Anyone with a Strava account who has signed up to Crickles can see analysis of their Strava activities on the Crickles Navigator. Here’s how to use it…
First, choose an Athlete from the drop down list. Unless you asked me to change it, you’ll be identified on the list by your first name followed by your StravaID in brackets – for example, I’m Ian (301194). Your name can be reached quickly on the list by typing in the first letter of your name (e.g. “i” in my case). When you return to the Navigator (using the same device), the Athlete you last chose is remembered.
Next, if you want to navigate and compare only those athletes who share your gender or are in one of the clubs supported by Crickles you can do so by selecting it from the Groups dropdown. If you know of a club, or a group of friends, with members in Crickles whom you’d like to see as a group, or if you want to change the membership of one of the groups, please let me know. Even if you are in one of the groups, it can be useful to compare your CSS against the entire Crickles population (“All”) too.
The default page on the Navigator is now Relative CSS, which is described here. There are also several other pages, which appear as tabs. Most of the pages are incomplete until you’ve chosen an athlete. Once you do so, your activities over the past 6 weeks for which Strava has heart rate data are loaded into the Navigator.
If you want to see activities over a period other than 6 weeks, change the Date range in the left hand sidebar under Athlete. Once you get used to the date controls it’s fast to make a change. For example, if you want to set the range to start on 1st Jan, 2015 (currently the earliest available date) click in the first date field to get a widget like this:
If you click on the month/year at the top (December 2016 in this example) the widget will change to something like this:
You can hit the <<‘s at the top left to change to 2015 and then click on Jan to see a calendar for Jan 2015, from which you can select 1st Jan, 2015, as required. Play with it; it’s easy.
As you change the Date range (or indeed the Athlete) most of the results pages will update to reflect your choice.
On the CSS Map there is a dot for each activity. The size of the dot represents the duration of the activity (Moving Time on Strava) and the colour represents Cardiac Intensity. Cardiac Stress Score (CSS) is given by the vertical position on the map shows the components of CSS and the x-axis represents time.
If you want to see more detail on the activities that are shown on the CSS Map look at the Activities tab. The easiest way to explore this is to click on the column headings. For example, if you want to sort by date, click the Date heading:
Clicking it more than once alternates between an ascending and a descending sort order and the little arrows change accordingly. For example, if you see this, it shows that the table is sorted by Date in descending order:
You can do the same on the other columns too – for example, to find the activities with the largest CSS or HR Intensity just click on those headings until you get them in a descending sort. I’m afraid the column centring on the table isn’t great.
The This week tab shows the five most active athletes over the past seven days plus yourself (or whichever athlete you chose) if you’re not in the five most active. The athletes are colour-coded on this map and in addition activities of the chosen Athlete (typically you) appear as a triangle rather than a dot. This week does not respond to changes in Date range.
If you constantly find that your CSS values are higher than everyone else’s you might want to consider whether you’re overcooking it. It can also be interesting to compare CSS with other that of other Crickles athletes when you do the same event.
Like the CSS Map and Activities, the Fitness tab is also blank until you choose an athlete. When you do so it will chart the Crickles’ estimate of your (or the chosen athlete’s) Functional Threshold Power (FTP) and Lactate Threshold Heart Rate (LTHR) over the Date range. FTP only appears to the extent that you have cycling activities with power readings on Strava – no FTP, no green power line. LTHR is calculated from any activities (not just cycling) for which you’ve used a heart rate monitor – no HR, no red LTHR line. The Fitness tab will be re-drawn whenever you change the Date range. The earliest date for which Fitness can be shown is also currently 1/1/2015. (At the very start of this period the estimated FTP and LTHR values may not be reliable until sufficient athlete data has been captured.)
The Seasonal tab is (currently) up to eleven charts for the chosen athlete, reflecting the time spent in each HR zone for each three month season since early 2015. Like This week, Seasonal responds to the Athlete that you choose but not to the Date range.
Newer tabs give (1) a picture of your relative All-in position, as described here:
and Summary values, together with a comparison of how each such value compares with the overall Crickles population or a chosen group, as explained here:
Activities are read from Strava every few hours so may not be up to the minute with your latest uploads. The time of the last upload is shown in the side panel.
Please let me know if you should see anything wrong or missing.
If you’ve signed up to Crickles but you don’t want your activities to appear on Navigator also let me know and I’ll take them off; I’d rather you didn’t but it’s always your data!
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