Giving Up on Strava
 

Yeah, disconnected Polar so that it doesn't upload to Strava.

Not angry. Don't hate it. I actually think its pretty cool. Just doesn't really do anything for me.

Get some kudos... Look at the flyby... Give a kudo... Send a note to a good friend who I really should have called on the phone instead. Blah blah blah... Just tired of it, that's all.

I'm sorry to have to do this to you all. I know you will all miss me. Given enough time I'm sure that the local cycling scene here in Middleofnowhere, Georgia will recover. It's for the best. You all will just have to trust me on this.

Yell "Strava! if you see me. Or just wave. Or don't. Doesn't matter. Sometimes a man's gotta do what a man's goatta do.

Just felt like saying that. Thanks for listening.


-The Rider Formerly Known as Tim-

You're welcome.

P.S. What are you known as now?

I finally signed up for Strava. I've been using their global heat map (to find routes) for a couple years, and now that I have a gravel bike, I'm riding roads that aren't on their map. Figured I kind of owe them.

I don't have my Garmin sync to Strava, though. They don't need my after work loops, and they don't offer me any useful analysis of them. I manually upload the interesting rides that happened when I drove the bike somewhere nice.

You're not completely alone.

Sometimes it sure feels like it though.

I feel you. There is almost no one in my area. Just me and the diesel trucks.

I quit Strava as well, but only because it is such a hassle compared to the bike speedometer. I fail to see why anyone needs to record their rides on gps anyway.

I did the same thing earlier this year... with Facebook.

It was several orders of magnitude less useful to me than Strava.

Not only did I discontinue Strava, I stopped using the HR monitor and computer as well. Maybe I'm not a 'serious' cyclist (I don't race) but somewhere along the way, the joy of cycling derived from just doing it, got lost in all the tracking.

If riding just to see the view - I guess not. If riding to go faster, get fitter then I can think of some:
For parents to lurk at
For coaches to see
To compare to prior rides on the same segment and see if there is improvement
To see where things went wrong/good on a segment
To confirm how you felt, how the ride looked
To know how far you went - then
To know how fast you went
To see relative ability
To KOM hunt
To brag about

FWIW - I don't use it. I'm a lurking parent of a kid that does.

Actually, the less "seriously" you take Strava, the more useful it is.

:foo:

This

I'm still a daily user, it's nice having it keep track of when I replaced components

Also one of the better free ride trackers. Coupled with the Stravistix addon, it is a powerful training tool.

Strava can be anything the user wants.

Come over to the dark side and be a lonely Map My Ride user :)

i can identify with your opinion, but i don't use it for the social part of it. although i have met some local people to ride with through it, i use it as a training log. i keep a journal that i write down my health issues BP and such. the strava program helps me with the map function. i can track my progress and match with my journal. also by logging with strava i have a backup which came in handy on a recent hard drive failure since i've converted to keeping my journal digitally. combined with road id my wife and family know i'm safe when riding alone, since i had a stroke last year we're all worried about my health and my where abouts during my solo rides. by keeping a journal i can feel good about my healing and weight loss as well as health gains on days when i just don't have it in me, my journal lets me know that there are more good days than bad and how blessed i am in my recovery.

+1. I use Strava as a training log more than a social platform. It's great just to see your progress over the months. (Though in my case, I just don't have many athlete friends.)

Do you have VeloViewer?

What's Strava?

Too bad about Strava, but Greek restaurants get old after a while. Try Luigi's down the street, nice northern Italian cuisine.

This. This right here.

Anyone who thinks Strava is somehow taking away from their "riding experience" is fooling themselves. Track your rides or don't. It truly is your prerogative. But every time one of these threads pops up, there's that contingent that espouses the notion that cycling is somehow "more pure" if done with no electronic tracking. Those people can take their opinions and put them right back up whichever wind hole they fell out of.

I don't race, I'm not in training, but I like numbers. Strava + Stravistix is fantastic. So many numbers. I don't need to track HR, power, or any of it. But I want to. Isn't it wonderful when we can do the things we want and it has zero impact on other people's lives? Sadly, the non-Strava folks are becoming the BF vegans. You know how to tell if a person doesn't use Strava? Easy, they'll let you know at every possible opportunity.

Got it. Thanks.

If it gets cold out, don't forget to wear your Baklava.

Oh? It still hasn't gotten me any dates.:mad:

@Doge mentioned VeloViewer, which gets its data from Strava. I like examining routes, and my cycling history, and it's great for that.
I'll occasionally use the social features of Strava, but if that's all there was to it, I could do without it.
I don't know why anyone would need to either, but I find it sort of educational.
I have a tendency to wander around a lot, and after a ride, I'll want to know - where DID I go? Sometimes I'll think I went somewhere I'd heard of before and I'll look at the map and see I actually went somewhere quite different. Or I'll want to tell people about a particularly nice or challenging route that I discovered - or just remember it for my own use - and I'll have to look at the map.
During a ride, I'll develop a mental image of the route, and then I'll look at it later and learn that it actually had a much different shape.
You look at the maps and stats of individual rides often enough - especially when you know the area where they took place - you get to where you can look at someone else's ride and get a very a rich sense of what it was like - it's not just numbers, it's familiar experiences. Kinda like reading a box score of a game you didn't see, but which, when you scrutinize the arrangement of names and numbers, you can definitely imagine.

Nothing you do will ever be real again without strava

I've actually never heard of Stravastix. This looks pretty neat. Might have to reconsider...