# Oh no....thousands and thousands of miles lost!!



## AlanW (17 Dec 2017)

My lad has just accidentally deleted my Strava account thinking it was a duplicate one!! 

In excess of 180K recorded miles gone and according to Strava not recoverable ffs...I feel so sick its untrue


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## jefmcg (17 Dec 2017)

Ugh! Wow, that breaks my heart.

Google strava help, there may be a way (sorry, I doubt, but still). Raise some tickets on https://strava.zendesk.com

And change all your passwords. Your son has all privileges revoked.

Oh, and change your will


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## sheddy (17 Dec 2017)

Never mind - put on a record 

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFDSCLF3m6c


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## Racing roadkill (17 Dec 2017)

Oh my Lord .



View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0GFRcFm-aY


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## AlanW (17 Dec 2017)

Ticket already raised and needless to say that my son has assumed a very low profile!!!


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## ianrauk (17 Dec 2017)

ouch
Sorry to hear.

I don't use Strava extensively as I prefer MyCyclingLog. Everynow and then I download all my ride information as a csv file in case something untowards happens,


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## AlanW (17 Dec 2017)

Yes I know that no one died but gosh how utterly devastated am I right now....that sick feeling in my stomach


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## pclay (17 Dec 2017)

Not backed up anywhere else, like on Garmin connect?


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## steveindenmark (18 Dec 2017)

AlanW said:


> Yes I know that no one died but gosh how utterly devastated am I right now....that sick feeling in my stomach


Really? Is it that important? Im not being funny, honestly.

The only thing that would annoy me is if there were a lot of rides abroad that I would like to do again and couldnt remember where they were. Otherwise I would draw a line under it and start again.


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## Heltor Chasca (18 Dec 2017)

I feel your pain. I like my graphs and stats almost as much as fettling and riding. Surely Strava can do something. 

We could have a whip round. Kilometres or Miles?


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## Drago (18 Dec 2017)

That's awful. As any cyclist knows, if its not recorded on Strava then it never really happened.


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## screenman (18 Dec 2017)

You are just going to have to go and do them again.


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## Nigel-YZ1 (18 Dec 2017)

And I thought it was the end of the world when my Garmin only saved the last ride but lost the previous one.

Commiserations 

...at least you have the fun of building it all up again


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## dodgy (18 Dec 2017)

How come he had access to your Strava profile settings, enough to be able to delete it?


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## byegad (18 Dec 2017)

Surely you still rode the miles, and had many happy memories of them? To me that's all that matters, a ride, views, possibly with friends. That's what cycling's about.


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## hoopdriver (18 Dec 2017)

Indeed - and no one, or nothing (other than Alzheimers) can take that away from you. You have 180,000 miles of memories, and presumably 180,000 miles of fitness, all of which remain untouched. Shrug it off. You have what matters.


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## jefmcg (18 Dec 2017)

Heltor Chasca said:


> Surely Strava can do something


I'm not sure than can.






Not being able to recover it is part of the privacy policy you agree to when you join Strava. Recovering deleted data (even if they can) may put them in legal jeopardy. I'm not a lawyer though, so my fingers are crossed for @AlanW.

For anyone who this has scared, you can get a copy of the GPX tracks for all your rides by clicking _Download All Your Activities_ on your settings page.


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## AlanW (18 Dec 2017)

[QUOTE 5083700, member: 9609"]180,000 miles ? that is a lot of riding[/QUOTE]

Yep, just over 181,000 miles to be more precise. On the 29th September this year I was 9th overall out of 37,700 riders worldwide in total miles recorded on Strava...gone 

Still waiting for Strava to get back to me to see of they can reinstate my old account.

And yes I was backing up my rides to Garmin Connect and also RWGPS, although I wasn't doing this in the early day. BUT...although my privacy setting were default set so that anyone could see them, its turns out that both sites have set them all to private, so I cannot export any of them now!

However, the good news (at last) is that Ive contacted RWGPS last night (2am!!) and they have now bulk set all my existing ride data to "open to all" and given me three days premium membership FOC so that I can back them all up. Dunno where Im backing them up though to be honest?

Which is great, and top marks to them for responding so quickly. The bad news is that neither them nor I can figure out how to import some many files into Strava, other than 25 at a time? And with hundreds of files, it would hours.

In the meantime I am still waiting for Garmin to respond to see if they can do the same and bulk set my existing rides to "open to all"?


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## smutchin (18 Dec 2017)

byegad said:


> That's what cycling's about.



Cycling is "about" many different things for many different people, all equally valid.


