A recent update to Strava has given users the option of selecting mountain biking as an activity (previously the only option was a generic ‘ride’).
What effect will this have? Like pretty much everything to do with Strava, it’s something of a double-edged sword.
The fact that it will be easier to specifically look at where mountain bikers have been riding (segments, Heatmap etc) is something of a Pandora’s Box.
Whilst it doesn’t really give The Landowning Powers That Be any more info than they already have (they don’t care if the cyclist is on a ‘mountain bike ride’ or just a ‘ride’), it does make it easier for mountain bikers to see where other mountain bikers like to ride. Then again, it’s already pretty easy to work out where mountain bikers have been riding as opposed to road cyclists.
So maybe this update won’t really change much at all? Apart from giving users the ability to track and log their differing types of cycling activity?
We shall see.
In the meantime, here’s something Hannah wrote a few years ago about the dangers of Strava…
Why Strava is damaging for mountain biking
[Originally from June 2015 – as are the comments below in case you were wondering!]
I’ve been thinking about this issue for a while, and now it’s hit the mainstream press. Strava is all over the news for revealing, through its heatmap function, the location of various military installations. Oops. While we might have a bit of a giggle at the foolishness of supposedly highly trained undercover CIA operatives uploading their patrol routes to Strava as they try and reach their 10,000 steps a day target, I think us mountain bikers need to take a look at ourselves too.
Don’t get me wrong: some of the data being revealed by Strava is very interesting (as well as telling us where we might find a supposedly hidden military base). It demonstrates that in many areas there is a huge cycling-for-leisure population that is completely abandoning the bike midweek for any utilitarian purposes. For transport planners and cycling activists, this kind of data can be really useful in helping to provide the kind of infrastructure or incentives that might help alleviate some of the traffic problems on our roads. Of course, the dataset isn’t perfect – Strava is likely to attract those with more of an interest in hitting targets than just getting from A to B, but it gives a degree of insight into cycling habits all the same. It also gives us insight into exercise habits more generally – data shows that people who exercise regularly (and keep at it) are more likely to exercise in the morning, or as part of a group or club – potentially useful information for tackling public health issues.
However, when it comes to offroad riding, I think Strava has the potential to give some insights which are probably not too helpful to anyone working to improve trail access for riders. Let’s take a look at those issues.
Speed on trails
Cruising past a walker at what seems like a slow speed to us might well seem like light speed to them. Especially if you don’t give them a cheery wave and hello. Strava gives them the power to prove that you were riding at whatever exorbitant speed you might have actually been doing – albeit at 5am at midsummer when they chances of meeting anyone are very slim. But when we did it doesn’t really matter. If people are hurtling down a bridleway at 40mph then people are going to hate. Do that on a footpath and feed them the data to prove you’re at it on a sunny Saturday afternoon, and they might have a point.
Cheeky trails – you’re using them
This is further fodder for the haterz. You’re riding on footpaths, over SSI moorland, and in that private estate, leaving your digital tyre marks behind you. Not only were you riding there, you were riding fast, it wasn’t an accidental mistaken route – you went back the following week to try and better your time. And you took a photograph of that little jump you built, and added it to your ride record. It might have added to the feel good feeling for the day as the little kudos thumbs rolled in, but it’s added fuel to the haters’ fire. Is it really worth it for those thumbs?
Cheeky or private trails – where they are
Now I know that haters are going to hate. Until there is Scottish style access we’re going to be up against them, and then they’ll probably just find new ways to hate us. But I think that the virtual signposting of trails is one of the most damaging things that us mountain bikers are doing to ourselves. It’s one thing to post a shot of a cheeky trail on Instagram, or even a video of some cool jumps in the woods. But record your ride on Strava and you leave a digital trail which can provide anyone with nice neat map of where to find that great route. Turn that great descent into a segment and things get even worse. Anyone who is thinking of visiting the area can simply search the Strava segment map and see where all the trails are. They don’t need a local guide or friend to show them, they can just follow the map and ride the trail. Look at the leaderboard for a segment or two, you’ll probably find someone who has a public profile and you can download their entire ride as a .gpx file. Suddenly a quiet hillside known only to a handful of local riders (and maybe only ridden in the right conditions) is covered in outsiders, subjecting the trails to more use than is sustainable and leading to conflict (which of course the local riders are left to deal with, while the outsiders move on to their next ride location). And what if you’re a landowner who has been building trails for your own fun, some muppet sneaks on and records their ride, and suddenly you’re faced with the problems caused by uninvited strangers injuring themselves on your own personal gap jumps?
No local knowledge needed
Being able to find trails without any local connection isn’t just a problem of heavy traffic. People finding trails this way know nothing of any local agreements that might be in place. Your mate Bob has a farm and lets you all build and ride trails on his hillside, but not in lambing season. Strava stalking doesn’t let riders know this. Or that you’ve agreed with local community groups to leave a trail alone due to local wildlife sensitivities. Residents just see riders – they don’t know if they’re local or not – and uninformed riders can jeopardise the efforts that local riders may be making to keep the peace and retain trail access.
