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Has anyone on here joined the "How many kilometres can you ride this January?" challenge on Strava? I like to think I put in a bit of an effort, my commuting racks me up about 280km a week. I was made to feel very pathetic by the leader board though. Top spot has a current total of 2549km. It's only the 9th of January, that is an insane distance. How on earth do you fuel and recover enough to put in that kind of effort?
How is everyone else faring on distance?
Is the chap at the top of the leaderboard the one trying to break [url= http://oneyeartimetrial.org.uk/ ]Tommy Godwin's record[/url]?
Nope, he is in second place with a lowly 2372km 😆
I'm trying to do the climbing challenge, which seems a better measure for a mountain bike.
That's not to say I'm faring any better on that. 767m down, 5,375m to go!
There are these guys who take the whole month off work just to get to the top of the leader boards! They travel to suitable locations (like 0m elevation massively long streches of roads in US and A for distance, or mountains for climbing challenges), rent some accommodation and ride every single day, without worry about work, family, walking a dog, etc...
They they rant against each other on Youtube, that someone cheated by driving some distance, or that someone did not climb even 1m by choosing some flat motorway... [url=
this bloke ;)[/url]
So you know what you need to do! Your pathetic 280km a week is nothing 😆 😉
you can normally click on the person to find out what rides they've done.
normally the people at the top are on some sort of crazy endurance expedition. If all you have been doing is riding everyday then that is not an impossible target to reach. You would just be grinding out slow miles so as long as you were eating then recovery would not be an issue. Also assume that these people weren't couch potatoes on December 31st!
To be honest I'm a little bored of the challenges. Distance, height etc. is nice to know but not really something I aim for. Would be good to see some more imaginative ones. Maybe covering new ground on the heat map function or riding with different people.
still only managed one ride/commute so far this year, so gonna be a pretty bad month
Bloody cold!
I'm in the climbing challenge as well and not doing too great as all my riding is pretty flat. I worked out last night I am averaging 6.77m of ascent (I'm not going to pretend this is climbing) per km ridden. So to hit the 6142 meter target I've got to ride 907km this month. Or alternatively go riding somewhere with hills.
I tend to go for ranking in the top 3rd or quarter, or something like that, the top lads do nothing else and isn't a real measure of anything
Top spot has a current total of 2549km. It's only the 9th of January, that is an insane distance.
Look up the Slovenian guy who's in 4th - there's someone who has nothing to prove.. 175 miles a day would be no big deal compared to what he's done in the past.
Vegan Power!
🙄
I haven't been riding yet in January, will be doing this weekend.
Can you choose MTB yet? Or is it still just 'ride'?
My biggest challenge last night was trying to upload a ride, they had messed up the interface from the plugin and strava. I'm entered both the distance and the climbing, want to complete the climbing but the distance is 1250km, never done that much in a month yet. Be pleased to beat every months totals from last year.
Some of these people are pro athletes with all of the support that goes with that
Strava challenges are useless to me. They are roadie challenges. As most here are roadies though they're probably of use to others here 😉
Have raised it with them as have many others, but they seem completely uninterested in distinguishing between road and MTB. They dismissed it all by saying they do distinguish on Strava based on the bike type you set up (if you set it up), but from what I can see they do not use that information at all, plus it doesn't distinguish the ride. You could be doing a road ride on an MTB after all, or vice versa.
I look at a challenge and it's all people in the thousands of km within a day of starting, and my MTB miles will always be right at the bottom on the challenge for the month. I have zero interest in how many miles I've done compared to roadies.
Same goes for group leaderboards or if you filter by people you know. Some I ride with also do road, so the whole thing is skewed.
We need MTB challenges, and not just based on mileage. Off road isn't necessarily about miles.
The climbing one will be easy enough, I just struggle to get time to do the mileage-based challenges.
The guys (it is mostly guys) at the top of the leaderboards always leave me feelign reassured that my strava habit's under control.
I've entered the climbing challenge, 20,000ft in Jan. Don't have a roadie so it's all MTB 🙂
Don't think I'll get anywhere near though.... 1 ride in with 2900ft so far!
