Doping Comes to Cat 6
06-04-13 | 07:55 PM
#126
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Joined: Jun 2003
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For anyone who might actually use the site originally posted I suggest cheating in a game of solitaire instead.
Strava is fun... I like riding my bike, I like riding my bike fast... I know when/how to push it and do so at my leisure. Makes hard intervals that much more interesting and is an incredibly useful tool to track progress. Comparison to others in this context may or may not be useful - but personally I have great fun chasing for a KOM, its a great motivator to push just that bit harder... as such I've gotten crazy stronger and going all out for a strava segments is a major part, its merely an interval. I mean, what puts someone on a high horse for refusing GPS data they can review/analyze/compare? What makes your interval better than mine??? And if you wanna put up fake data that says you went .1mph faster than me in a segment, how can you possibly scoff at ME???? How lame can you be? If me going for/beating my best time or someone elses best time pisses you off... well, in this time I got stronger and you got pissed off at someone who doesn't care.
If I do something stupid and crash, thats my own dam fault. Frankly the close calls and crashes I've been involved with had absolutely nothing to do with strava, they were merely a product of riding on a road/not knowing the limits of my bike/stupid people doing stupid things/me being stupid and not paying attention. I'm not stopping at every stop sign and putting a foot down, I'm not waiting for every green light, I'm not going to go 30mph through a crowded trail either...
Folks can hate it all they want, I'm gonna keep using Strava to motivate my training/find new places to ride/find people to ride with and I am very happy with the results (read: winning an actual race in a solo breakaway and keeping up with/finding the fastest group rides around here).
Strava is fun... I like riding my bike, I like riding my bike fast... I know when/how to push it and do so at my leisure. Makes hard intervals that much more interesting and is an incredibly useful tool to track progress. Comparison to others in this context may or may not be useful - but personally I have great fun chasing for a KOM, its a great motivator to push just that bit harder... as such I've gotten crazy stronger and going all out for a strava segments is a major part, its merely an interval. I mean, what puts someone on a high horse for refusing GPS data they can review/analyze/compare? What makes your interval better than mine??? And if you wanna put up fake data that says you went .1mph faster than me in a segment, how can you possibly scoff at ME???? How lame can you be? If me going for/beating my best time or someone elses best time pisses you off... well, in this time I got stronger and you got pissed off at someone who doesn't care.
If I do something stupid and crash, thats my own dam fault. Frankly the close calls and crashes I've been involved with had absolutely nothing to do with strava, they were merely a product of riding on a road/not knowing the limits of my bike/stupid people doing stupid things/me being stupid and not paying attention. I'm not stopping at every stop sign and putting a foot down, I'm not waiting for every green light, I'm not going to go 30mph through a crowded trail either...
Folks can hate it all they want, I'm gonna keep using Strava to motivate my training/find new places to ride/find people to ride with and I am very happy with the results (read: winning an actual race in a solo breakaway and keeping up with/finding the fastest group rides around here).
06-04-13 | 08:04 PM
#127
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Joined: Sep 2007
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Strava is awesome!!!
People who try to rationalize that it encourages dangerous riding are just jealous because their segment times suck. And that old hat about pinning on a number and racing in circles around the block is the litmus has no idea how to really ride.
How hard is it to ride fast when everybody is going the same way at the same time? It takes real skill to command presence and respect on the open road with a 30lb. bag. Commuters rule.
People who try to rationalize that it encourages dangerous riding are just jealous because their segment times suck. And that old hat about pinning on a number and racing in circles around the block is the litmus has no idea how to really ride.
How hard is it to ride fast when everybody is going the same way at the same time? It takes real skill to command presence and respect on the open road with a 30lb. bag. Commuters rule.
06-04-13 | 08:19 PM
#130
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Joined: Apr 2011
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From: San Diego
Bikes: Domane SLR Gen 4
I use Garmin Connect for my data. I m not a racer and my times are average. If I want people to laugh at me Ill post my bank statements. For me KOM means Killed on the Mountains or King of the MUP. If I was riding competitively I might take STRAVA more seriously.
06-04-13 | 09:30 PM
#131
Portland Fred
Joined: Oct 2005
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06-04-13 | 09:32 PM
#132
Thread Starter
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From: SE Minnesota
Bikes: are better than yours.
06-04-13 | 09:55 PM
#133
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From: Chicago, IL
Bikes: S-Works Roubaix SL2^H4, Secteur Sport, TriCross, Kaffenback, Lurcher 29er
You should take that little gripe up with Strava instead of using it to make absurd projections on other cyclists.
