Man it’s just about impossible to figure out what syncs with what and it is always changing what works with what, but the basic problem is that I have no less than six different main places where I’m tracking my workouts and it is so confusing which are and the syncing sort of works, but I do need Rungap for specific things that don’t. So here is what works:
- TrainerRoad. I use this for daily indoor bicycle workouts and it a nice application with pretty good training. The good news is that it automatically sends rides to TrainingPeaks where I track general fitness and also into Strava. It does this on the server side, so no further work needed.
- Strong. This is a freemium application that records lifting and other workouts. It has a nice Apple Watch implementation, so you can record pushups and so forth. Natively, it only pushes to with Apple Health, so you need to manually synchronize it to Training Peaks and Strava with Rungap.
- Garmin. If you go on an outdoor ride, then your Garmin device will push that ride into the Garmin Connect cloud. The Connect syncs from many devices, but also pushes data to 14 other clouds most notably Strava and TrainingPeaks. But also for MapMyFitness, Zwift and Run Keeper if you use those. The missing piece here is that it will push data to Apple Health but will not not the actually heart rate data, so you will get Chart Unavailable which kind of sucks (see using RunGap to solve this problem below).
- Apple Workouts. I use this for hikes and walks mainly and this autosyncs to Apple Health of course. And you manually import them into Strava. It will not push things into TrainingPeaks.
- Hammerhead Karoo. They were just acquired so who knows what is in the future, but you can push rides up to Strava. YOu can also download routes that are made on Strave, RideWithGPS and Komoot. You can also automatically upload rides to Strava, TrainingPeaks, Komoot, Ridw with GPS and Xert.
- Wahoo Fitness. I actually don’t use this much, but with our Wahoo trainers, you can run rides, but I mainly use TrainerRoad for this.
- Zwift. I actually don’t use it as I’m mainly not doing social riding, but it does work with with Connections to Strave to post Zwift rides to Strava, TrainingPeaks, Garmin Connect, TechnoGym MyWellness portals and with Withings to get weight
- Withings Scale and Healthmate Application. This pushes weight and other data to Apple Health, Strava, Training Peaks in addition to RunKeeper, MapMyFitness, FitBit, Google Fit, MyFitness Pal and even Amazon Alexa. And it also reads from Apple Health, so they are trying to be their own portal too. This is kind of nice that Apple Health for basic data is a good router since more and more things are interchanging data with it. This is all done in the Healthmate mobile application in Profile and scroll down to the Apps section for Health and Strava. Confusingly the TrainingPeaks integration is done on the web
- Omron Blood Pressure Monitor. Yes they have a portal and they can push data as well to Apple Health which is nice. They have an application called Omron Connect
So you can see this is kind of a hodgepodge, the recording applications do not all automatically push information into the right places. Fortunately, certain applications like Strava and Garmin will take what they call “third-party data” and push it elsewhere, so they act like a gateway.
- Garmin Connect. Although Garmin is mainly for uploads of rides, it turns out it also pulls from Apple Health so you can use it to sync general health data from Apple into Training Peaks
- Strava Integrations. Strava has lots of synchronizations. First, you can record rides and runs on the native Strava application but it does burn up your cell phone. I normally use my Apple Watch or a bike computer instead. However does read data from a huge number of partners including Zwift, Peloton, The Sufferfest, TrainerRoad, Rouvy, TechnoGym, Slopes, Garmin. As an aside, it treats the Garmin integration as a Social Integration because I think it’s a cloud thing, so a little weird and it can do the same for MyFitnessPal (the Underarmor portal that I don’t for philosopical reasons use). It can also push these rides to Apple Health. Also, while it does read data from Apple Health workouts, you have to manually say Import when these come in, it is not automatic. Also route information only comes if you recorded it on Strava (which I don’t do), so you need to rely on native Garmin to Apple Health to get that data.
- TrainingPeaks. They are pretty comprehensive and explain well whether they read or write data, but basically, they can read rides from apple Watch Workout, Hammerhead, Trainer Road, Wahoo. In addition they support Zwift, PowerTap, The Sufferfest, Rouvy etc. The Watch workout requires that you do this in the TrainingPeaks app > More > Settings > Apple Health and then turn on reading it all. So Training Peaks is nice, except for Strong, all the workouts will appear automatically,
- Apple Health. This is the main application I use for general fitness because it includes heart rate and non-workout data like how much I’ve been walking
Filling the gaps with Rungap
So this seems pretty complete, but there are two cases where I need to use Rungap to fill in the sync gaps and they are listed. But Rungap is basically the best synchronizer that I’ve used. You download it and then there is a huge list of things to sync with in the Setting section including Adidas Runtastic, Apple Health, Fitbit, Garmin Connect, Hammerhead, Komoot MapMyFitness, Nike+, Ride with GPS, RunKeeper, Strava Training Peaks, Wahoo Fitness and Zwift and you can specify is you are reading data or writing data.
When you start the application, it reads everything and then everything that is new, you can specify where you want it synced. Or you can automatically sync. I normally don’t automatically sync because it is easy to get duplicates particularly in TrainingPeaks and Strava for Apple Workouts particularly.
Rungap: Strong plus Workouts to Strava and TrainingPeaks
OK, Strong only syncs with Apple Health and it doesn’t provide any data on what the workout is except the time. It does record the heart rate though. So you have to copy the actual workout data (beware that if you have PrivacyPro or other third-party blockers, you have to turn this off to use the copy). And then you manually sync to TrainingPeaks and Strava. What is really happening is that since Strong isn’t on the Rungap list, Rungap gets the data from Apple Health. You just need to copy in the details and then send this on to TrainingPeaks and Strava
Rungap: Get heart rate data into Apple Health
Because the Strava sync does not quite work I normally need to push the TrainingRoad data directly into Apple Health. Otherwise, I lose all the heart rate data what is actually happening is that from TrainerRoad it goes to. I find that if I don’t do this right away then I don’t get the right data because the sync. So RunGap gets the full data that TrainerRoad generates from Garmin Connect (I know, I know, it doesn’t get it from TrainerRoad, but you can’t specify the order of reading from data and Garmin Connect retains the run time heart rate data unlike Strava which strips it). So then you use this to manually sync into Apple Health, Apple Health then does a match sees that the data is the same and throws away the Strava data.
I can’t turn off the Strava sync though because I want to get Apple Workouts from Apple Health and there is no way to say with Strava please just read data.
