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Recently I started to run with Suunto Race S watch. While I quite like this watch, it has one significant for me disadvantage compared to my old Garmin Fenix 7X - support for Strava Live segments.

With Garmin Fenix 7X, I can have up 100 segments synced to the watch, and downhill running segments are synced (despite what Strava’s support article claims). Just to be clear, downhill cycling segments are not synced, but downhill running segments are. That is great, because I live in a hilly area with a lot of downhill running segments, especially when that is applied to trail running segments.

Now, with Suunto Race S, the number of synced live segments is limited to only 20, and downhill running segments are not synced. 

I wonder whether these limitation come from Strava or from the device specific implementations? 

The main problem with the very small number of synced segments is that I pretty much can no longer star segments. Once the number of starred segments has exceeded 20, I can no longer control which segments I get on my watch - Strava just picks some 20 segments. Considering Strava’s effort on de-duplicating and deleting segments, that means that essentially I don’t have a mechanism to “upvote” a segment to prevent it from being deleted.

But, also, not having downhill running segments is a huge bummer. I wish there was a more universal mechanism on Strava side to allow that on all devices.

I don’t think any manufacturer can and wants to pay the same amount for incorporating live segments, therefore the big differences in number of segments and what you can compare to (PR, KOM, friends, goal and so on).

Do you think manufacturers pay for that? We already pay for that as premium users. You'd think Strava would want to have this feature on as many devices as possible - this is one of a few features that really makes difference between Strava and other platforms. If properly promoted, this could drive premium membership up because it could be used to do things like virtual races or FKTs, but not many people are even aware that live segments exist. 

Besides, what about downhill running segments available on Garmin but not Suunto? 

Live segments are a crucial selling point for manufacturers so they can be somewhat forced to pay for it. In https://developers.strava.com/docs/partner/strava-live-segments/ is some background information where you can see the that licensing is required.

Thanks for the API links. Looking in there I don’t see anything about limiting the number of live segments or the types of segments. It looks like the API to return starred segments is open to everyone. The endpoints for accessing live segments is designed to fetch one segment be API invocation - that because the segment ID is a parameter. With that, it is unlikely that the limit is on the Strava side. Perhaps there is rate limiting - that I can believe.

I think, more likely than not there is a problem on the Suunto side. I remember Garmin used to have an issue with watch syncs taking way too long because fetching segments one by one takes too long. A proper solution requires some smart caching on the client side, and perhaps Suunto has simply not implemented that. I’ll ask them again at Suunto Forum.

With regards to whether downhill running segments are included or not, perhaps Suunto implementation chooses to simply not fetch segments with downhill grade. I’ll ask them about that too.

Can anyone from Strava comment on this?
​@Jane, can you please redirect to someone with a knowledge about this?

 

Hi ​@Silentvoyager and ​@Jan_Mantau 

Apologies for the delayed reply. I can confirm that the number of live Strava segments that sync to devices are determined by the device manufacturers, and any feedback should be directed to them. 

We do not sync downhill segments to devices for Strava Live Segments. Please keep in mind that our system recognizes even the slightest negative grade so there may be segments that display a 0% grade that is considered downhill and therefore will not sync to devices. 

More about live segments here

Hey ​@Jane, actually Strava does sync downhill running segments to Garmin. That applies to running segments only and cycling downhill segments are excluded as you mentioned. It worked this way for the last 1.5-2 years. 

Here is the proof - this is a screenshot of my Fenix 7X that shows synced segments:

 

But for some reason that works only with Garmin and not Suunto.

If you ask me about that, there is no reason to exclude running segments, especially the ones that are barely downhills. For example where I live, there is a trail across a hill with the highest point in the middle and slopes on both sides. One end happens to be a bit higher than another end. There are 2 segments that cross the entire hill in opposite directions. One of these segments is considered uphill (+0.5%) and another is downhill (-0.5%) just because of the relative elevations of segment ends even though both segments climb and descend much steeper grades. That is completely arbitrary, especially when we talk about running. 

And contrary to Janes comment Garmin supports very slightly negative ride live segments, like -0.1 %.

​@Silentvoyager  I wouldn’t recommend laying much emphasis on this examples before some of their lawyers thinks it to be a wonderful idea to disable anything that has even a small portion of descent in it. The next one who breaks a leg running downhill may be inclined to fault Strava for it because if there is a live segment it must be completely safe :-)

Garmin just informed me that it is Strava that limit the number of Live starred segments on Garmin devices to 100 NOT Garmin - so who is not telling the truth???

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