Interesting observation on Strava Premium.
 

I'm fairly new to Strava, and debated really hard about going premium. The thing is I am old, and a little clyde, and wanted to see how I stood up to people in my own category, speedwise. My big mistake was buying the year plan for five bucks a month. I should have just bought a month for six bucks. It would have told me all I needed to know.

First, I was expecting my standings to go up when I filtered by age (Low end of 55-64) I did a segment this afternoon in a conscious effort to make a personal record, which I did- 1.2 miles at 21.6 mph. That put me at 258/947 overall, or the 27th percentile. Filtered for age, it was 18/69, or the 26th percentile.

What a buffoon. I should have realized that the overall was for a group that spanned all age groups, and that segregating them only shrinks the sample, and if the sample is still large enough to be statistically significant, my standings will not change. I did this for several segments, including a few where I was cruising, sometimes near the bottom of the rankings, and the results were the same, that is, filtering for age had insignificant effect on my standings.

I've noticed the same thing. I usually ride alone, but on several occasions i have ridden with others close to my age, or even a little older, (I'm 61 next month). I've also ridden with other clydes, (but much younger than I). After these rides and seeing how I've done on strava, the conclusion that I have arrived at is that there are a LOT of older, stronger riders out there than we would think there are. It's quite humbling. I strive for personal goals now, not so much to be at the top of a strava segment leaderboard. That is not to say that I'll stop trying.

I see plenty of "grey hair" gentlemen out there biking. They look like strong riders. Perhaps they are lifelong cyclists. I would not be surprised if most older riders fall into this category.

I think Darwinian forces take over in the older age groups. The sick and weak have already croaked, or at least gotten their power wheelchairs. Those of us survivors go against some very good protoplasm.

I think a big factor is also that the statistical sample is of Strava users only, and is not a representative sample of everyone who rides those routes, but of those who are working it.

Yeah, it's a subset of serious riders. Strava users need a way to record their rides, and enough interest to upload them to Strava. I'm a casual Strava user, I just upload occasional rides, mostly when I'm pushing hard! It's interesting to see how fast the leaders are.

I see literally no benefit in Strava Premium for myself.

1) I'm on beta blockers, which lowers my heart rate dramatically, therefore all "suffer score" calculations aren't going to be anywhere near accurate or useful.
2) I don't have a power meter, and I can tell right away that their power estimations are way off; it says I spike up to 1,500 watts sometimes. Yeah right. Given how windy it is here 9 months out of the year, I just don't see how any of their estimates can be useful.
3) I seem to be one of the only people in the area that actually use Strava anyway. Almost every segment I try out I'm in the top 5, and also dead last. I have a few KoM's, which is so utterly ridiculous it's funny, but there's absolutely no reason for me to filter my results by group; I'm 100% certain I'm the only 30-40 year old 400 pound cyclist in the area attempting category 3 and 4 climbs. :D


It does amuse me when I look at segments in California and see up to 1,000 people on the board. That's ridiculous, I can't imagine seeing that many cyclists around (yes I know it's not all at once).


http://app.strava.com/athletes/154287

In hindsight, neither do I.

For a fee, I can create some awesome graphs of your performance, suitable for uploading to internet forums for bragging rights.

I can also modify GPX files for uploading to STRAVA if you want the hard stuff... it's surprisingly simple, but incredibly tedious. I only know this because I had to do a little research in combining two files for the same ride.

Yeah, I thought the Premium was a bit steep so I just dipped my toe in the water with a 6 buck one month subscription. My plan is to just do it during the riding season or maybe every other month to save some money.

As a whole I'm liking Strava a lot. Good motivational tool for me personally.

You're probably the only person in the area that can FIND a cat 3 or 4 climb. Isn't Buffalo flat as a pancake? I know there are some hills south, but nothing all that big. But good luck to you.

Yeah, filtering by age generally doesn't make things any more glorious for me either. There are some serious Masters-class riders around here.

My reason for buying a 1-year membership was that I'm getting a lot of motivation from their service, and figured I could throw them a bone. Someone has to, they're not a charity. I've certainly spent $60 on worse stuff in my cycling life :D

Yeah, I get that too. I know a lot of people will poo-poo the idea. This kind of reminds me of another hobby I have, RC planes. There are guys who will spend thousands of dollars for a "toy" airplane, yet throw a hissy fit when they are asked to pay for the use of a ten acre open space. The amount they are asked to pay is usually about the same as you would pay for two rounds of golf on the course that your model airport will be plowed under to build.

Do the math.

Strava could start using ad's to generate revenue, which is not a bad thing, until the abuses, like aggressive rollovers start.

I like Strava, most of my friends on there were Premium, so I thought why not? I like to support companies that offer good products.

when I was 15, I was watching the over 35 race and said to myself that if that was representative of the level of racing, I would be cleaning up when I was older. Now some of the hardest races are often the 40+ or 50+ groups. A 20 year old isn't likely to be lining up against a national or world champion, but it's not uncommon in the masters races.

And if you are female, the numbers are thinner. I'm a "serious" rider, but I SUCK at riding! Actually, I often find myself amazed at how high up in the ranking I am even when including men. I figure this is the Bay Area and with high tech salaries there are lots of people who suck like me and have more dollars than sense and purchase a Garmin. Oh wait.... looks in mirror. Well, it's not like I spend my money on anything else really.

And yes, I should pony up $60 for this entertaining free service. I'm surprised they don't have ads to support their site.

I did a race the other day as did some other guys from my same club. I won my cat and the others in a higher cat came mid pack, I had faster times than my clubmates on all the segments but their overall race time was up to a couple of minutes faster than mine. Something is screwy here or they really kicked ass on the non-segment sections and cruised in the segments.

hehe I know why they don't have ads.

someone looks at an add wrecks and sues strava !!

I meant that humorously but now that I typed it that might actually be why !