Ok, it was more of a phone failure than Strava failure. At some point during a 30 mile ride today my phone crashed and factory reset itself losing my Strava data for today's ride. Has this ever happened to you? How did you cope? haha. It's sad that this could ruin an otherwise wonderful ride.

This is quite literally why I have reverted to a simple old school cycling computer. I still run GPS on my phone, but now I don't have to worry about making sure the battery is at 100% before a ride. With JUST GPS on & the phone in airplane mode otherwise, it's good for 8 hrs on a full charge. That's good for a century. But, if I want to make calls, listen to music or otherwise use the phone, the battery life is shortened significantly.

I've actually been tempted to buy an old Android with a removable battery just for this... Old small simple Android phone + one of those massive extended aftermarket batteries...

Yup.

Bike Ride Profile | Dammit Strava, you had one job! near Santa Cruz | Times and Records | Strava

Didn't know my route, so kept checking google maps along the way. I had to restart the activity to get Strava going, but forgot one time. Spoiled a really nice ride. Oh, and then my battery died as I was getting into Monterey, so couldn't find the hotel.

My lesson; bring a printed map. And an extended battery pack.

It's better to use a garmin for strava unless you're very diligent about keeping your phone fully charged before going out on a ride and don't ride too far.

I've made it through 2 centuries with my phone. Had it charging in the car on the way to one, had a battery pack for the other.

A friend borrowed the battery for a double recently, and was glad he did. I always have my cateye as backup anyway.

My phone was fully charged and it crashed after an 90 minutes so it's not the battery. When I took it out of my jersey pocket it was completely reset back to the Android set up. So lost my ride and all the apps and customization I had done to my phone..argh!

I have a cheap computer on my bike so I'm just upset about Strava because I like to track my progress. I know there were some PRs on this ride! I've thought about Garmin 510 but I don't know if I can justify it now. My $30 computer is wireless and has cadence so the only real upgrade for the Garmin is to be able to upload to Strava. Oh well, still a great ride today. I'll get over it

I had that happen on a ride, but it was my Garmin 500 that went bad - wouldn't read more than a few hundred feet each time I reset it, so I had 0.1 miles recorded when I got home.

As it was a route I've done before, I copied/renamed the old fit file, edited it to change the dates (in Notepad) and then went to Strava and did an 'upload from file'. It worked just fine. I just wanted the mileage, so the stats being off a bit was no big deal.

Ha ha, thanks for the tip. I figured out how to export an old ride from the website and modify and upload. I feel like I'm cheating the system but like you, it was the same ride so mileage and elevation gain should at least be accurate. I'm in the middle of the July MTS challenge so I didn't want that hard work to go to waste

Weird. I mean, I do keep rides logged on Strava, but my wonderful rides are wonderful whether or not they're cataloged, compared and shared. To each their own, I guess.

how could this negatively affect the ride?

Get a cycling computer to log rides. Strava on any phone is a huge battery drain, and you may want your battery to make a phone call in an emergency. Plus, the phones get really hot.

On a budget, CatEye computers are small and light and run a really long time. Or you can pick up a Garmin 5xx series for cheap these days on ebay.

I don't know how long everyone else rides, but I use a GPS app on my iphone (cyclemeter), tuck it into my jersey pocket, and run Pandora as well, yet I can ride a century and still have ~20% battery remaining. I guess the battery life would be a problem if I were doing double centuries, but who here is really doing that? For my average 25-40 mile rides, it's a non-issue.

Some people, myself included, like to have some in-ride feedback. Having the screen on for that is a major drain. Besides that, phone GPS has never given me terribly accurate results (though I haven't used a phone for this purpose in 2-3 phone generations) and most phones aren't compatible with the Ant+ HRMs and speed/cadence sensors. I think that phones will close the gap even more (hopefully we'll start seeing more BT LE phones/peripherals, soon), but even so, there's something to be said for dedicated devices.

I had my Garmin play up on a 120 mile race. Didn't seem to effect the wonderfulness of the ride at all.

I use a dedicated cyclocomputer (an old Polar HRM) on my handlebars and keep my phone in my pocket running Strava. A 50 mile ride drains the battery maybe 30-40%. I always have it fully charged before doing a ride of any considerable length so that's no problem for me. I may pick up a small spare external battery for century or longer rides but those are few and far between these days.

As far as accuracy is concerned, my phone and computer report mileage within a few tenths of each other at worst. That's good enough for me.

I was thinking of going Android for my next upgrade; could you tell us which phone you're using so I could avoid? Thanks!

Same. I have my phone in my pocket tracking the ride and I use a stem mounted traditional comp to give me real time speed/HR data. My distances reported on both are always virtually identical.

Moto G. It's actually been great otherwise. It's hard to beat the hardware and features for around $200 without a contract

Moto G by Motorola

Me too. I have speed, cadence, trip distance and the time on my computer. I just use the phone for strava with the screen turned off in my jersey pocket. I usually ride 2-2 1/2 hours and use about 20% of my battery on my phone.

What's Strava?

well played sir

Never had that happen, but I have had cases where my phone just won't pick up a signal.

Yeah, kinda upset me to lose a 21 mile ride...

One time, long, long ago, my phone battery went flat when I was making a call....I blame the person I was calling at the time...

About a month ago I drove down to Markleeville for a 100+ mile ride that included Carson pass and both sides of Ebbetts & Monitor. As I was getting my bike out of the car I realized that I forgot my GPS. It was sad how much that bothered me. I realized how addicted I was.

It was still a super fun ride, though. By the end of the day I was glad I didn't know exactly how slow I was going.

the first step is admitting you have a problem.