waynesulak

Amen. I have never raced a bike but I know from other sports that it is much easier to produce in practice on a day when you happen to be going well than it is to produce on demand when facing real live opponents and random elements. Pressure does interesting things to people.

Ritterview

I think there are two separate issues here:

1. What is the most sporting way for tandem teams to identify themselves on the profile, given that none of the choices Strava makes available accurately describe a tandem team?



2. What is the most effective way for tandem teams to influence and encourage Strava to make tandem accommodations?


I think that it is most sporting for tandem teams to select Male, or desex themselves with Rather not say. That leaves QOM feathers unruffled, and Strava without bothersome tandems to deal with.

If tandem teams are all so sporting and helpful, and thus disappear into wherever Rather not say goes, Strava will not thank, or even acknowledge, tandems for being such good Strava citizens. Oh no. Strava will continue to pretend tandems don't exist.

I don't see a positive way to encourage Strava to accommodate tandems. I've done positive things-- initiated the Strava tandem club, encouraged other tandems to join Strava, etc., and I have zero expectation of any positive reciprocal action from Strava. It would help if there was a Strava business/revenue model, that at least one could work with, but that is all nebulous. I think the Strava business model is to be really cool, popular and awesome in hopes that another company pays a billion dollars for it. They don't need tandems for that.

Reluctantly, I must concede that if tandems are ever to make any headway at Strava, such that there is a tandem team athlete profile, and a tandem category for competition on segments, it will by tandems inserting themselves as an unwelcome and sexed guest into the Strava segment competition wheelhouse. It is by teams such as BradCycles/StubbedToe posting blazing times, refusing to desex its stoker self, incur deposed QOM pique, and let Strava explain to the wrathful QOM's that it is too lazy to make a tandem category to definitively solve the QOM's tandem problem.

If anyone has a more positive approach, I'd like to hear it.

StubbedMyToe

Why am i'm protesting?? I'm protesting because WE'RE THE ONLY ONES GETTING FLAGGED! They are basically not acknowledging our rides just because we are FAST. If we were slow....nobody would have a problem with that. NOT COOL! I would 100% be fine if they flagged ALL tandem rides. But i'm not ok with them just flagging mine.

StubbedMyToe

Would the legitimate female riders prefer it if i do what most of the other female stokers do, and post my tandem rides as a single female rider instead of as a tandem? Ignorance is bliss?

What is more deceptive?

1. Creating a tandem account and listing it as female?
2. Uploading tandem rides to a single female account?

StubbedMyToe

Thanks for this Ritterview. I get what everyone is saying in the forum about how this is just for fun, and how the female riders are getting pissed. I see that side of it. But i'm mad because of the way strava is dealing with it. Strava is erasing our rides as if we didn't do them. We rode hard on those rides and i want to have them archived! Someone earlier commented about how "people think tandem rides are easy when they're really not". This is completely true. I would say that tandem rides are waaaaay harder than when I'm on a single bike doing a group ride.

Strava is dealing with this in a petty way (yes! they started it so i had to stoop to their level! LOLOLOL). They deleted our tandem ride and they deleted bradcycles "male" ride and then they started deleting our other tandem rides until i told them I wanted to get in contact with their manager or legal team. I want to make it clear that i'm only this pissed off because they are only policing us. If they want to be fair, they should police ALL tandems.

bradcycles

I like this approach. It's frustrating that their is no single way that tandem rides are getting posted to Strava. Some people post them under individual accounts. Some label their tandem rides as "tandem" rides. Some don't. Some people only post the rides under a "tandem" account. The "tandem" account of mixed teams is sometimes labeled "male," "female," or "rather not say." There is no consistent approach being taken. From a sporting perspective, I agree that labeling a tandem team as "male" is better, but, as I mentioned above, any individual male will go faster with almost any stoker on the flats or descents, so there is still a level of not being fair with this approach. From a sporting perspective, I think the worst possible thing on Strava is the individual female riders who are posting the rides to their personal account and are not labeling the rides as "tandem" rides. It's a bit frustrating that our rides are getting flagged (and therefore getting disqualified from appearing on leaderboards) when we are being explicit about riding on a tandem, but there are a number of female stokers who are just posting their tandem rides to their individual accounts (and not identifying their rides as "tandem" rides) and not getting flagged.

merlinextraligh

^ Do you guys go out and ride these segments as time trials? Unless everyone is trying to ride the same route, no more no less, and trying to do it as fast as possible, does it matter how fast you go for a segment?

