Sitting here, I'm honestly having a hard time remembering what life was like before Strava. Before cell phones? Before computers? Forget about it!

Wait, it's coming to me somewhat...I think I'd not reset my Cateye Mity 3 so I could show off my ride stats with the guys at the coffee shop! I dunno; it's a vague memory, but jeez, was it just like 4 or 5 years ago?

Anyone else remember what cycling was like back in those days?

I remember before electronic odometers. We used a gizmo called a Huret Multito. They were amazingly accurate and we argued about the mileage at the end of the ride just like we do today.

You can google Huret Multito to see how they worked.

What's Strava?

It's like pong.

Oh, okay. It must be pretty good then. I wonder why I never got that idea before.

You sound like a millennial.

The question is which millennium, 1000.

Super Breakout and Missile Command were the real deal though. Pong was like a unicycle.

You who?

Gizmo is right. It was ELECTRONIC, and as such, a NEW, MODERN, bit of TECHNOLOGY, we could add to our, otherwise, purely mechanical bikes. It replaced the Lucas odometers that we used as metronomes as we rode down the road.

Multito was the camel's nose poking into the flap of our biking tents, and the first of what would be the electronic invasion of cycling.

As for Strava, I leave it for folks who care about that stuff. I only used odometers to estimate my position and compare it to the map. Folks of my era didn't need Strava, we lied about speed and distance straight to each other's faces.

I remember a cycling forum back in 2002 (Bicycling) way before Strava. Everybody but me averaged 26 mph+ and I was still doing 18.

That's a great line!

I don't think I know the Multito, so gotta look that up. My first road bike was a hand me down Hercules with Huret derailleurs from my pop, so I know the brand. I only go back as far as Avocet 30 or 45 or whatever the model progression was; I had a few of them. Those were really cool looking units.

Technological advancement isn't the culprit. It's marketing and the manipulation of the general consumer. We live in a marginal gains disposable society that pounces on the latest and greatest so we can feel better about our shortcomings.

Yeah. I trailed off there,.. Whoops.

Strava is pretty neat though. Gives me the ability to analyze where I am improving and need improvement. Couldn't give a ****e about what everyone else is doing.

I should turn my Strava on next time I'm flying and buzz one of the segments.

I erred in my earlier post.

The Multito was a belt driven mechanical dual register odometer. Besides the separate trip/dist registers, the main advantage was that it didn't go tick, tick, tick like the pinion driven units.

The Multronic, which followed close behind, was the electronic version.

I only started using Strava this past Christmas. I think I can manage to remember a time before that.

I only started using a mobile phone a year ago, at Easter. I think I can even manage to remember a time before that.

But I've been using a bicycle computer of some sort since the 1980s.

In fact, I still log my distances in both bikejournal and my own Excel file.
https://bikejournal.com/

I also used BigDogs, but that one seems to have disappeared.

There was time before Strava? How can you be sure? Do you have a Strava recording of it?

Give me a brake .....tic-tic-tic-tic... et cetera, et cetera, et cetera

Here ya go,....

Ya, imagine going out for a ride and nobody knew where you went, no cell phone, nothing.
Just a dime in your pocket to make a phone call, but you never needed it because you knew how to fix a tire, and your bike was reliable.
No electronic leash. No backup. Maybe your buddy had an extra dime.

We must be talking about a different animal. The Sachs-Huret Multito that we used was an odometer driven by a rubber belt and pulley on the front axle. You may be thinking of the Multronic.

11971941446_4cf03e6261_b by trsnrtr, on Flickr

See post No.14

Ah, yes, I have seen the Multito, but never used. Man, that's like from a time before computers! Weird!

That was a kinder, gentler time.

I am a late adopter of a lot of things. It helps to save money and spend it something that works and is reliable for my purposes.

I bypassed the Garmin fad, and use my cell phone exclusively for Strava. I admit to experimenting with a cheap GPS computer to test out whether (free) Strava was worth it to me. It was. But the battery life was limited, and that's the reason why I jumped to the phone which also has bluetooth so it records HR.

I've recorded distances, sometimes relgiously, in the past. I've even used Polar uploads more than a decade ago, but it really was a bit of a chore. But the modern way is just so convenient and virtually instantaneous. I like it a lot.

The only gripe (and I am not sure if there is a way to sort it) is that Strava won't allow you to manually enter a start distance for each of the bikes you already own and have ridden, sometimes for years.

One thing that reminds me of days before the electronics revolution are the times I go out on my CX bike. Although I'll turn on Strava when I leave and turn it off when I get home, when I'm riding I have nothing on the bike to show time, distance, cadence or speed. I just go out and ride around, like back in the day. Of course, back in the day, I had no competitive aspirations, or concerns about achievement on the bike except where I happened to get to, e.g., all the way to such and such place.

That's because the main idea of Strava is to record what you do as you do it. Although manual entries are available to allow one to fill in gaps, I think that's more about indicating the continuity of ones activity than completing ones history.