Moving That Data

I recently added a Wahoo Elemnt Bolt to my box of gadgets. Seriously, the list of equipment never gets smaller, does it?

Wonderful little bike computer that does all I could ask of it (and no doubt much more but I’ll never know because who reads manuals?). Bike ride data syncs from this computer to the Wahoo app on my phone. Among other things, I would then want that data headed to Strava and TrainingPeaks (TP) — but also I like to capture burned calories in MyFitnessPal (MFP).

And that’s when the wheels fell off.

I already had a bit of a tricky data flow running between those afore-mentioned apps and the Garmin Connect app (for activities tracked by my Garmin watch) along with Zwift. This is tricky because I try really hard to not duplicate activities anywhere. I don’t want bike rides showing up twice in Strava or MyFitnessPal, for instance.

So, I sat down with [digital] pen and paper and thought it through. What’s the best way to manage all this data into the right apps — and not duplicate it? This is made a more challenging because some apps are doing bi-directional data flows. For instance, food macro info from MFP gets sent to TP. Also this is tough because not all of the apps will talk to the same set of other apps.

But here’s what I ended up with:

I’m still testing things out, but so far I think I have it all working properly!

I capture all activities in either Garmin (workouts and runs), Wahoo (bike rides), or Zwift (inside bike trainer rides). From there, those 3 all send both to Strava (social network humble-bragging) or Training Peaks (keeping the coach happy). Training Peaks then sends it all the MyFitnessPal for calorie tracking.

It seems so simple, in hindsight….