Slave to Strava?
 

Been using Strava since last year. Now, in an effort to keep track of total miles, I've been riding my bike and using Strava even on short hops to the gym, library, etc.. along with 2 to 3 longer rides every week. Am I obsessed or does everyone do that?

I only use it for training. If I'm not riding for training, no strava.

Besides, short trips like that would wreck my average speed for the week!

I Strava everything. Gran Fondos, commutes and short hops to the 7-11. Strava sells heat maps to localities which are then used to determine where to put bike lanes etc. Average speed is irrelevant.

Yes and yes

I rode 2 miles to my nephew's birthday party and Strava'd it. Partly because I have a ridiculous annual mileage goal and every mile counts, and partly because I use Strava to track component life.

I record pretty much every ride on Cyclemeter and/or Strava, sometimes switching to Wahoo Fitness to compare results. Even two mile errand rides.

I don't care much about overall average, junk miles, etc. Everything counts toward objectively evaluating my real world fitness. If I cherry pick my overall average would seem pretty impressive to me, but wouldn't help on the faster group rides I'd like to participate in once in awhile When my real overall average hits 17 mph, I'll know I'm ready to tackle those tougher challenges. Meanwhile, it's consistently around 15-16 mph, not quite good enough to hang with the local B group's 50 mile rides.

If I cherry pick only rides where I'm deliberately trying to ride fast, I'd overlook the errand rides where my average speed has increased from 8 mph in 2015 to 12-14 mph now. Since I enjoy casual group rides too, and used to struggle just to ride a couple of miles to and from the grocery store, it's the mundane stuff that helps show my real world daily fitness.

I even record and post my warm up and cool down stuff. If I cherry picked and cropped the first and last five minutes, my average would be much faster. But that would still be misleading because my warm ups and cool downs are also faster now.

You're obsessed if you think or act like you are. If strive is taking time from other things that you'd rather be doing, or think the riding itself is changing in a way you're not sure you like, then you're obsessed.

Otherwise, not.

I Strava everything, obsessed or not..it’s a good obsession I think..drives me to complete my yearly absurd goals, get more fit and spend more time doing what I love..riding. I spend more time On Strava then here Facebook and all other social media combined. Love to lead the leader boards and compete to local KOMS.. it’s somthing meaningful to me, and pushes me to be more fit and a stronger rider

I Garmin everything, for total mileage and gear maintenance purposes. Only send the interesting stuff to Strava for their global heatmap.

I've used it a few times, it seems to be a power hog on my phone, and I'm not really into tracking my placing on segments. Ride with gps does everything I need and uses a lot less battery.

In other words if an app could sit on a phone and collect dust, Strava would be doing that on mine.

I Strava every time I get on the bike. I don't ever commute on my bike or do anything like shopping, etc. If I'm on the bike I am either joyriding or a fondo of or a charity event. I do it to track what I do and see how I'm progressing as a cyclist. When I feel like I haven't improved since I started cycling, I can simply go back and see that I have. It's nice to be able to look back and see that.. and if I haven't and am trying to, I can change things up.

I always use Strava but rarely ride much under an hour.

I started with Strava just recording longer rides...but now record almost everything. In part, it's because the National Bike Challenge is popular in my area, and I wanted there to be evidence that I actually was riding that much. In part, it's because those silly Strava challenges only count miles/elevation that were actually recorded, not manual entries. All those short trips add up to 100+ miles a month.

I also made some private segments on some of my short trip routes. It gives me something interesting to do.

I have logged all the distance I have cycled (short rides, long rides, and everything in between) since April 29, 1990.

I've only started using Strava this year.

But basically it's a slightly more informative logging tool than my computer and Excel.

Nevertheless, I still use my computer and Excel.

^^ This

I use Strava to monitor my performance/training and track mileage. Also to see what others have been up to, where they like to ride, etc. Don't really care about leaderboards and KOMs.

I only use Strava to track anything over 5 miles.

Yes and no.

I have never ever ever used Strava and have no plans to.

I'm using RidewithGPS, but yes I use it for every ride. A mile is a mile.

I used to crop rides a few miles from my house. But, then I started doing the monthly challenges. 1250 km, or 800 miles is quite a bit. Likewise it is even harder for me to get the Strava climbing of 8000 meters or so.

So, I started recording everything... more or less.

I did discover, however, that I can get quite a few miles in, as well as climbing if I leave Strava running in my sleep :twitchy:

I don't hit the Strava goals every month, but can hit them regularly in the summer.

Not sure what's going on there. I don't find Strava uses much battery at all on my phone. I ran for forty minutes last night with a fully charged battery and logged it using Strava. It still at 100% when I got done.

I started riding on Jan 1 2013. I started Strava'ing on Feb 18 2013. I've recorded every ride since, except for a couple of times when I was using a phone and it crapped out.

This means I have detailed info about how many miles I've ridden on each bike and every component on those bikes. I know how fast I was every time I rode a bike. I don't Strava for KOMs. I just use it to track my own performance and record my own history.

It's so easy to record. Why wouldn't I?

I follow a few people that strava all their rides, including little rides under a mile to the grocery store. Some of them even strava their neighborhood walks with their kids. And they'll document with photos. Always lots of photos.

Nope. Not even close. Slave to a many things Strava not one.

By no means a slave to it; but I'm obsessed to the extent that I get angry when I discover that it failed to record something, like when I didn't capture my Citibike ride to a meeting yesterday morning. Yes I try to capture everything, and manually enter conservative estimates for rides it misses, and I manually enter rollers sessions (all logged under rollers, not under bike used). The mapping and performance comparison aspect is just one side of it. The other side is what I get from Velo Viewer, which for me is all about history and patterns, and only as valuable as it is complete.