TrojanHorse

I think I might have found a new addiction... Strava is insidious. It's actually a slick, clean little app for my android, and I thought the whole social aspect piece would annoy me (wrong) and frankly, they keep telling me I should follow some racer type I've never heard of (also wrong) but the segments are freaking cool. I put a little effort into my ride today and knowing full well that my best effort on a hill would still net me back of the pack status, I hammered on a downhill today and got all the way up to #17. Boo yah! If the light had been green and I hit the downhill with a bit of steam, I think I could hit top 10 easy. That will of course be my mission next Tuesday while my son is at dive practice and THAT is why I now think strava is cool.

Obviously, my Clyde self will never win any king of the mountain segments but it is really sweet to see those little personal record trophies pop up in the title bar of my phone when I'm done.

So Nick: Nice work.

volosong

Not true. Find a little ridden segment that is short, say a half mile or one kilometer long ... bring up usairnet.com ... find a day with a 15-25 mph tail wind ... then ride that short segment after a warm-up but before you wear yourself out 'cause you just rode 30 miles. "That's" how you get to be a KOM or QOM.

Just don't tell the youngsters, okay. Let me enjoy my little victory. (p.s. watching for a good day to set the bar a little bit higher.)

Apiltas

Thanks to you guys, I checked this site out. As mentioned above, the segments are awesome. This really adds some competion to my local ride, even though I don't know anybody else around here. Hmm, I guess the next step would be to meet some of the people I'm now completing with.

TrojanHorse

LOL. Honestly, I haven't figured out how traffic signals affect times yet but so far they seem to kill me. Hit the greens? I'm looking good. Reds? I'm 393/394.

Obviously there's something to be said for knowing the start and end point of the segments near you.

savagemann

I joined the group.
Have been on Strava for a while now.
I wouldn't put too much weight on the segments.
Anybody can create a segment, and often times more than not, they are created poorly.

What I mean by that is......lets say you want to create a segment for a sprint point between 2 landmarks.
Lets say these landmarks are 2 cross streets, both of which have stop lights.
A lot of people will start the segment exactly at the beginning of the first road, and end it right at the end of the next road.
The proper way to create a segment would be to start the segment shortly after the starting point, and end the segment shortly before the last portion.
This way, everybody is moving at some speed when the segment starts and ends.
If you get caught at the red light and the segment is timing you, your resting time goes against the segment time.
Some people just don't understand how to create segments.

For mountain bike segments, I often see even worse examples than what I stated above.
Say for example.
Where I ride there is a climb that is 2.9 miles long.
You gain about 1200'
At the bottom and top are both popular rest spots.
The person who initially created the segment started it about 100' before most people stop to gear down or take a quick breather, and ended it about 200' past where most people collapse and rest for a while after drudging up this spawn from hell of a climb.
So even if you set a KOM on what would be considered the ACTUAL climb, if you stopped for a rest after the top, the resting time would go against your actual ride time for the segment.

I see this crap all the time on strava.
I usually recreate segments that I find like this, and people usually adopt them and delete the older version.
I seems like some people are catching on and creating better segments these days.
Remember Strava is still new, and will take some time to work the bugs out.

For the MTB segment I mentioned above, I recreated it by moving the start point about 50' beyond the popular rest spot, and ended it about 50' before the end rest spot.
It took a month or so before the original segment creator noticed and deleted his original segment.

As for road biking, nothing is worse than red lights.
It completely kills your average speeds and resting time goes against your segment time.
To get a better idea where you rank on a segment that catches you at a red light, subtract your resting time, and compare that time in the leaderboard.

Here is a fun little segment that was on my ride yesterday.
Notice I am only 9 seconds off the leader, but that puts me is 359th/1194th place !!!

https://app.strava.com/rides/5028649#95618665

I don't take this stuff too seriously, which may jive with all the anal retentive jabber I posted above.
But I do find strava a cool way to motivate myself to ride more/faster/further.

Chaco

I joined, but what I really need on Strava is the ability to combine classes, e.g. Clydesdales over 60. Then I would have a chance!

RedC

Me too!

savagemann

Strava should also add an Uber Clydesdale catagory.
For people over 250lbs, or 40bmi....= )

TrojanHorse

You are welcome to create whatever group you choose to create... as far as I can tell, you only get the age / weight breakdowns on segments if you pay for premium and I haven't decided whether that's worth it for me yet, so I get lumped in with the scrawny racer wanna be types for now.

