Using Suunto and Stryd in 2024
Keeping Running Power Clean, Reliable and Simple
The Good
The Suunto/Stryd functionality is still just as reliable (and spartan) as it has been for years. Pair the watch to the foot pod, and away you go.
After the run, as long as it’s configured, Suunto’s platform will upload your workout to Stryd. You can then perform a manual synchronisation with the pod from the mobile app to extract the rest of the accumulated data (basically everything save for power, cadence, HR, and the GNSS track).
For those that need to see more data while running, good for you. Either use the S+ app, see below for caveats, or accept that the Suunto platform might not be for you.
What about moving from another platform?
Let’s imagine you’ve just bought yourself a new Suunto, but you’ve been merrily running with Garmin and Stryd for years. If you performed a manual synchronisation of your Stryd now, you’d have an awful lot of duplicate data, as the Stryd saves data until its memory is full.
If this is you, do the following:
Create a new Stryd account.
Sync your pod to that account: it’ll say something like ‘pulling ∞ runs off your Stryd’, and you’ll see them appear in the calendar.
Sign out of that account, and back into your normal account.
Go for a run.
Perform a manual pod sync, and enjoy the complete data.
Steps 1-3 only need to be performed once.
The Less Good
2024 was an exciting year for Suunto/Stryd users, as a Suunto Plus app was released that allowed for some of the advanced metrics from the Stryd to be displayed during the run, and synchronised to the Stryd platform afterwards. Unfortunately it was little better than a marketing exercise, with the following functional issues:
not all data was captured on the watch, and as the pod doesn’t cache data when using the S+ app, significant data was lost:
Form and Air power (air power fascinates me)
GCT, LSS, ILR and VO Balance
it uses x1 S+ slot, meaning that if you’re using a structured training plan, you can’t use anything else (eg CORE, ActiveLook, Train.Red, et al)
usage is counter-intuitive:
either, if you have your Stryd pod paired to the watch, you have to un-pair it as a foot pod, so that the S+ app can connect to it
or, you have to disable the foot pod connection in the sport settings (thanks to Suunto forum member Herlas for this)
in addition to data loss, no data is exported from Stryd to Suunto, eg structured training, so you lose data, and still have to manually configure your workouts
again, thanks to Herlas, there’s an oddity where the Suunto doesn’t record power for the first few seconds (probably because it’s busy calculating it), and Stryd trims these seconds from the first lap
The cynic in me wonders if the Suunto team only had access to a Stryd pod from before air power was a thing, and hadn’t done any research. Given that this would have to be a pod from before 2019, it seems unlikely, and I suspect the volume of data the pods generate exceeds what Suunto can reliably handle.
I understand that the pods generate a lot of data, and have been told by Stryd that Garmin’s 7X Pro (and corresponding Epix Gen 2) devices struggle under the load, too. I experienced connectivity dropouts when trying to listen to music from the Garmin, which in turn caused the watch to pause my run, as it saw speed from the Stryd as 0; neither are a particularly good UX.