I don't upload my commutes but they are dead flat anyway.
MTB, I'm more about the down than the up anyway.
I'm the same, but you have to go up to come back down. Most of my rides are <20 miles but involve a fair bit of climbing (slowly).
Vegan Power!
100,000 YouTube subscribers and 72m views
$$$$$$$
Top guy at the mo cycle doc is this guy
I'm up to 30km, quality not quantity 😉
If you want challenges that differentiate by bike(ing) type then head for Endomondo.
I finish the climbing challenge on Monday in just over 138 miles, who says there's no hills darn sarf. 😛
Even the Endomondo challenges could be skewed - suppose you commute, off-road, by MTB - is that a MTB ride or a commute? cross bike - at what point is a mixed terrain ride road or MTB on a cross bike?
I've entered both, not doing too good on the distance on but I reached 100% on the climbing challenge last night. All on the mtb as training for the Puffer next weekend. Pretty pleased as it's the first Strava challenge I've completed.
[i]I'm in the climbing challenge as well and not doing too great as all my riding is pretty flat. I worked out last night I am averaging 6.77m of ascent (I'm not going to pretend this is climbing) per km ridden. So to hit the 6142 meter target I've got to ride 907km this month. Or alternatively go riding somewhere with hills. [/i]
More hills here, 2,200m in 73km so far.
The distance ones are only for Roadies (in warm countries) IMO.
[quote=kcal ]Even the Endomondo challenges could be skewed - suppose you commute, off-road, by MTB - is that a MTB ride or a commute? cross bike - at what point is a mixed terrain ride road or MTB on a cross bike?
Commuting is Cycling-Transport surely?
Strava challenges are useless to me. They are roadie challenges. As most here are roadies though they're probably of use to others here
The distance ones are only for Roadies (in warm countries) IMO.
So you won't enter because you can't clock more miles than pro/semi pro roadies? Sure...
I take it THE must have fashion for "Serious" MTBists during 2015 will be a big Chip worn on the shoulder and directed at anyone riding a road bike?
FFS the whole juvenile "MTB Vs Roadie" thing got old a very long time ago...
Only a handful of people will ever be in contention to "Win" these MTS challenges, the point for most who've signed up should really be to challenge themselves to get out and ride that little bit more than they might otherwise have, in the new year when motivation can wain a bit.
And it's quite clearly a cycling challenge, you might like to make some distinction over Tyre widths and terrain choices but for the purposes of this thing, Strava don't... it's all bikes, its all good.
Grow the **** up!
It's still pointless. I can set a goal for mileage I want to achieve if I want to and push myself. The only point to a challenge on Strava is to compare against others, and Strava don't provide any way to compare against other mountain bikers, and distances aren't really what I ride for anyway.
So I stand by my opinion as a mountain biker that the Strava challenges are useless to me.
It's not about some childish MTB vs road attitude, and I'm not hating on "roadies", it's just about Strava not providing anything useful to mountain bikers or making any distinction between a road ride or MTB ride. If I did road rides and entered the challenges, I still would be interested in challenges that are also suited to MTB and aren't skewed by road rides. Vice versa also, I wouldn't want road challenges and leaderboards to be skewed by MTB (if that's possible).
Likewise with group leaderboards and amongst people I follow, there's no point in comparing against people if you've no idea if they've been doing road rides, off road or a mix. Some that I follow I guess are doing some road based on the high mileage but I can't tell. Am I unfit, or are they just on road a lot?
I mean, seriously, the whole point of Strava is to compare against each other after all 😉 . Tracking just your own progress, may as well just use Endomondo, MapMyRide, Garmin Connect etc.
Though I still maintain... why on earth so many road topics on a forum for a magazine that features virtual zero road bikes and virtually zero roads? 😐
[i]So you won't enter because you can't clock more miles than pro/semi pro roadies? Sure...[/i]
Eh?
I enter every one and so do many of my riding buddies, and I don't really bother looking at the overall leader board just the 'following' leader board as these are the people who ride around here.
