Endomondo for Downhill Skiing — Its Usual Strengths
In my recent review of the Endomondo app I expressed satisfaction with the app. Those satisfying points repeat with Endomondo while downhill skiing. The app did its things as usual, it sounded off miles, it recorded time in motion, it paused recording when I stopped, recorded my path, recorded distance, kept track of caloric expenditure and water consumption needs. It wrapped my phone up in a (Green Bay Packer) stocking cap and stuffed the package into my ski jacket and that did not seem to cause it any problems with keeping a lock on the GPS satellites.
In short, all was good.
Endomondo for Downhill Skiing — Its downhill Skiing Weaknesses
This is where I rely on MyTracks at least to cover those skiing metric gaps. Yes, I know there are applications dedicated ski tracking, but I am a bit slow in adopting those and am working on it (old phone had storage limitations I was up against and so I need to acquaint myself with applications such as AlpineReplay).
However, once your phone has the data uploaded to the website and you visit the website to view the ski trip, there are a few more bits of interesting information, too bad that is not on the phone application.
Endomondo for Downhill Skiing — Downhill Skiing Calorie Burn
While I have always known that downhill skiing is a significant burner of calories, I was pleasantly surprised to see the number Endomondo reports. Still, my official calorie counter differs by recording fewer calories burnt.
For those of you not familiar with downhill skiing, one must work their legs constantly to make sure they remain under control, that is, even though gravity is supplying us with speed, we need to fight gravity lest we fly down the runs at 80 mph into the lodge, with the expected result. Watch world cup skiing and see how the racers are when they cross the finish line, they are short of breath and tired.
Endomondo for Downhill Skiing — Do You Use It?
In short, Endomondo can help you understand how much time and effort you expend while downhill skiing, but it does fall short of being everything in terms of measurement a downhill skier wants.
How about you? Do you use Endomondo while downhill skiing?
I have used it for DH skiing. There are too many gaps in GPS coverage. Also, turns out I don’t really care to know the data from my resort days.
I do care about it in the backcountry though, and it works well for that.
Until these apps let you delete the drive home from the trailhead after you forget to turn them off, they we useless to me.
-Mike
Man of Bacon,
Thanks for commenting here!
Anyway, I have run into the situation you describe, I have a dorky moment and I fail to turn tracking off. When I finally get it turned off, I have 30 miles of driving in on top the track I am interested in.
I suspect this is a feature they could add on the website side of things.
Also, I am interested how you find it useful when backcountry skiing. I suppose when skiing backcountry speed is not quite the stat you are interested in. Did you do a writeup on it your site?
Thanks again!
Does anyone know if Endomodon discounts the use of ski-lifts in the calory calculator?
I keep the GPS tracker turn on all the time (its painful to switch on and off, plus I would forget more often than not), which means that I have, for example, 5h of skiing tracked and 30 miles, while in reality its 50% skiing, 50% sitting confortably on a lift.
The 2000cal/day burned suggests it doesn’t. Maybe the alternative is to manually change the practice dividing the miles and time by two (or maybe 1,8 as lifts go straight while slopes do have their turns).
Cheers
Carlos,
Good question and I will have to research that. I currently assume, chair time is assumed as being half of the activity for calorie calculations. I know AlpineReplay also reports on calories and AlpineReplay does report on chair time vs. actual skiing time, so I suppose they then also factor in the difference between chair & ski time for calorie calculations. Next time I am out, I will run both and compare.
I typically run AlpineReplay and maybe Google MyTracks when I am skiing, MyTracks reports on min & max grades a good number for skiers and bikers.
Thanks for stopping in and commenting, I appreciate it and hope to explore the calorie calculation algorithms these applications use.