I have been reading a lot of negative commentary on Strava recently so I decided to come to its defence. I hope you enjoy my article, let me know what you all think and feel free to hit back with your Strava opinions (stravopinions?). Yes it is a link, I hope you will read it anyway.
Sadly cheaters are gonna cheat either by motor pacing or now even electronically: http://www.digitalepo.com/
.
I like Strava… I put up every ride I do. And I particularly like it when there are a lot of files up from races… you can see how the race unfolded. Actually it would be great if there was a way synch up a bunch of files on one page, so you could see the attacks, when people got dropped, etc.
Seems weird to me that it messes with people’s heads. I have no problem whatsoever riding segments at a leisurely pace… for months at a time. And if I feel like it I can try a max effort and see how I do.
The cheating is annoying, but I’m really just “racing” against myself.
Maybe it has become fashionable to get negative on Strava, but I think it is great. It makes it easier for me to get to know others in the cycling community, feeds my competitiveness in a pretty safe way and when I travel it makes it easy to find good routes. I’m sure it evokes some bad behavior in some but I’ve seen very little problems as a result. Quite the contrary, I’ve seen some group rides that keep things civil so that people can go apeshit at the well known segments. It gives some structure instead of group rides going at the speed of whoever decides to hammer the front row.
Great read. I upload almost all my rides/runs to Strava and I like to compare how I did to others on various segments.
That being said, I think a lot of people can ruin a training ride by hammering for KOMs instead of sticking to their protocol. But who’s fault is that… not Strava’s!
OBTW good article, I upload to Strava after every ride too and find it very useful even more so now that Ray Maker introduced me to Race Shape which is great for travelling
.
Dude that Race Shape is pretty cool… thanks for the link.
I think the beauty of Strava is that you can view the whole profile of the rider that just stole your KOM. If he/she suddenly digitally dopes to 500 watts for 5 minutes to snag your segment but they have bunch of rides where 300 watts is 180bpm, you can call bs. Its all pretty damn transparent actually.
If you love Strava you must try veloviewer, which now offers a ranking based on a selection of your segments
I admit that I first thought Strava was just another place to upload rides like the other thousands of similar programs. So I ignored it. Over time I saw a lot of praise for Strava here on ST. Then my younger brother started raving about it. So I caved and uploaded some old data on error the winter.
I was impressed.
I still don’t upload very much. Just a few rides and a few runs a month. The new ability to see not just your segment pr but all your attempts will make it much more useful. I like comparing my time over test set venues. I agree with others that seeing others post race files is fun as well.
The power estimation is also a great feature. It is cool to upload my pre power meter rides for comparison.
All in all. Good stuff.
If you love Strava you must try veloviewer, which now offers a ranking based on a selection of your segments
OK, that is insanely cool.
The power estimation is also a great feature.
It would be cool if they made that more sophisticated.
All the negative comments about Strava are not consequences of using it themselves, but just “in their heads” for lack of a better term. Segments only become dangerous if you ride them dangerously, it’s only competitive if you make it competitive. Maybe people just don’t like how easy Strava makes it to realize how true the saying “there’s always someone faster” really is? I upload everything to Strava because it’s simple and easy, and I’ve discovered some routes I would’ve never otherwise thought of riding. I focus on PR’s and not leaderboards. Just tell yourself everyone in the top 3 drove it in a car and stop being so vain. We’re not roadies after all
. Just tell yourself everyone in the top 3 drove it in a car and stop being so vain. We’re not roadies after all
Sounds a little harsh, I have some KOMs and no other people who have and they definitely have not been gained by in a car.
I love Strava. At almost 58 and not a racer (Many are happy I don’t race as my bike handling or lack thereof is dangerous) I still like to test myself. I paid for the Premium so I could look at age groups where I do well. I don’t target segments at all, just let the ride unfold and see what happens. Many of the people I “compete” against are in my cycling club, so it’s all in good fun and we support each other.
Strava is good in small towns it looks like, lots of competitive racers where everyone knows everyone, it seems to limit the amount of cheating going on because, as I would assume, there’s accountability. if you know everyone who has results on the site and joe schmuck did a hill at 22 mph, when he can’t even hit 20 in a training ride… then you know something is up.
I’m in Vancouver, so yes, smallish, but lots of riders here. Last week I was 18th out of 707 overall on a popular segment, which I thought was pretty good, then I saw I was 2nd 55-64 to someone in my club.
I like it. I only upload some of my rides, but sometimes you see some really interesting, humbling, or impressive things - Josh Beck is local to me, so we end up riding some of the same segments, and I follow him on strava. He recently uploaded a 120+ mile ride where he earned 6 or 8 KOM’s. It’s damn impressive to see someone so good they are smoking everyone else’s best efforts just as a matter of course during a long ride.
I think this is what you want: http://suffervision.appspot.com
It’s a little buggy (tried to get a file to work, but it kept losing me and randomly going blank) and not the easiest to use, but if you get it running, I think it’s doing exactly what you’re looking for.
And I love strava. If you don’t have the self control to make your easy rides easy or stick to your ride plan and ruin a workout b/c of strava, that’s your fault, not Strava’s. Personally, I plan some of my vo2/shorter interval rides around strava segments I want to attack. Extra motivation chasing a KOM makes your interval all that much harder (and better quality). But I’m a roadie and regularly train those types of efforts. but OTOH, I recently did a TT and aero’d out my road bike and it was like cheating on the flat segments…just not fair!
ETA: I’m not afraid to flag. WHen I see something fishy - it’s really easy to tease out of the ride if it was done in a car. 90% of the time it’s because a garmin or iphone was left on after the ride ended for the drive home. WHen I get an email that someone beat me by 45 seconds on a 3 min segment, that’s a red flag that something ain’t right. Just now somoene uploaded an entire “ride” that was a drive in a car - took like 30 KOMs.
The power estimation is also a great feature.
It would be cool if they made that more sophisticated.
More accurate would be a good start actually. Strava tends to mess up more and more. Pace all over the place, same thing with power. I find it rather unreliable.
And I’m not even talking about the iPhone version of strava. My wife holds all the running segments in the area, with runs in the low 4min/mi 
Given the total lack of trees in El Paso, it sure isn’t related to poor GPS signal.