06-04-13 | 10:27 PM
#134
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From: Driftless
Bikes: Caad8, Mukluk 3, Trek Superfly, Gary Fisher Irwin.
06-04-13 | 10:44 PM
#135
Portland Fred
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I'm going to go out on a limb and guess your batting average is lower than BH's...
06-04-13 | 10:50 PM
#136
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Joined: Dec 2008
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From: Columbus, OH
Bikes: CAAD10
Ditto. I've been using Strava since 2011 and I've never once seen an unsafe act in the name of a KOM. I have to assume all the KOM racing shenanigans are in the heads of people who just want to whine. Not on a single group ride have I heard an utterance of attacking a strava segment. Most of my teammates are on Strava and as far as I can tell nobody really worries about it that much. There's also this mistaken belief that chasing a KOM inherently means being unsafe. How about just being strong? There are several flat segments and climbing segments near me, for which safety is not a concern. Going 0.2mph faster than the other guy doesn't make you unsafe unless there are intersections involved. For segments that are clearly dangerous, I flag them and they get hidden or removed. What's the big deal?
In contrast to your experience however, if I am on a ride with one or two other guys, we are conscious of the segments around our route and will talk about where they start/stop. Sometimes we choose to make an interval out of it, or do a mini-TTT on a flat segment, and sometimes it doesn't come into play at all. Depends on what kind of ride we're doing. I also have never seen any unsafe acts in pursuit of KOMs, nor segments which seem inherently dangerous. Yeah, so no one cares except you and your buddies - so what? You are having fun, and that's value-added experience provided free by Strava. If nothing else, I think it's worth while to see my own segment times throughout the year and compare them with perceived effort at the time.
People who have fun with Strava don't take it seriously. People who hate on Strava are taking it way too serious.
06-04-13 | 11:11 PM
#137
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Joined: Nov 2012
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I've always looked at strava as a social networking site more than a performance tracking site. I use it mostly to see what my friends are doing and to give them encouragement when they push their limits, whether it's the friend working up to his first metric century or the one that's training for RAAM. With strava I get to see and know about it before I hear it directly from them and that seems pretty cool to me.
06-05-13 | 12:08 AM
#138
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06-05-13 | 12:14 AM
#139
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06-05-13 | 12:29 AM
#140
Zoom zoom zoom zoom bonk
Joined: Sep 2006
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From: New Zealand
Bikes: Giant Defy, Trek 1.7c, BMC GF02, Trek Marlin 6, Scott Sub 35, Kona Rove, Trek Verve+2
Speaking of activities, personal stuff, and tracking.
What would be really useful would be a ride generator. Not to me of course. No.
But I'm sure some guys would love to be able to leave home on the bike, come back 2hrs later all sweaty and have a garmin track to show Mrs Stemflip where they've been.
What would be really useful would be a ride generator. Not to me of course. No.
But I'm sure some guys would love to be able to leave home on the bike, come back 2hrs later all sweaty and have a garmin track to show Mrs Stemflip where they've been.
06-05-13 | 12:45 AM
#141
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From: Columbus, OH
Bikes: CAAD10
I found this picture on google and used it because I think it's a pretty cool idea. Just because you are intentionally logging times on segments doesn't mean you put any stock into it, or as we call here, "e-wang." It could be for any number of reasons, including legitimate training value. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that segments are often placed where folks tend to want to go all out and see what they can do anyways. No harm there - Strava just helps in aggregation and display of data.
06-05-13 | 01:26 AM
#142
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I found this picture on google and used it because I think it's a pretty cool idea. Just because you are intentionally logging times on segments doesn't mean you put any stock into it, or as we call here, "e-wang." It could be for any number of reasons, including legitimate training value. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that segments are often placed where folks tend to want to go all out and see what they can do anyways. No harm there - Strava just helps in aggregation and display of data.
It's the riders that Psimet is targeting in his comments that think they are in a big competition and take unwarranted risk on public highways and paths in the mistaken belief they will "win" some mystical prize called bragging rights.
06-05-13 | 05:11 AM
#143
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From: Chicago, IL
Bikes: S-Works Roubaix SL2^H4, Secteur Sport, TriCross, Kaffenback, Lurcher 29er
06-05-13 | 05:16 AM
#144
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From: Chicago, IL
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Segments are just segments. The projections are from the people who for some reason believe that people consider a Strava segment to be a mountain contest just because Strava picked a bad name for the first place ranking.