I'm nearly there with the climbing challenge: 181 km, 5,832m climbed in 12 rides.
All on the mountain bike. Helps that it's summer here and there are some decent hills on the way to work!
deadkenny: easy to do, simply set up a "club", it doesn't have to be a real club just a name that people can "join" then invite others to join. You can then filter the league table to just members of that club. You do get the occasional individual joining a club for no other reason to be at the top of that leader board but you can spot them quite easily.
If you don't want to create a club you can filter the challenges by "I'm following" so long as you aren't following Team Sky then you are just comparing yourself against your mates.
The tools are there, just not particularly obvious or you have to think around the "problem"
Well I was dead chuffed, following a recent ride, to see I was KOM on lots of segments... 😀
But then I realised that this was KOM for [b]2015[/b], and being a fairly sparsely ridden area nobody else had been out... 🙁
whitestone - I have a club set up for out regular bunch and I'm a member of half a dozen others that I often do rides with.
They are better, as is filtering by "I'm following", but people in these clubs and those I follow also do road rides as well as the off road, while some don't. Some are logging their commutes also. So largely useless as I have no idea if those miles, or climbs even, were in any way a fair comparison.
It's not that I want to be top. I'm no where near as fit, but I use Strava's comparison features as an indicator of my progress or fitness by being able to compare against like riders. Which is fine if you can filter it down to the same type of rides. My usual judge on segments I ride (which generally I can assume are off-roads) is I'm always around a third down the table. On club and friends leaderboards I could be half way down, near the top, down the bottom, all depending whether my friends have been on road rides or logging commutes. A challenge on Strava, I'm at the bottom.
Strava have a forum where you can suggest new stuff and then other users support it if they agree.
I bet someone's already proposed a challenge for MTB-only riders, so you could pop over and back it up deadkenny.
Wonder if they would not implement it because of the risk of "cheating" though?
I'm no where near as fit
Road bike required?
Though I still maintain... why on earth so many road topics on a forum for a magazine that features virtual zero road bikes and virtually zero roads?
just cycling aint it? on a huge popular forum, going to be loads of crossover
deadkenny: Fair enough
I log my commutes but mark them as private - two reasons: 1. One individual in our club kept giving me kudos for riding in to and from work? 2. Marked as private they don't count towards any of Strava's challenges but you still get them in your personal weekly and yearly totals.
I'm all over the place on segment rankings and challenges. I'm top ten on a few segments with only local semi-pro riders above me, on others I'm nearly last though those often have rather long stationary times as either I don't know where the segment ends or I've had a mechanical 😛 Generally I reckon on adding 50% to the KOM time and I'll be in the top third. I'm approaching my 56th birthday so I don't think it's too bad. My 50% rule doesn't apply to off-road descents, I'll be double or triple the time as I'm a crap descender.
I believe that if you upgrade to a Premium account then you can also filter by age group - I wouldn't be in the top ten then either as there's some seriously fit old timers around.
The Monthly Training Series challenges are a bit boring really but those that are tied to events or races are more interesting: Ten days to climb the equivalent of the Tour's mountain stages or similar.
I get people giving me kudos for every ride I do. I could ride to the shops and they'd probably give me kudos 😆
It's a bit like LinkedIn where I get relatives who have no clue about computers endorsing me for stuff like C# !
Out of interest, Pinkbike has their Trailforks site under development, and it's turning into a bit of an MTB version of Strava. More focused on off road trails and segments ridden than pure performance tracking and racing. It now has Strava integration and can auto sync Strava rides. Looking good, though they admit there are many bugs at present.
Also I notice Garmin Connect is trying to do segments. They have comprehensive ride types including various kinds of road riding, MTB and even Downhill plus distinguish between training, racing, recreational rides etc.
The problem with Garmin Segments is having to create them in Garmin Connect. I can load Strava Segments onto my Edge 810 but I can't load them back into GC. This means a Garmin Segment and a Strava Segment will never be exactly the same.Also I notice Garmin Connect is trying to do segments.