garmins via IQ but will only display data on the watch. IE that data is not recorded into the FIT file and so cannot imported.