Data selling
As the US Army has now realised, Strava is collecting your data. As their business model doesn’t involve serving adverts to us, they’re using other potential sources of income – and one of these is your data. As I said in my introduction, knowledge about where and how we ride can be used to benefit cyclists, however I have little doubt it could also be used against us. What if Natural England was concerned about cheeky trails on SSI land? It’s not too hard to imagine that buying Strava data to show the patterns of usage and access could easily be used to justify the building of large fences or other obstacles. Forget to set all your privacy settings appropriately – or just don’t give it the thought that it might be an issue – and you could be contributing to this kind of justification.
What could Strava do?
Before this military data story kicked off, I contacted Strava to ask about their position – their response is basically that people using Strava are expected to behave. This is the statement they gave me when I asked them about the issues above:
Gareth Mills, UK Country Manager at Strava, said: “We expect Strava athletes to know and obey all laws and rules related to their activities. We ask our members not to use illegal or closed trails, or trespass on private property.”
Call me contrary, but I find this a cop out. They also failed to tell me whether it is possible to get a segment removed. As far as I can tell, it is not. So if someone creates a segment on your personal gap jumps on your own land, I can’t see how you can do anything about it. Even reporting it as ‘dangerous’ only means you have to go through an extra disclaimer before you get to see the leaderboard – it doesn’t remove the segment.
Surely, where it is clear that riders are using illegal or closed trails, there should be some way to report this and get a segment removed from the map, or create zones (similar to the privacy zone you’ve probably got set up round your house) where ride routes will not be displayed publicly? Indeed, with modern on-line mapping, it can’t be that complicated to make it impossible to record a ride on anything other that wouldn’t exist in a sat-nav? Road cyclists could continue to compete, land access issues would go back to the times where secret trails stood a chance of being secret.
Given all the effort Strava is putting in to developing itself into a social network, with new features to encourage its use, you would think there would have at least been some discussion of these issues, and possible solutions. Again, I asked Strava, but only got the statement above. Even a vague ‘we recognise it is an issue and are testing out options for addressing this’ would have been more encouraging – but no such glimmers of hope were forthcoming.
I made my own suggestions for possible remedies: could there be an ‘environmental’ flag added, so that – like with ‘dangerous’ segments – riders could be alerted to a sensitive trail that had restrictions (like, for example Snowdon) upon it? Could such segments be removed from the search map, but not the segments – so that if you rode a trail, you would be recorded on the segment, but you couldn’t use the map to discover its presence in the first place?
Again, silence apart from that bland statement above.
Other social media channels have had to step up and address the behaviour of their users. Extremist content and images of abuse must be identified and removed. Purveyors of hate have their accounts suspended (Trump excepted – Ed). Obviously cheeky trail access is on a completely different level of ‘wrong’, but the point that social media operators do have a responsibility to police the behaviour of their users stands. Asking riders ‘to know and obey all laws and rules related to their activities’ and absolving yourselves of responsibility doesn’t cut it.
Perhaps this will change now that Strava is going to be getting calls from irate military commanders – maybe they will start offering a means of removing data from the map. But until that’s the case, I suggest you take responsibility for yourselves: don’t use Strava when mountain biking.
Strava must be able to remove and block a segment going on. My example is the dark crystal in whist. Nothing there and you cannot put one down it. Just saying.
On Strava’s privacy settings page there is a checkbox that allows you to remove your data from Heatmaps….
The biggest problem with Strava around here is the dumbing down of trails. Some of the most interesting, and tricky, single track quickly becomes a ripped straight line once a segment is created. I’m tempted to create a loop around the perimeter of the car-park for those who want to get their circuit completed as quickly as possible without the hard part of actually enjoying riding round the trail.
About four years ago I was working in a busy bicycle maintenance business in an upmarket London suburb.
We had a new customer come in one day with a fancy racing bike that had a fancy crank, and he asked us to change the spider out for another one which he provided. He was a surly fella, but one of our customers recognised him from a race and engaged him in conversation so that gave him some authentication in our eyes.
When it came to doing the work we found that he had provided the wrong spider for the crank he had so we couldn’t fit it because it didn’t fit. There was something else wrong with the crank set up which we sorted free of charge and then I phoned him to apologise that we couldn’t do the work because the part he’d provided was the wrong part. He came in with a face like thunder, grabbed his bike and the part and left without saying one single word.
Two days later he’s on the phone saying we’d broken his power meter and I was to pay him £600 now for a new one. I explained that I was only an employee so I wouldn’t personally be paying him anything, and that I’d get my boss to call him.
We got on to our customer who knew this guy who then looked the guy up for us on Strava.
And Strava told us this guy’s power meter had not been working for six months.
