I get your point, but ultimately that *is* Strava's fault. All those problems sound solvable to me from a software development-standpoint. Some user education always helps. But companies like Apple became famous not for requiring users to learn lots of tricks, or force them to the desktop, but making it "just work."

Best thing they could do is to delete all segments every 3 years completely. So you get rid of the stupid ones to some degree.

The leaderboard would work better if it was a rolling average of 3 results across 12 months.

Also be good if you could default to your rides and not following. Be nice not to have everyone you are following not to come up now and again. People have been asking for that for years and yet Strava ignore. While Strava was free it was hard to complain but now they want you to pay over the odds, they had better listen to customers and get their finger out when it's not doing what people want.

Im Still blown away by the investment in the route finder thing. Just how many people really use that. Maybe there are other motives behind that, like being able to sell information to 3rd parties easier.

Someone else could now come in and easily take away this market.

I think another company sweeping in is easier said then done. Often the value in a company is the data and Strava has compiled tons of data when there were no other companies really penetrating the market.

I really like Garmin Connect, but it gives me no visibility into things Strava provides.

I find myself surfing the segment leaders in Strava and I can validate who is real and who are not in terms of their performance on their other rides. Then I can dig deeper and compare by age and weight. I find this motivating.

I just wish they would do more for data quality control and prevent stupid public segments from being created. I know I can ignore specific segments, but this more effort I want expend. Zooming into a map and trying to figure out what the "go to" segments are is too much work. And why the hell are there segments of 300m that are downhill?!?!? Don't get me started.

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Adrian in Vancouver

no! i want to be able to compare my efforts now vs 3 years ago to see if i have improved

If you need Strava to tell you you are improving as a cyclist then you're doing something wrong!

Well feel free to delete all your data every three years and leave those of us that pay and appreciate the long term data to still use it. ;-)

No pay, no say. (Tongue in cheek)

[[/quote]

If you need Strava to tell you you are improving as a cyclist then you're doing something wrong![/quote]



strava doesn't help me improve, but its incredibly useful to look at all my efforts over a specific segment over a course of years. i have gps data for every ride/run/swim/ski/kayak i've done for the last 14 years. almost all of it is uploaded to strava. certain segments have 100's of efforts and i can look through them for trends in speed, HR, power etc. same for certain races that i do every year. playing devil's advocate, how would you objectively say you are improving year to year?
i would suspect most would say "my ftp is increased," but are you actually having better race performances? race results may show a faster time than last year, but was the course exactly the same? strava can answer those types of questions.

I was willing to see what they would do since the changes, because they specifically said there would be better detection for unreal efforts. What happened though was they announced segment local legends which is just counting how many times a segment was done over 90 days. Pretty useless if you ask me.
And I still get the same regular notifications of losing a running CR because some local person took their bike and the default setting is run. If they were really running then Kipchoge has work to do for Tokyo 2021. Insane paces breaking records over short/long distances. I cannot understand why this is not handled already. Surely strava can detect paces faster than x/km, and then give a message to the user to verify their activity first. Most of them will be glad to see they made a mistake and were indeed biking.

I am wondering has anyone who said they would never pay for Strava caved in? Is it worth it? Is there any data on how many users they gained or lost? FYI (non member here)

Nope, never caved.

Edit: I go there very infrequently now

Never caved...I don't need Segments to ride my bike fast.

Still a proud non-premium user.

I've been a premium user for years now and plan to stay one. I really enjoy Strava and don't mind a small bit of my money going to something that I enjoy.

So much of my money goes to things I don't... :(

I'm in this camp. When it comes to where my money is going these days, the five dollars a month that I'm spending on my premium membership is pretty low on the totem pole. I continue to enjoy looking at things on Strava.

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"Human existence is based upon two pillars: Compassion and knowledge. Compassion without knowledge is ineffective; Knowledge without compassion is inhuman." Victor Weisskopf.

I did through pressure of friends challenging crowns then cancelled it. Waste of $65.00 but I have it for a year now. I might open strava once a week to see if some friends ran. Otherwise, I just don't find it very valuable.

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http://www.sfuelsgolonger.com

Yep, I paid...a year worth of racing against all strava segments is still cheaper than a single race. In terms of economics, it is a winner still at this point.

Stephen J

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I believe my local reality has been violated.
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Happiness = Results / (Expectations)^2

Disconnected all workouts but still give kudos to others and watch where friends are going. Riding mostly alone during COVID helped not getting pressured.

Still haven't caved. Have logged in twice - once because a friend told me about an epic ride they did and I wanted to see, and another because I did a ride I hadn't done in a year and felt MISERABLE and wanted to see how much slower I went (turns out I PR'd it). So a single workout has been uploaded since the paywall change. Sometimes I feel a little bummed because I really did just like seeing people crush their training, but that's rare.

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KJ
Swim and Triathlon Coach
AllTerrainEndurance.com
KJ@allterrainendurance.com

Didin't even notice the change, that's how much segments mean to me. It says I have a couple of KOMs, but i couldn't care less. I only use Strava to keep track of some teammates that I'm training with for a big race in June. But if you don't use Training Peaks, or some other training tracking software, it might be good for the ride anyalitcs. That's about the only reason I'd pay.

I totally get you. I'm divorced too.

I joined the paid-version of Strava recently because my friends were on it, and I was curious what it was all about. I'd been using the free version for 2 years before that.

Here in Norcal there is almost no way to KOM any reasonable climb around here. Too many pros and super elite amaters crushing them - I never come close! Still nice to have segments to compare against yourself, though.

The feature I've come to find most surprisingly useful though, is the "Fitness/freshness" graphs, which is probably the Strava version of the form/fitness curves that show up in Trainingpeaks and are reference here a lot. (I've never used paid version of TP.)

In the last 2 months, I made sure I had accurate HR data on all my runs/rides (swim doesn't get factored in Strava) and on my pullback weeks, Strava was recommending that I pull back more than even then 80/20 plan pullback weeks recommended. Since my races were all canceled, I pulled it back to the range Strava suggested, which meant cutting my Sat/Sun ride and run in half of what was planned.

It seemed to work though - I'm finally busting through a long run and bike plateau that I've been sitting at for 4 months. I know I'm prone to overtraining, but it's likely in retrospect I still wasn't giving myself enough volume decrease on pullback weeks.

It's surprising how much training load a Z4 run or bike that isn't that long gives - usually over double the training load of z1-2 easy effort stuff done at twice the duration.

Right now this form/fitness feature of Strava is really worth it to me, am looking to see how it guides my training for the near future.

Yep, when they made this change I deleted my account. Haven’t missed it. I made segments on Garmin Connect.