Strava is wrong?
 

On tonight's ride, I did several breakaways, soft-pedaling to let the group catch back up. On one, I had to soft-pedal for almost 2 miles. My final breakaway was about 2 miles from the end, and I finished at least a quarter-mile ahead of everyone. And yet... Strava shows one of them floating in front of me the entire time we were moving, including finishing in front. Something's up. How do I tell if he's doctoring his .fit file?

What does it matter? If he doctors his rides he is the one with issues and he will have to live with that. You obviously know you were out front the whole time. Just ride for you and do your best. Don't worry about some other person who may or may not be taking the easy way out.

maybe he upgraded to strava premium...

Strava doping... gotta love it

Taping his cell phone to your fork?

I am sorry, but no. Cheats are quite happy to live off the kudos to which honest people are entitled. It's how the Lance Armstrongs of this world have been able to manoeuvre themselves into a position where they bully and threaten others into silence. Even in the innocuous world of randonneuring, I have seen enough cheating to leave a nasty taste in my mouth.

BlazingPedals, call out the guy, and if it is proven he is doctoring his files, have him banned from the group rides.

could it be a possible gps issue? For myself my gps acts up sometimes showing me in inaccurate places.. Just a thought

I am NOT on Strava so no skin in this game, but really, it's not like someone's life or lively hood depended on results----is it********** I ride with a guy who has 12,000+ miles so far this year and he is a little upset that a new bent rider has taken some KOM titles from him and nothing shows on Strava that it has been done on a bent.

Did you examine your ride next to his, do you know what equipment each of you use to track? Sounds more like an error of some kind than hacking files.
GPS has an error margin, and that can go up a lot from things like a low quality receiver, blocked or partially blocked antenna, etc. Also, who cares? You were both there and know what happened.

The steroid code-software upgrade from the dark web finally shows up..I'm surprised it took so long.

So how far does the dishonesty go before you decide it's not OK???? The interesting thing is that cheats don't have a line where they stop cheating if someone's life or livelihood depends on their actions. Read up on narcissists in particular.

Your bent rider comparison doesn't fit with this scenario where BlazingPedals was in a group ride with this character, and knows what happened, but that still hasn't prevented the real possibility that the other rider has doctored his file.

As a by-the-by, two teams involved in a fleche here in Australia -- a 24-hour time trial -- were rubbed out for not abiding by the rules. They pleaded ignorance and/or safety as to why they broke the rules. They appealed, became quite aggressive when challenged on their flimsy evidence, and they simply could not see that they had done anything significantly wrong. As one of the people who sat on the appeal panel, I was as disappointed in their lack of contrition as anything else.

In the context of this discussion, Strava files were used to build the evidence against the team, along with ego-boosting videos of one of the teams' ride.

This.

I think it's a fair amount of work to do what the OP is implying and what would be the point? Yanking your chain is the only thing I can think of.

OP if you're that competitive that you care about correct recording of your group ride 'attacks', it's time to pin a number on and ride against some others who care about winning. Your group ride buddies probably just let you ride on your own while they concoct schemes for doctoring their Strava files to mess with your head.

Agreed to the OP on maybe this type of workout isn't really for the day you go on a group ride. As far as how hard it would be to doctor raw GPS files? Depending on which device is used and how he gets that data into strava, doctoring a file isn't that hard if .gpx or something similar is used in the middle - if the other rider mysteriously jumped in front of the OP on his last 'breakaway' (on a group ride? why not just train by yourself?), he's probably yanking his chain. Especially if everyone else who was on the group ride logs in and 'kudos' the mystery rider.

Strava wrong? No, just no. EVERYONE knows that Strava is the #1 most reliable way to determine what actually happened in a ride. Ever heard of the phrase 'if it's not on Strava it didn't happen'? There is a reason for that.

In this case, am I supposed to take your word for what happened or trust ultra high precision satellites? I think we all know the answer. My guess is that he did an early breakaway that you didn't notice and never managed to catch up. It happens. Try to ride near the front and be more attentive next time.

Doctored or not, with the group or not......."How do I tell if"......, my take is what difference should it make, why even be concerned about finding out if he WAS doctoring or Strava had an issue? The end result, IMO, is that it really should be a NON-ISSUE so ride on and enjoy.

Didn't see a ;), :innocent: or :roflmao2: at the end, so ouch :D .

Based on your description, I assume you are looking at the "flyby" on Strava, I don't totally trust the flyby data since it's an estimate of relative position at a given time. It could be as simple as the clock setting on his device is ahead of yours by a minute or two.