I'm not really worried about getting any first places on any segments but it is nice to look at the group and see other people racking up rides, makes me want to hop on my bike right now.

ChuckD6421 

I'm in.
Been a RideByGPS fan for quite a while and will continue to support that effort, but I'll take a look at this. Problem is I now upload to Garmin Connect, RideByGPS, my local install of Training Center and now this. By the time I'm finished uploading it's time for another ride.

ChuckD

Apiltas

I've been impressed with this website, and that has surprised me. The idea of adding a little competition to my mostly solo rides has some real appeal. I did a hill today for the sole reason that many other people have done it, and I wanted to see how my numbers compare. They don't.

I did another loop again which I've done in the past, with the goal that I want to do it faster this time. I really like the idea of keeping Personal Records for your own segments, and then tracking them over time. I've got the GPS data, and this website makes it easy to add segments and they're automatically computed as you upload new data.

Thinking... Is there a standalone program that allows me to define segments, use my GPS data, and then figure out my best time from all of that data on that route? I've started using Golden Cheetah, and that's a great program for parsing the data, and this may be the next step.

Are there programs that can parse and time a route segment over multiple GPS rides, much like Strava?

--Apiltas

Brando_T.

Trying out this strava stuff, just uploaded a ride from last year. Trying to get Sunday's ride off my Dakota now.

and I joined the group.

Brando_T.

oh wow, I'm 4th fastest on a particular local segment, out of 12.

I weigh 270 lbs, I should not be fourth fastest.

TrojanHorse

Where's that segment? I'll go fix it so you can be 5th. I kid... my uphill segments look like a dogs breakfast, downhill looks pretty good. It's really cool to see when you get a PR on a segment though.

There are about 40 bajillion skinny roady types in southern california. Odds of me ever hitting #1 on a segment that more than 3 people have ridden are really slim. I'm currently 1st out of 1 on a segment I created yesterday, which is bizarre because I see lots of other people have ridden by there.

vesteroid

Just curious how do you take a segment from the website and use it? I mean can you use your farming to get to the exact place the segment starts?

TrojanHorse

Just ride over it and it should show up in your ride report as a segment. I'm not sure I know what you mean by "use your farming" (Garmin?) to get the exact place the segment starts. They're typically just after an intersection and end just before one, or so it would seem. Other than staring at the map while you move the mouse around on the chart, I don't know how to tell exactly where it starts.

I will say that I've gone over some segments that I KNOW are segments and they don't show up, so I guess the GPS is a little fussy. If you want to create a segment, you just view details and then hit create segment. There is a confusing little slider up at the top of teh page that you slide around to set the start and end point of the segment, but it's nice to create one for a piece of road you ride frequently so you can hammer it every now and then and see how you're doing.

BARKEATR

I believe Strava uses wieght in its calculations? Im not sure Im new to it also. I read a review that said strava is not accurate (as far as power analysis) except on hills

Beetz

I'm in.

I've been using Bike Brain for a while now. It will be interesting to try Strava out.
Now, to try and get a ride in.


Bob

nymtber

Can you upload details from Garmin (bike) gps to strava? I have an Edge 200 on the way, and I would love to be able to compare rides with fellow clydes Would have sprung for the 500, but I don't need the extras, and I am more of a casual rider who just wanted GPS mapping and get rid of all the wires/sensors. And my phone is not at all app capable...

nrowensby

AFAIK, yes... a lot of the rides uploaded to Strava come from Edge 300 and 500's...

shriekingmonkey

I joined. Thanks for creating this!

ChuckD6421 

Confirmed with my Edge 305. Now If I could transfer all my rides already in Garmin Connect...

nymtber

Sweet! My 200 is planned to be here saturday. Not sure if I will have it before going to my girlfriends (depends when I get up/when mail gets here) if I have it, we are riding Sunday (gonna fish the creek by her house sat!) so I will give it a try.

EDIT: created profile and joined the Strava Clydesdale group Now to wait for the Garmin...

ponchera

i've been hearing all the hype about strava lately but honestly i'm underwhelmed. i use sportstrack and endomondo pro, i see way more data logged in these then in strava, specially since strava has no BT HR monitor integration. Am i missing something? why strava over the other well established apps?

rhammons

I use a Wahoo BT HR and it sends off all my data to Strava (among others) for me; I primarily use Strava from the desktop to view that data in more detail which is pretty helpful to me. The Strava app itself has some bonuses too, like finding routes, climbs, etc. near-by as well as quick looks at leader boards and past ride info at a glance while you're on the go.