[Closed] All the downsides of Strava!

Friday 13th innit.

OTOH... I was inspired earlier this week by seeing a mate’s route on Strava to go ride a loop near Home that I haven’t ridden in about five years! So nice to revisit a familiar road that for whatever reason had fallen from favour.

I’d forgotten how lumpy it is! So it’s not all bad.

I hate it when your strava 'friends' change their name, so you end up with loads of people you don't know with random names. wtf are you, wtf are you? I've got loads of strava mates I've never even met, just added to see where they ride for inspiration. There's one guy who lives near me and we keep seeing each other when one of us is riding and the other is just walking back from the shop or something.

Compare your ride to person who took the KOM.

where he stopped/eased up after smashing your KOM (by the 1 second) ... make another section about 20 foot further on so you take that KOM .. and he gets the email 👍

he won't, thats not how it works.

downside: seeing your fall from grace after a period of less riding (in my case, having a littleun)

no PRs for many rides now 🙁

and if you link to a service which uses strava data, like veloviewer you can see your segment placings slip everytime you sync too

 make another section about 20 foot further on so you take that KOM .

Not so easy to do now - there's a minimum length to new Strava segments, about 300 metres, and it's also not keen on you adding overlapping or very similar segments.

When I used strava I used to see quite a lot of that inspirational behaviour you talk of... I found it all a bit creepy stalky TBH.
Strava is a great tool for logging rides/training/seeing personal improvements but the whole leaderboard/KOM thing is fairly fake compared to real life performance so kinda difficult to take it too seriously.

I got a kom in a section of woods which took the brunt of some gales earlier in the year, it's now blocked with treefall so I reckon that one is safe until the trees rot down which will be long after I've stopped riding 😎

I lost a KOM last night that I have had since July 2015.  It is a 2 minute sprint through some twisty flat woods with a narrow bridge in the middle.

I will be trying to get it back at the weekend as I would have been using 52" gear on a single speed back in 2015 but am now using 60" on fixed so have a chance.  If I don't do it in one attempt will leave it as don't want to be obsessed...

Got my first "proper" KOM last week - by proper, I mean not a 30s downhill blast, but a proper length segment, with a few hundred riders. In my case, it's 12 minutes of relatively flat, mixed gravel and singletrack with a bonus golf course on my way home from work. Took 3 goes to get it, with the first one being a full minute slower than the last, but on the last one I specifically went full guns to get it.

I won't hold it forever, and when I lose it, I probably won't get it back, but I've got it today and I'm actually surprisingly proud.

Ignoring KOM-chasing (which, I'll be honest, I'm not quick enough to do), one of my favourite parts of Strava is having years and years of data to compare my performance so when I say "I'm fitter now than ever", I've got some data to back it up!

It doesn't happen every day, so here it is:

All that shows is times, no power or heart rate data, does not prove fitness. 😉

Good times could be massively influenced by wind direction, drafting etc.

Are you suggesting that good strava times *might* be influenced by wind conditions?

What an allegation!

Bunch of cynics 😉

This one is mostly in the woods so not a lot of wind to speak of. Also (but you'll just have to take my word on this) the recent runs are all in similar conditions.

Interestingly, while I do have more data, Strava doesn't make it as easy to compare anything other than times. I might rummage in veloviewer to see what that can do.

one of my favourite parts of Strava is having years and years of data to compare my performance so when I say “I’m fitter now than ever”, I’ve got some data to back it up!

Same for me only that I can see that I am gradually getting slower as I go past 50 so I am getting less fitter than ever.

The St in Strava stands for Straight line. A lot of the beautiful winding, twisty single track round our way has had the lovely flowing twists and turns taken out by shortcut straight lines created by strava busting speed nobs seeking ever faster time placings. The K in KOM stands for 'kin !

There was a quarter mile sprint segment near our office on my commute. It has a blind tight 90 degree bend at the start and a coworker and I started getting competitive over it, to the extent that if the wind was right I'd cycle 6 miles just to session it including check the route was clear so I could hit the blind corner as fast as I could handle. We kept knocking a second off now and then, but when we started borrowing bikes just for it we came to our senses. Fun for a while, but only because we worked within 20ft of each other and kept taking the piss.

Two options with Strava

or

Never be bothered by leaderboards and KOMs again. Just enjoy the ride.

Actually, third is make your rides private. Can't share them with friends though doing that, but maybe that's a good thing too.

I use Strava to motivate me to get out,when I see that my peers have all been out on rides it motivates me to get out there.

I also use it see where my fitness is & how much cycling I'm doing compared to previous years.

I know someone who got a QOM the other week,but she says it doesn't count as she's now on a electric bike.I wonder how many other QOM/KOM times have been set with electric bikes? It doesn't concern me as I only use Strava for my own times but others use it to compare themselves with other users..

Friend recently got a E-Bike. He records all his rides on Strava as an E-Bike. Looks like there are E-Bike specific segments as normal segments don't show up. So when I try to steal some KOMs from him and fail, I'll need to record it as an E-Bike ride. Bit weird you think they'd just have two tables for all segments, one normal bikes and the other E-Bike.

Im not bothered by the fact that there are so many people ahead of me, but I use those times as a target to train towards.

the whole leaderboard/KOM thing is fairly fake compared to real life performance so kinda difficult to take it too seriously.

It's fake in the sense that someone like me turns himself inside out to get a good time then needs a sit down. But it's good training because it's further into the red than I ever would have gone.