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## jefmcg (18 Dec 2017)

AlanW said:


> Which is great, and top marks to them for responding so quickly. The bad news is that neither them nor I can figure out how to import some many files into Strava, other than 25 at a time? And with hundreds of files, it would hours.


https://tapiriik.com/ !!!


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## Heltor Chasca (18 Dec 2017)

^Sounds like you might be in with a chance. That’s good.

Rhetorical question now: What would you say if you were asked, ‘Which is your favourite child now?’


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## jefmcg (18 Dec 2017)

Dogtrousers said:


> I was a bit surprised to see quite a few rides in my backup appearing in ".fit" format, which isn't a format that I use.


What format you use is irrelevant. They will extract the data from whatever you upload, and store it as a set of points in their database. The file (if their is one) will be discarded immediately. If you download rides, they will generate the files, in whatever format they have decided is best for that data.

At a wild guess, are the rides generating FIT files the ones with sensor data, eg cadence or HRM?


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## ianrauk (18 Dec 2017)

Dogtrousers said:


> That's what I found odd. My rides are all vanilla GPX. I don't have any sensors. Still, it's not that interesting.




FIT files are your rides in recorded 'Garmin' form.
You can upload them to Strava, RWGPS etc and they will extract the information.
Worth keeping.


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## AlanW (18 Dec 2017)

Dogtrousers said:


> Sounds like _someone _is going to be busy with some rather boring work.
> Remind us who it was deleted your account?



My son, sticking his oar in again!


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## AlanW (18 Dec 2017)

jefmcg said:


> https://tapiriik.com/ !!!



Yep, running that, in fact it was running all last night and its recovered just over 55,000 miles so far. However, its the files that are marked as being "private" that are presenting me with a problem now

Still nothing from Strava or Garmin.....boo hoo


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## jefmcg (18 Dec 2017)

AlanW said:


> Still nothing from Strava or Garmin.....boo hoo


Are you a premium member of strava? Just looked at my last ticket, from several years ago. Took them 12 days to respond.

(oh, of course you aren't premium. Your account was deleted. Sorry!)


AlanW said:


> its recovered just over 55,000 miles so far.


You can stop now. That's more miles than I have kilometres. More than enough for anybody!


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## AlanW (19 Dec 2017)

A ray of hope from Strava:-

_Thanks for writing in Alan. There are a few ways we can try to locate your deleted account. Please answer the following questions:

1. Can you send me links to profile pages of people you were following or that were following you? We may be able to locate your account by looking at athletes you were linked to.

2. Do you have any emails from Strava that have a link to an activity of yours? This may be an email about a friend giving you a kudo or comment.

3. Was your account upgraded to Premium? If so, we may be able to locate the original transaction and use that to find your account.

4. Have you tried Googling your profile name + Strava? (Example: "Johnny Appleseed Strava"). Google does store web urls for a period of time, and you may be able to find a link to your profile page this way.

Keep in mind that if your account has been deleted, you will not be able to access the profile page from a link, but it will allow us to locate the account and restore it._


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## AlanW (19 Dec 2017)

From Garmin:-

_Dear Alan,
I'm sorry to hear of the mishap. Unfortunately there is no way to change the privacy settings in Garmin Connect in bulk, the only settings there are are specific to individual activities, or only apply to new activities, not retroactively to all saved activities. I have therefore forwarded your email to the design team as they are always interested in customer feedback. Many of the comments/suggestions we receive (such as yours) are often evaluated towards potential implementation into future Garmin products or current unit software releases. We cannot guarantee that what you have suggested will be implemented, however we do appreciate you passing along your opinions.

We also have a portal for customers to submit ideas directly to our innovation experts. Please share your ideas with us at the following page on our website: http://www.garmin.com/ideas

Kind regards,

Loek

Garmin Europe_


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## Nomadski (20 Dec 2017)

AlanW said:


> From Garmin:-
> 
> _Dear Alan,
> I'm sorry to hear of the mishap. Unfortunately there is no way to change the privacy settings in Garmin Connect in bulk, the only settings there are are specific to individual activities, or only apply to new activities, not retroactively to all saved activities. I have therefore forwarded your email to the design team as they are always interested in customer feedback. Many of the comments/suggestions we receive (such as yours) are often evaluated towards potential implementation into future Garmin products or current unit software releases. We cannot guarantee that what you have suggested will be implemented, however we do appreciate you passing along your opinions.
> ...



"Sorry we can't help you, but if you'd like to help us, here's the link..." *Garmin*

That's....an awful lot of miles on a bike! Hope you get it sorted @AlanW


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## AlanW (21 Dec 2017)

Its all back........