Strava can be useful.
I haven’t read the Strava privacy policy in-depth but it seems that even if you have a private account and also mark individual rides as private, this data is still shown on global heat maps – albeit anonymously. There’s a very convoluted way to opt out through the app, on their website it’s easier.
I’m torn on this.
Although a local I learned my way around what I consider my local (The Quantocks) from guidebooks, online magazine maps and posts on the STW forum. I only found Strava later (I had been using mapmyride). It did prove invaluable for finding trails and I did get far more enjoyment and riding from hunting places out. Part of riding for me is exploring, and doing it the digital way still requires some intelligence on the ground. You can still get a bit lost (just not completely for too long!).
If it weren’t for Strava I wouldn’t have the depth of knowledge of my local area. I knew which areas weren’t being ridden and explored those too. This gave me a reason to get out, time and time again, and build more interesting rides.
It’s not just about riding fast and screaming down trails, but a balance of all things.
Conversely, the other smaller riding area round there, The Mendips is a much denser place, and doesn’t have the same information online about where the trails are etc. I’ve ridden with a local group, and on my own. Its very different to learn your way around that way. I didn’t learn a huge amount from being lead by people. Same again for another local area, I’ve explored it myself from some Strava stalking, but time on the ground is what helps you put together a good ride.
btw as an aside
1) the awesome ‘trailforks’ app does have exciusion zone, the mendips has one set up.
2) there was a ‘local only’ strava free areas in one part of the quantocks.even with facebook and local networking people can’t stop talking about em. let alone spotting laybys in an unexpected place full of people unloading bikes.. loose lips sink ships n all that…
Sorry guys and gals but i think the cat is already out of the bag on this one.
strava is obviously here to stay, Personally i think its great and has got many folks out on bikes.
What you cant really say (well you can) is i dont care what laws im breaking. If you get done its a fair cop im afraid. Otherwise you just end up devaluing the law and we end up with everyone running amok?
Nasty Strava allowing outsiders to ride on my special local trails for local people. I hates it, I does. I hates it…
Entitlement.
I’m entitled to ride wherever I want, whoever the land belongs to.
No-one else is entitled to ride ‘my’ trails. (or just my local friends)
And people wonder why we get a bad reputation?
Strava? Touched it once. Never again.
uberpod said on January 30, 2018
Entitlement.
I’m entitled to ride wherever I want, whoever the land belongs to.
No-one else is entitled to ride ‘my’ trails. (or just my local friends)
And people wonder why we get a bad reputation?
Who do you think the land belongs to? If you live where I live the land owners plough tracks on to moors kill local wildlife so their rich friends and clients can go on shoots while we subsidise it, and helping to flooding homes in the valley – and you’re concerned about skidding a line into a side of hill? Forestry commission land is subsidised or a tax write down for the wealthy, any bit of working farmland is subsidised by us, set aside is subsidized by us ,
in regards to just our mates on “our” trails I completely agree with you.
A lot of these concerns are easily managed already:
Go to Strava settings on PC/MAC:
Go to Privacy Settings:
Consider using these:
Privacy Mode: Enhanced
Create Privacy Zones (a no brainer for security)
Flyby – Nobody
Group Activity Enhanced Privacy: Check
Strava Metro & Heatmap: Uncheck, so data not included
Other Options:
Hide from Public Leaderboards (can also do on ride by ride basis)
All Private (can also do on ride by ride basis)
How can you describe someone as a “Hater” for pointing out that MTBers are riding illegally and/or too fast ?
Illegal is probably too strong a word as it normally implies a criminal act.
Cycling on footpaths and on private/access land may be trespass, which is generally a civil law matter solely between the trespasser and the landowner (unless bylaws in place). It is not generally a criminal law matter.
Lot of good points raised for healthy debate in the article and comments!
There’s lots of arguments for open access, but then responsibility needs to come hand in hand with it, quite often see where people have built their own trails on private land with no real impact to the landowners or other public access users on nearby footpaths, but the massive stash of litter some people leave behind in the form of their days worth of soft drinks cans and crisp packets is not necessary, you can understand why some people are turned against MTBers as they assume we’re all the same. These are the reasons people eventually put up massive fences and stop access all together, a case of one spoiling things for all.
There are a number of large parkland type areas in the UK where access is allowed and everyone seems to get along fine with a bit of tolerance from both sides, but these too are often subject to the same litter issues as private ones.
Bottom line, If we all behave we can coexist.
We should respect other users of the countryside. I ride a lot of cheeky trails at night, but wouldn’t in daylight as they are frequented by walkers etc. In daylight I stick to bridleways and don’t expect to do fast times unless I’m lucky enough to find no one else using them.
Strava is for roadies, wanna race and compete with virtual friends, buy a road bike.
This reads as, lets keep the cheeky trails secret. Which is nonsense.
The only sensible solution, campaign for open access for all. Youse are mental down there.