I can see that a tandem specific category would make strava data more interesting for tandem teams. It would be nice if hey did that, but they likely won't for reasons listed above.

Beyond that, there are just too many limitations in the whole process to take it seriously enough to worry about it.

Dean V

+1

Bad1

Just saying if your that fast nationals are here in Bend Or right now & tandem division is well Represented with a honest scoring system!

StubbedMyToe

Thanks Bad1. We'll do it next year.

Ritterview

Strava segments are the same route, no more no less. PR's are pitted against PR's, so only the fastest ever for each Athlete is compared. So, it does matter how fast you go for a segment. Especially a popular segment, such as Old La Honda, with 7,273 Athlete's times, and these subdivided by sex, age, etc. Knowing how you fare in comparision to thousands of enthusiast cyclists I take more seriously than who might be in any year Northern California / Nevada District TT Champions, which might have only 1-3 entries in several of the mixed tandem age categories.

Ritterview

The way I look at it, tandems at Strava are like Pinto and Flounder rushing Omega.

You all remember:

Here's how it goes:


Strava will take you as a half-bike Athlete, but would rather you leave the tandem team outside.



Strava very welcoming to all cyclists, on the face of it.



But, at Strava, tandem teams are not real athletes, and are mocked behind their backs.

"A wimp and a blimp!"


Strava touts itself to the real Athletes.

We're not going to say Strava's the best quantitative self site. But a lot of outstanding Athletes figure they'll join Strava, or won't upload at all.


The real Athletes complain to Strava about non-desexed tandem teams.

This stoker stole my QOM.


Strava solves Tandem Team problem by encouraging teams to desex themselves, mix only with the dubious gender crowd, and leave the segment competition up to the real Athletes.

Team Pinto & Flounder, I'd like to introduce you to Rather Not Say Gender! You've all got a lot to talk about!


Tandem teams in their element, Strava problem solved!

JMarino

Interesting thread. Kathy (my wife/stoker) and I have two accounts: One listed as male with our two names and the word Tandem in the title, and the second one listed as Female for just Kathy (she has her own Garmin GPS watch which we upload from). She has quite a few QOMs around here. No issues so far with the approach, but she has lost a few QOMs recently by only seconds. It may be coincidence, but it is happening more often now. We enjoy the fun of the whole thing, but do wish that there was a tandem category.

The funniest this is when she or I post different times on the same ride. Sometimes she even beats me!

bradcycles

Does your wife's account make it clear that it is a tandem account or do the ride titles clearly indicate that they were tandem rides?

JMarino

No, Kathy's account does not indicate that it is a tandem ride. The Male account that we share does list it as a tandem ride, though. Our tandem account is listed as "Joe & Kathy Marino (Tandem)"

bradcycles

Interesting. We are getting flagged because our rides on our tandem account (female) are clearly identified as being done on a tandem. It looks like it is better to not label the rides as tandem rides if you want to avoid getting flagged on strava. But it seems unfair to the other single female riders to not give any indication that the times were achieved on a tandem...

kingsqueak

JMarino

Maybe so, but anyone who knows us (or wants to know about her) will know or soon realize that Kathy, as a blind stoker, cannot ride a single bike. Plus, she feels pretty strongly that she earns what ever she can achieve on every ride that she does. She really does, too. I am quite lucky that she and I have a similar approach to riding. We both approach it as both recreation and more often as exercise.

Team Fab

We are in the same boat. My stoker is disabled from a spinal injury and cannot steer or brake safely. She is still very competative though. You may want to play the disability card on Strava. It worked for us to get entry into Canadian Gran Fondos. Here as long as it is reasonable to accomodate a disability they must or really big trouble. And the courts favour the disabled side.

We currently, just list ourselves as male. Seems to make us not stand out.

While on the Strava subject. How do I list our triple? Male/female/child. Now there is a new can of worms.

diabloridr

Took the words right out of my mouth: "First world problems..."

I'm lucky in that I live in an area with an active - but relatively small - cycling and Strava community. Most everyone near the top of the leaderboards knows most everyone else and recognizes it for what it is - a little friendly competition and incentive to improve.