Just a couple of minor niggles, lost all my KOMs and have to start again with following / follow requests and re-joining clubs etc, but hey, the important data is all back that's the main thing! Okay there "might" be one or two rides missing, but overall I'm chuffed to bloody conkers. 

And the other minor problem, all the ride data has all come back as being marked "private" now and Strava say there is no way to bulk set them all back to being "open". But on the plus side you can view 20 activities at a time and it is just a case of just unticking a box. Its taken me 1 1/2hours this morning to do a 1000 rides, so only another 3000+ rides to do and then I'm back near enough to where I was pre delete account status!

I've had to create a new Strava account and then they loaded all the old data onto that, so many thanks to Strava for:

a) doing it in the first place.

b) doing it so quickly for me.

Right then, where's me bike........


Happy Christmas every one


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## ianrauk (21 Dec 2017)

@AlanW 
Good to hear you retrived it all. 

Now after you have faffed about with Strava, add all your information to a site that allows you to back up or put on a spreadsheet.


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## jefmcg (21 Dec 2017)

AlanW said:


> lost all my KOMs


Those will come back. Strava takes a while to process those things.

(and everyone who became KOM when your account disappears will get a note "Oh no! AlanW has stolen your KOM!")


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## dodgy (21 Dec 2017)

Now create an account on your PC for your son to use so he doesn't get to meddle with your private stuff. Don't give him your password, you're not an MP


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## AlanW (21 Dec 2017)

Like most situations in life I thought that I had all bases covered in backing the data up to Garmin Connect and RWGPS. However, it turned out that yes it was being backed up but I couldn't access it due to the "private" setting on Garmin which it shouldn't have been?

The same hurdle was with RWGPS but a couple of clicks and it was resolved and the data could be downloaded. Sadly Garmin Connect wasn't as forthcoming!

RWGPS was only a recent backup process and that recovered about 30k miles, which is about right. However, some of the data was coming back into Strava as corrupted data and I ended up with about six pages of KOMs.  Which to be fair I was happy with, but it certainly pissed a lot of people off as the emails came flooding in about my rides being flagged as incorrect data. 

But it was Garmin Connect that had the lions share, but again not all of it.
And even backing it up to Strava, Garmin Connect and RWGPS, I still write it in a diary after every single ride and have done for 30 odd years. 

So if you'll excuse me I have some box unticking to continue with.......


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## pclay (21 Dec 2017)

Good news about your account recovery.

Every few months, I remove all the fit files off my Garmin, and save them onto a folder on my PC, and then upload them into a folder on dropbox. 

Therefore, I have: Strava, Garmin Connect, PC hard drive and Dropbox.


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## Ming the Merciless (21 Dec 2017)

Yep do not share the account on your PC with your Son. Create a new account for him that does not have admin rights


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## AlanW (21 Dec 2017)

YukonBoy said:


> Yep do not share the account on your PC with your Son. Create a new account for him that does not have admin rights



Consider my account well and truly locked down....trust me!


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## AlanW (21 Dec 2017)

One thing that has suddenly started happening and not sure why, but even though I have my new Strava account synced to Zwift (and also Garmin Connect) when I do a Zwift session its not loading into either site now?

Then just to rain more confusion into my life (_like it needed it ffs_) , when I go into the Zwift folder in My Documents and get the .fit file and try to manually add it to Strava, it doesn't like the data and refuses to load it?

Now pre the Strava account deletion saga, we had just done a factory restore on the PC to try and speed it up a little as it was grunting and groaning even opening up the simplest of programmes. Since then Zwift doesn't seem to want to sycn to Strava but it also doesn't like it when I try and load Zwift .fit file to it either? 

Now as I've had to reinstate seven other drivers for other applications after the factory restore, I'm wondering if there is a driver or some other programme that I need to reinstate as well to get Strava to read the .fit file?


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## AlanW (21 Dec 2017)

Well after treble clicking on 3387 rides, they are all now back to an "open" status again! Time for a beer I think......


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## Ming the Merciless (21 Dec 2017)

Don't forget to add your privacy zones back in


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## mustang1 (21 Dec 2017)

Ah sorry to hear. I actually accidentally deleted a few months of data from my personal logs and hadn't made a back up. that was kinda fine because I was planning not to record any more data for 2018 anyway. This reminds me that I should export my strava logs...
Edit: just read you got your data back. Nice one.


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## AlanW (21 Dec 2017)

YukonBoy said:


> Don't forget to add your privacy zones back in



It's all carried over from the deleted account oddly enough and so have my KOMs now.. ..happy days all in all l say


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