Anybody here use these apps? I’m trying to get the data from my walk to link with the Myfitnesspal app so I don’t have to make a manual entry. I followed the instructions I found via Google without luck. They’re both UnderArmour apps, so you’d think they’d talk to each other.
Also, why does the walk track on the map show that I staggered around like a drunken sailor? I know GPS isn’t accurate to millimeters, but I didn’t slalom down the road as the app suggests!
And for the record, my personal calculations of distance and speed were confirmed by the app – go me!!
Sorry - I don’t know of any solution. I used MapMyRide in the past and gave up on it out of frustration for exactly the reasons you note, connectivity issues and inaccurate tracking.
I very frequently do the same bike ride and the MMR tracking would vary the distance each time, often by 10% or more. Exactly as you say: it showed me zigzagging all over the place. (There was another thread on this topic last year and it seems it has to do with the way it accesses your phone’s GPS.)
I emailed them and got a form letter response reassuring me how important I was to them and them nothing else.
I use Strava (free version) now and it tracks my rides, walks, hikes and swims. I don’t use My Fitness Pal anymore, so I can’t speak to the compatibility. I enjoy the tracking and do find it motivational so I got an Apple Watch and it links automatically to Apple’s Activity App. It also links to diet/nutrition tracking apps (I use MyNetDiary). So I get a full picture of calories in and calories out.
Thanks - glad to know it’s not just me. It’s not a huge deal for me to make the entry on Myfitnesspal since I use that to track my food anyway. But it does seem strange that the apps don’t talk to each other, even when supposedly linked.
I’ll take a look at Strava - there are a number of different routes I can walk and it’d be nice to get accurate time, distance, and speed without breaking out a pencil and paper!
Just an aside…I find Map My Walk seriously inaccurate. My walking partner and I both use it. We synchronize our start and stop times and walk exactly the same distance. One will read 1 mile while the other indicates we walked 1.2 miles.
Interesting. I used a mapping program on my PC to determine distances in my neighborhood, and Mapmywalk seemed to be pretty close - like 1.8 vs 1.75 miles.
Strange. My experience has been that it’s more precise for me than that. Like 0.02 mile different after 4 miles or so. The elevation gain or loss is complete garbage though. Does the app have location access to your device for GPS and other wifi sources? Maybe that’s the difference?
It has had a bad habit recently of not updating workouts across all of its little ‘challenges’ and my own personal fitness dashboard. I’ll take a look at Strava.
I’ve used MapMy* and Strava, they seem to get dicked around by my phone’s GPS, which has a propensity for recalcitrance. So they work most of the time, but randomly produce nonsense.
Standard GPS is accurate to about 3 meters/10 feet, meaning that your device will compute a precise position, but that you are somewhere within a 3 meter circle of that point in reality.
That’s best case. It can be much less accurate, especially if you’re somewhere that your receiver doesn’t have a full view of the sky from all angles, such as a densely packed urban area or mountainous area.
Newer dual frequency GPS receivers and the EU’s Galileo system can be much more accurate- something like 30 cm/ 1 foot accuracy. But they’re really uncommon in phones so far- only a handful of Chinese-made phones actually implement it at the moment.
So my guess is that what happened is that as the OP walked, it calculated positions within its own accuracy circle at the moment, and then the app connected those dots, giving a zig-zag effect, even if they were actually walking a straight line.
My track was shown all over the place, but certainly within 10’ of where I was. I’m kinda surprised the program didn’t extrapolate a relatively straight path, but maybe that’s too sophisticated a program?
When all is said and done, all I really need to know is how long I walked. The rest is just for my personal edification. So I don’t even need tracking software for that - I have a watch, after all!
This morning, I just uninstalled the app. I came back from a 3 mile walk, and the app said I did .17 miles in an hour. Um, nope. So it’s gone. And this thread is no longer needed. So that’s that.
