strava. yay or nay?

[RIP]

Blast, I didn't think I was that transparent . Still, I'll go for broke and say that unlike Stu I don't even have an account!

[psling]

I'll stand with you Reg Never had an account, never going to. I do log my rides though... in a diary, handwritten

I've seen beautiful twisting, winding, singletrack turned into straight line race tracks to log the best times on strava; I've seen delicate trails destroyed because of strava heat maps. I know riders who have tried for K of this and that who cannot tell me what they've seen along the way. Each to their own. Me, I'm a somewhat selfish curmudgeon really

[RIP]

"diary, handwritten" - I know when I'm trumped and beaten

[JohnClimber]

Wasn't gonna break cover as a 'nay' but Stu has so I'll hide behind his coat-tails and for exactly the same reasons. Just the two of us then but I'm at ease with that - enjoy the day and live the next one anew for itself .

Me too, gave up 2 and a half years ago after an E-bike took one of my KOM's and I could see the start of the up coming problems.

I used to stress around November if I wasn't going to hit my 5000 miles a year target.

Now I couldn't give a flying fump if I did those miles or not as long as each ride was safe and enjoyable who cares about the daily Kudos from someone who you've never met.

[ton]

did a ride with mrs t today. had my strava on.
she told me off for checking it twice, because she thinks we are pressured to try and ride faster when using it.

so we are now a strava free household.

anyone got a cateye mitty i can buy.........

[redefined_cycles]

Blast, I didn't think I was that transparent . Still, I'll go for broke and say that unlike Stu I don't even have an account!

Yup... kinda figured (guesstimated) that too... Did you know Stu is on Twitter and every so often sends out a twit (ot is it a tweet)

Partly the reason why your always cheerful is cos you're protected from all these futuristic (current affair) technologies...

[Alpinum]

anyone got a cateye mitty i can buy.........

The last time I had one of them things was for the only reason to see how fast I could go during the Saas Fee glacier bike DH race.

It was the time of the Garmin Extrex Summit - that yellow thing we all thought was quite amazing - which was rather incapable for such a task.

9 km distance and 1700 m vert loss on a ski slope with some fairly steep bits. My only goal was to go beyong 100 km/h, so I kept looking at the little lcd display. During the first steeper part I realised the acceleration and went into a tuck and watched the speed to up. 101.5 km/h I remember reading and thanks to not paying attention I couldn't hold my line when just a tiny moment later I hit a rut and had a proper high speed crash. I ran back to the bike, rode on and eventually cracked 120 km/h on the steepest section. Later that day and those following, my neck was really stiff and I had a very bad head ache.

It's in us or it isn't. If you're a speed freak or like to ride competitive, you'll always find a way to do just that. Strava won't change your behaviour (perhaps amplify what's there already).

When I track my rides, I have no clue about what Strava will come up with. So if I've tracked, then there's often a little surprise or a few when I'm back home and connect the GPS via Bluetooth to the phone. Sometimes the surprise is because I rode 80 km and there's not one single segment

[redefined_cycles]

Regards the mapping on Strava... Did you know that a new route can be made these days from the app. Just by drawing a line roughly in the direction you'd like to go and it will pick the most 'heatmapped'of roads for you. Pretty cool if it helps...

[ScotRoutes]

That'll be a Summit(paid for) feature?

[gairym]

It's in us or it isn't. If you're a speed freak or like to ride competitive, you'll always find a way to do just that. Strava won't change your behaviour (perhaps amplify what's there already).

Totally agree.

To me Strava has nothing to do with performance or competitiveness and so I find it odd that people cite this as a reason to not use it.

Maybe they can't switch it off in themselves and so would rather not use the whole app?

At any one time (I last looked probably two years ago) I had about 8 incidental KOMs which I assume are from when Strava auto-created a segment and that I'm the only one to have ridden it.

I presume this because once or twice a year I'll get a notification that someone has beaten my time and usually it's about twice as fast as my time.

Like any tool it's open to being used in different ways by different users but for me it's simply a handy and convenient way of logging what I've done for future reference and for creating new routes on the fly whilst out riding and for that it's great.

[ScotRoutes]

To me Strava has nothing to do with performance or competitiveness and so I find it odd that people cite this as a reason to not use it.

Maybe they can't switch it off in themselves and so would rather not use the whole app?

This. It's a personality thing, the tool is pretty much irrelevant, though I guess that the easier it is to use, the easier it is to slip into a pattern.

FWIW, in Joe Friels "Fast after 50" book he cites Strava segments as a good way of getting out of the Long, Slow, Distance mode that results in a loss of of muscle mass in older riders. A bit like Fartlek or Intervals if you're into that.

[Fat tyre kicker]

Never been on it...never will.

[Bearlegged]

That'll be a Summit(paid for) feature?

No, works on the free version too. I like it.

[Charliecres]

I set up an account years ago, used it twice and decided I wasn’t a Strava person.

I’m not competitive, I’m not bothered about logging my riding and I can’t be arsed with another thing to remember before/during/after riding.

[Bearbonesnorm]

I once got a KoM by accident .... I was riding with Chew and Wenchie and I stopped for a slash. Obviously I had to pedal that little bit harder to catch up. Sometime later I was notified that I was the fasted person (on Strava) to ride that section. It really was in the middle of nowhere before anyone calls foul.

[ScotRoutes]

That'll be a Summit(paid for) feature?

No, works on the free version too. I like it.

How do you access it? I can't see any menu option.

[whitestone]

Gairy - Strava doesn't auto-create segments. What will have happened is that after you rode along whatever track someone created a segment and you just happened to be the fastest at that time. Someone else comes along, sees the segment and goes for it and you "lose" the KOM you never knew you had!

What's even weirder is that the person who created the segment automatically gets the KOM until Strava's computers whirr through all the activities and find those people who've ridden it before. They then get an email to say they've lost their KOM which they never really had in the first place!

The best Strava activity I've seen recently was someone who logged mowing the lawn because he wanted to know how far he'd gone when doing it!

[ScotRoutes]

Strava doesn't auto-create segments

It has auto-created for me. I have a KOM where I'm the only person to have ridden the segment. I didn't create the segment.

[psling]

A colleague at work uses strava for running. At the weekend he painted out the lines of a football pitch and had his strava on - the resultant map is identifiably a football pitch but I hope the lines on the field are straighter than the lines on the mapping!!

[Bearlegged]

How do you access it? I can't see any menu option.

Via the desktop website version:
Log in, then go to the "Dashboard" drop-down menu and select "My routes". Just under the page heading, there's an orange button marked "Create New Route".

[ScotRoutes]

How do you access it? I can't see any menu option.

Via the desktop website version:
Log in, then go to the "Dashboard" drop-down menu and select "My routes". Just under the page heading, there's an orange button marked "Create New Route".

Aye - but from the App?

[gairym]

Strava doesn't auto-create segments

It has auto-created for me. I have a KOM where I'm the only person to have ridden the segment. I didn't create the segment.

Me too. That's what I'm saying, it's only me and I've never created a segment (unless there's a setting that I'm unaware of that means I'm doing it automatically???).

[Bearlegged]

Aye - but from the App?

In the app, if I scroll down to the very bottom of my list of routes, there's a message saying "Build custom routes on the web at strava.com/routes/new", so I guess not (unless it's something bundled with the paid for version).

[gairym]

That's the same as mine but mine also has a '+' on the top right of the routes section.

Nothing?

[redefined_cycles]

That'll be a Summit(paid for) feature?

Yup.. good observation. I must've managed to use it whilst my subscription was still active (before it became Summit Peaks whatever)... As i just tried to find the 'finger route build' buttpn but no longer there!