Just checked, Create a segment not working for me.

I think it probably has something to do with the military thing. It's been shown that you can create a dummy gpx file for one of the secret locations, upload it to Strava, create a segment from that file and then later you can check the leaderboard (after it has populated all the activities) and you can find out the names (and perhaps where they have been from their history) of the Strava users at that base. Having the names of those people is quite possibly a greater security concern than the heat map thing.

I just created a segment, no problem.
Are you guys using a desktop or a mobile app?

I'm using the desktop version. Non-premium member.

Still not working at 10:40 PM EST.


This makes sense. I don't doubt it. Thanks.


-Tim-

I'm on Premium (for like another month, it was a promotion), using the desktop version, and I still can't make segments. This is weird that some people can.

Well, I did have a SECRET security clearance at one time. Also I marked the segment private.

This is the beauty of web scale applications. They are loosely consistent but can withstand major component failures and keep on running.

In Strava's case, we are all probably hitting different regional web server front ends. If the change is intentional then it will eventually propagate to all the servers. If the change is a failure then it is probably localized.

My guess is that it is intentional as I still can't make a segment as of 2:30 PM EST Feb 1.


-Tim-

Yea my guess is that it's per region/server. After all, they did the same thing when they rolled out photo uploading from the desktop/web.


Also, anyone notice you no longer get PRs the first time you ride a segment?

Is that important, by default it is, right?

They recently changed it so you'd get a PR the first time you rode a segment. They took a lot of heat for that. I'm wondering if they reverted back to the previous system.

Personally I pay very little attention to KOMs (which I never get) and PRs and such, I mostly use Strava to track mileage and to see what my friends are up to, but I can see why getting PRs the first time on a segment would bother someone.

I had an interesting glitch with Strava the other day. After uploading my ride, it said I got a PR. Great right? Well, it recorded the date as 1/1/2026. So i don’t get credit for it for 8 more years! It wouldn’t show my ride in the feed either. I gave up trying to upload it again after several attempts and just put in the ride manually so I can at least track the mileage.

Yes I did. First group ride outside and rode about 40 miles of new roads out of 70 mile ride total. Only had 5 badges, instead of the usual 60 or so you used to get riding anywhere new.

A welcome “fix”.

Can anyone beat this?
TrackStandingForAnHour.JPG

That deserves a much higher suffer score.

Obviously it is posted here for entertainment, but the raw data of the HR it takes to do something like this is interesting. It takes 50-70 beats depending on where your baseline measure is resting or awake-chill to balance your bike and produce no power. I expect with power on, the balance effort is less, but hard to isolate anything really. 70 more BPM is AT. So for THIS rider doing no power to the pedals consumes half the HR band from rest to aerobic threshold. 50 rest-193 at (206 max).

I get HR is very individual, but it is nice to have something even if I don't know what it means yet. What made it go down at 30 I don't know and I expect the end 154 was a no-hand on bars effort.

Would a ride where I purposefully descended a hill slower than I climbed it at least match it for perversity?
Meanwhile, interesting observations.

Did you guys see this?
https://www.bicycling.com/rides/stra...ents-in-the-us

Pretty cool seeing the name of my little town on the map for #5 on the most popular Strava segments. I've contributed 84 attempts, and my PR (achieved solo on a still day, as it happens) puts me at a modestly respectable 4162 /18737 (not fourth place, four-thousandth place! ).

Also, not so surprising to see a segment in Central Park at #1, what with all the racing and training that goes on there. I've contributed 283 attempts to that one, and my PR is a much more respectable 1533 /36409, achieved during a race where, unfortunately, I got a big fat DNF (broken pedal ).
By the way, contrary to the article, Three Sisters is hardly a "straightaway;" it's named for three winding rollers.

Interesting. Taking a look though, it appears they're ranked by the total # of attempts, rather than the # of (different) people who've ridden the segment (eg. Alpine to Kiku sprint has 21,863 people having ridden this segment, or about ~3K more than KC5 ).

I'm maybe a bit surprised a bit that the southbound KC-5 segment is up there, vs a northbound segment but I suppose more riders come back via 9W than head north. Also, I assume a factor as to how long ago someone actually created the segment and that segment has been in existence.

Yeah, the numbers of rides or riders seems to be presented in different ways, which confuses things. For one thing, rankings only include rides that were public, and only one ride per 'athlete', but presumably the total number of riders indicated includes 'private' rides as well, and of course 'attempts' includes every attempt.

At first I was confused about KC5 as well, but after looking at the map, I realized that E. Clinton, where it ends, is not such an uncommon place to turn off (in fact, I take it often myself ), and yes, all the folks who ride up through the park and head right back to the GWB on 9W miss Kiku and all the other preceding segments. It doesn't seem to be as common to take the same loop clockwise, even though it's simpler. I guess it's because only anti-clockwise goes all the way from the river to the top in one continuous climb at Alpine if you just drop to the boat basin. Me, I just go in from the top anyhow, and make a climb sandwich of it if I'm hungry that way. Come to think of it, people probably like to take the loop anti-clockwise because they're eager to get into the park.

They seem to rank it by total attempts, even though they put in number of riders for some of the write-ups.

#2 in DC is on a loop that has a daily/weekly noon ride that a lot of the local racers/serious riders do often - leads to a lot of attempts (when they do 6 or 7 laps across the segment).

Done it.

A couple of my favorite training routes include north/south climbs/descents. Our prevailing spring winds often switch from mostly from the south to occasionally strong from the north. Perfect for weird Strava times, especially since I'm a mediocre climber under neutral conditions.

So recently on several occasions I've coasted down a long grade at around 12-14 mph (which I usually ride at 25-30 mph) into the wind to conserve energy for the return trip. And back up at 16-19 mph with the tailwind assist. This appeals to my sense of absurdity.

On the flip side, some of my return trip climbs into the wind have slogged along at 8 mph. Not sure the 30-35 mph downhill rides with tailwind were worth it. Okay, yeah, they were.

A bit misleading in the article as sometimes they don't differentiate between attempts and people, the three sisters segment has 921,299 attempts by 36,445 people.

This segment in Sydney's popular Centennial Park (sort of equivalent to NY Central Park) has 2,755,801 attempts by 25,312 people. Two thirds the number of different people but 3 times the number of attempts:

https://www.strava.com/segments/774964


The world's most ridden segment is this obscure one in Brazil with 5,407,493 attempts by 8,424 people:

https://www.strava.com/segments/1032028


I'd bet the UK has the most popular segment world wide (excluding Zwift which has some segments with 150,000+ people). This one in Richmond Park for example has 1,277,168 attempts by 95,122 people:

https://www.strava.com/segments/3970089

That's an average of 600+ attempts for each person!

There are some YouTube videos with drone footage of that segment in Brazil-- it's just bike after bike after bike. Clouds of them. And if you were to ride around it for just an hour, you'd easily get in 50-60 attempts. Getting to that 600 would be no problem. I've crossed the 1.2 mile stretch across the wash to get home over 300 times.

It probably has more to do with the fact that those areas have lots of people living there.

One would expect a segment in rural Nebraska for example, to have fewer riders.


-Tim-

Looks pretty boring. Must not be any other place to ride in Sao Paulo.