Did you check the key segments and the results for the day? You can only do this on the day of the ride. The segments would be a better way to ID data tampering.

And then there's this: How to tell if someone used Digital Epo to cheat on Strava | ScarletFire Cycling

About sums it up...

Amateur athletes embellishing their accomplishments :eek: I can't believe it. What is the world coming to? Every club has "that guy" who is a legend in his own mind. Ignore it, there will always be more horses' arses than horses. You and everyone else on the ride know what really happened. It was a club ride, no yellow jerseys, world records or big endorsement deals on the line, just some putz who had to re-inflate his gonads by lying about the results.

Or as others have suggested, it might have just been a technological glitch. BION the great god STRAVA is not omnipotent.

Yep, a clever marketing department :thumb:

What does a Strava "flyby" graph tell you about performance? I thought it was mainly just to see who was on the ride, or had a similar ride.

I may be wrong, but I believe that the GPS message includes the GPS time and that's included in the file uploaded to Strava. So Strava might be off a little bit on the "where" but not the "when".

I've always wondered if the all magnificent STRAVA has a category for a eunuch like me, thank you prostate cancer. :D, re-inflation not an option :lol:, and the guys say I'm a good climber. :thumb:

I honestly don't understand why people even care about this; my attitude has always been "ride your own ride." Sure, it's fun to trash-talk your friends a bit when you beat them to the finish line. But ultimately, for 99.99% of us, it's just riding a bike. Some people get their jollies out of gaming their numbers. It's a profoundly pointless and stupid thing to do, but how does that affect anyone else, other than the "glory" of having your name appear on a website for a short period of time? If someone's ego is so intimately intertwined with that, it might be time to chill out and find another hobby.

According to what I've read on Strava, bents are legal. It's fairings that are not. OTOH, Strava times are supposed to be individual efforts, but most of them around here are accomplished with a group -- I see the same 4 or 5 guys with nearly the same time on the same day, all at the top of every segment.

I think faired bents should be a separate category on Strava, because those guys want to keep track of their performance too and it's not, er, "fair" for anybody to force them into the regular bicycle category.

As far as this particular ride, I'm not upset about it or anything. He knows I can beat him anytime, and so does everyone in the group. Maybe it was an innocent equipment malfunction. It was just a "WTF?" moment when I saw the flyby play out on Strava. (How did he do that???)

After analyzing the Stravidence, here is how the OP should read:



Strava does not lie.

Meh. I have a route I ride frequently. My GPS ride tracker gives me a normal distance of 7.8 miles, backed up by my wired computer, but I've seen that same route read 7.6 and 8.0 miles ON THE SAME DAY. I've had times where I've turned the thing on, it gets a lock on a better satellite after it is already recording, and I've got 500 feet on my ride before I've even moved. I use it for generalizations, not precision measurement.

Proof (I think these are public, let me know if not):

Outbound leg: https://www.strava.com/activities/562620278
Inbound leg of the exact same ride, same start/end: https://www.strava.com/activities/562620368

EDIT: And a normal leg over that same route: https://www.strava.com/activities/562614792

To the OP, I have no idea how easy it is to modify GPX tracks (I'd imagine not all that difficult), but I'd be as surprised (or care) as much as when someone knocks a couple strokes off their golf card.

The resolution on your GPS unit is terrible.

On rides of 30+ miles, my wife and I have had end results of the exact same distance and elevation multiple times, and the greatest variance has been ~0.25 miles between the two of us. Garmin 500 and 520, respectively.

We don't seem to have a digital doping problem around here. A whole lot of people leaving their app running on the freeway, though. A lot.

Possibly is. Or slow at picking up satellites. Or affected by dense tree cover. Or bogged down processing things besides my GPS tracker. Or any number of things. It is a cheap cell phone I bought unlocked for $30, but for what I really need the GPS for, it works far better than my needs.

My point being, handheld consumer electronics with GPS units are hardly calibrated, precise instruments that you can rely on for racing type timing results. Even your worst case distance difference is proof that one can have the discrepancy the OP was worried about.

And I have the opposite problem: I leave my app running when I am walking around, making myself look even slower than I actually am :)

This is the right answer.

I have a Garmin GPS watch for hiking and running and swimming, and also an Edge computer. My experience is pretty much like yours. I have to go about 30 miles before they disagree by 1/10th mile.

We have plenty of dense tree cover in the Pacific Northwet. A good GPS (not yours apparently) is fine with dense tree cover at cycling speeds. It's a problem hiking because the speed is so much less but the speed you carry on a bike (really the inertia that comes with that speed) rules out 90 % of the jitter in the signal.