Beautiful stoker and I both have accounts, but do not maintain separate accounts for the tandem (we both ride our singles more than the tandem). We always accurately show the bike as "Co-Motion Speedster TANDEM" so there is no doubt which bike we are riding.

I have periodically achieved KOM's on the tandem but eventually someone raises the bar. Beautiful stoker has about a dozen QOM's which are all on the tandem AFAIK. Whenever I congratulate her, she inevitably replies "It's just the tandem, it doesn't really count".

We ride regularly with the local QOM Queen (she has 10 pages worth) and she takes no offense, losing a QOM only inspires her to train smarter and harder.

There is one other local tandem I know of who play into the local Srava KOM/QOM mix. The captain is an extremely strong rider, having earned 20 pages of KOMs, mostly on his single, but also on the tandem. His stoker records her single rides on Strava, but not the tandem rides as "it wouldn't be fair". Her call.

Everyone is chasing a strong local recumbent rider who has about 4 pages of KOM's. Some of his downhill times are amazing. We're close behind on a short segment outside of Paso Robles where he is KOM. The guys just ahead of us on the list are two pro's who uploaded the 2011 Paso stage of the Tour of California to Strava. I suppose we might be able to squeeze ahead of them if we had a closed road and peloton to work with.

I've only ever flagged one entry on Strava. The time was so far out of wack and the member had no significant history on Strava that I felt very comfortable flagging the entry for deletion.

Like I said, "First world problems".

Ritterview

So, Kathy's only chance to participate in segment competition on Strava is as a stoker. With her tandem bicycle, Strava allows Kathy to participate in competition just as do the better sighted. This could be an inspiring feel-good story for Strava, and if they had any sense they would make it nice feature on at least their blog (especially so as Team Marino in performance and appearance are definitely athletes). so to counteract the negative press Strava otherwise attracts.

But, no, given the precedent of BradCycles/StubbedherToe, and Strava's ham-handed ways, Strava will be visually impaired to this PR*opportunity. With its anxious solicitude for their precious QOM's, Strava will manage to extract the sour lemon from the proffered lemonade. At the first peep of protest from a dethroned (and perfectly sighted) QOM, Strava will publicly expunge Kathy's QOM ride, snatch QOM laurels from Kathy's brow, impugn her sportmanship, and imprecate that she is a QOM cheater.

Strava yanks QOM's from blind athlete. That's the sort of story that Strava is working towards.


[*Strava: in this context, PR refers to public relations, not personal record]

bradcycles

lol. well, this likely will never become an issue. because kathy doesn't ever identify herself as riding a tandem, when a QOM gets dethroned by kathy, the dethroned QOM will just assume she got beat by a stronger individual woman, and won't flag the ride. so, we have learned, on strava, it pays for female tandem riders to post their tandem rides as if they rode them alone. so, rest assured for all you female stokers posting those rides as your own individual rides - you will likely not be flagged! and the other women will never know you had a man helping to power you to all of your records! problem solved! don't worry! you earned it! you didn't have any advantage over the other individual women!

bradcycles

ham-handed or not, this event raised the issue within strava. our strava support person responded with the following:

"Please know that we are in discussion internally about the best way to handle tandem data going forward.
Thanks for your patience!"

if we had posted our rides as many others (as an individual woman without identifying the ride as a tandem ride), our rides would have likely not been flagged, and the issue would not have received further visibility within strava.

Dean V

How many competitive mixed tandem teams are there in your area that you think it will be worth while having your own division within strava?

Ritterview

Team Brad/StubbedToe live in the epicenter of the Northern California cycling hotbed, and there are a surprising number of competitive tandem teams. Anyone doubting this could have joined us on Labor Day for the Western Wheelers Java Ride. Several notoriously fast tandem teams were on the ride, and we could barely hang on the back of the peloton, and were dropped several times. This is getting dropped on a flat section at 27.9 mph, because the tandems were pushing it at 28.5 mph.

Just as a town may not have enough business for one lawyer, but will with two, so too does fun competition require only one other competitive tandem. If there were a tandem category, tandems could find each other. That alone would be a big tandem deal right there.

Even for tandem teams in an area with few tandems, competitions could arise from flat time trial courses, and hill climbs. The VAM is a means of global hill climb competition. So, this would be a means of a team in a remote and relatively sparsely populated island to compare their efforts, and indeed compete, against tandem teams worldwide.