06-05-13 | 06:47 AM
#145
serious cyclist
Joined: Apr 2009
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From: Austin
Bikes: S1, R2, P2
The thing I don't get about the Strava hate (and I say this as a non-user; Addictionites can vouch for the fact that I'm a trainer rat) is that plenty of non-Strava-users have favorite climbs or long flats they use to monitor fitness changes. All Strava does is codify that. I know I got up Heartbreak Hill in Boerne faster on Sunday than ever before, but I don't know by how much, since all I have that's concrete is the minimum speed I hit on it. Actually knowing that would be nice, though I'm not going to bother signing up for Strava to get it.
Now, taking your ranking seriously is silly, given the ease of cheating, but if I had a bunch of roadie friends I'd have no issue with trash-talking about who had the best times out of us.
Now, taking your ranking seriously is silly, given the ease of cheating, but if I had a bunch of roadie friends I'd have no issue with trash-talking about who had the best times out of us.
06-05-13 | 06:51 AM
#147
Portland Fred
Joined: Oct 2005
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Bikes: Custom Winter, Challenge Seiran SL, Fuji Team Pro, Cattrike Road/Velokit, РOS hybrid
My only absurd projection is thinking that people would realize that if I'm saying really stupid things, I'm screwing around. But hey, this is the 41.
You seem to be under the impression that people are serious here. Or that they care.
Just in case it's not obvious that a 'bent rider who hangs out with road cyclists probably doesn't get too hung up on choices, consider a few of my contributions to this thread:
And there's a mini thread about encrypting data which may look serious because it makes sense from a technical point of view, except if I thought strava was a bad idea, why would I want to help?
Strava doesn't raise my skirt nor does the data obsession people so many people have. But I get it. But just to spell things out, I'm not serious and I regularly add gibberish just to see what it brings out of others.
You seem to be under the impression that people are serious here. Or that they care.
Just in case it's not obvious that a 'bent rider who hangs out with road cyclists probably doesn't get too hung up on choices, consider a few of my contributions to this thread:
Strava doesn't raise my skirt nor does the data obsession people so many people have. But I get it. But just to spell things out, I'm not serious and I regularly add gibberish just to see what it brings out of others.
06-05-13 | 07:02 AM
#148
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From: Chicago, IL
Bikes: S-Works Roubaix SL2^H4, Secteur Sport, TriCross, Kaffenback, Lurcher 29er
Also, although I did respond to your post, but that doesn't mean I was responding to you and only you -- it was just a reference point in the conversation. Some people here do seem to be making similar comments and not all of them are in your vein.
Honestly this forum is harder to discern in that regard than some others because of the tradition of not using colored text to indicate sarcasm, not using emoticons, and because of the wide representation we have of age groups, experience levels, activity preferences, and cultures.
06-05-13 | 07:28 AM
#149
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From: Alpharetta, GA
Bikes: Nashbar Road
I'm still struggling with why Strava segments aren't races, if people race against them. Non-sanctioned and un-monitored, I get that. Not involving road racing tactics, I get that to. But I'm skeptical about the safety generalizations, or that the competition is meaningless.
Oh well, I don't race Strava so it's just hypothetical - my commutes all being within seconds of each other takes the shine off after a few times. But the other thing I struggle with is the complaining about ringers jumping on personal segments for an easy KOM. Why not just mark them private if they're strictly for personal use? It seems to me that the only reason to upload to public segments is to make the ride available to the public and the main reason for that is to publicly compare with other riders ... maybe I'm missing a point here somehow.
Oh well, I don't race Strava so it's just hypothetical - my commutes all being within seconds of each other takes the shine off after a few times. But the other thing I struggle with is the complaining about ringers jumping on personal segments for an easy KOM. Why not just mark them private if they're strictly for personal use? It seems to me that the only reason to upload to public segments is to make the ride available to the public and the main reason for that is to publicly compare with other riders ... maybe I'm missing a point here somehow.
06-05-13 | 07:40 AM
#150
serious cyclist
Joined: Apr 2009
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From: Austin
Bikes: S1, R2, P2
the other thing I struggle with is the complaining about ringers jumping on personal segments for an easy KOM. Why not just mark them private if they're strictly for personal use? It seems to me that the only reason to upload to public segments is to make the ride available to the public and the main reason for that is to publicly compare with other riders ... maybe I'm missing a point here somehow.