Strava

Mccraque

Is faaarking dangerous.....

After a very wet ride on Leith Hill this weekend just gone I am convinced that with a reasonably competitive bunch of blokes, you're going to end up with someone who pushes it a bit too far trying to climb the virtual leaderboard...

discuss.

mintedox

I don't use it to race, I use it for the locations. It's a great tool for that.

I do agree that someone will get hurt using it, there seems to be more of a debate about local spots being ruined because of the racers.

agg25

Yeah, it can be dangerous for the streets of London too when you're almost at the end of a segment and you hit traffic!

tarbot18

strava is ruining my life !! me and a few guys in work are constantly trying to beat each others times at llandegla and on the roads and coast of wirral.
Its a great training tool though no longer do i chill riding my 12 miles to work i wait for the next segment and go for it.

bwfc4eva868

I love it me for the segments, but i like using it just to see how far I'm riding etc. Must admit i may have pissed a few roadies off by doing a Segment on my motorbike 120 kmh

Anonymous

Have to take what's on Strava with a pinch of salt really. You can be trying to beat a time set by a dodgy GPS, or yeah someone on a motorbike.

Main thing I like is the segment matching so I learn what the trails are called. Though this is going to reach a head at some point for all the unofficial trails, footpaths and "no bikes" trails matched. Many landowners may not be keen. The MOD always said no GPS, but some of their land is getting mapped out now, and they're already at breaking point and looking to ban bikes entirely.

I like just comparing amongst friends but otherwise compete against my own times just to see how much I can push it. Assuming they're accurate. A few of mine have been screwed by lost GPS which has set insane times. Okay I get KOM but there's no way in hell I could match it, and no one else can too . You can flag dodgy segment matches though but currently you have to ask them to unmatch them. Raised a suggestion that we should be able to do that ourselves.

Oh and tip - if you use a device or other app than Strava that has auto-pause - turn off the auto-pause. This messes up Strava, especially on climbs, as they work out for themselves when you are moving or not anyway.

Other issue is GPS in phones are not equal and then you have issues where consumer phone GPS is tailored to navigating in cars and not so good at slow speeds and may need tweaking - http://www.notaboutthenumbers.com/2012/ ... em-solved/

Mccraque

I'm finding that the wet weather (and motorbike riders) are causing me to be well down on the leaderboard at the moment....

Well...that's my excuse anyway!

cat_with_no_tail

Ok, I've got a couple of questions about this strava boIIocks.

- When I set up a club/group/team whatever you want to call it, for some reason the drop-down to make it private is greyed out. Anyone know why?
- If I manage to generate my private team, and was to then set a challenge on a specific section of a trail, would the people in the club need to start and stop their GPS recording at the start and finish of that specific section, or are they able to just start the GPS and the start/finish of the ride, and have Strava recognize when they are riding that specific section?

Basically, what I'm after doing is creating a challenge amongst a group of mates who don't always ride together. Sort of like a gravity enduro style thing, but over a period of a couple of months.

I want to record times on 4-5 sections of different trails, then get a leaderboard going. What I don't want though is to have to get everyone to stop mid-ride to start the GPS running on a specific section, then stop at the bottom to stop it.

Make sense?

If strava can't do it, does anyone know of an app that can (I already know that Endomondo can't).

benpinnick

The Private team is only available if you pay for a sub I believe. And yes, you can start Strava at the beginning of your ride, and leave it running for the duration, letting Strava figure out whats what. This does need some checking though, as it can mis segments, and some are in there many times under different names, so you don't always get the match you wanted.

Anonymous

Strava web site basically is doing all the work. It's down to the segment matching algorithms they do. Which generally get it right and allow for some variation in where you start. Sometimes it gets it wrong, fails to match or matches you against something entirely different. You can ask them to tweak the segment matching though.

What you track with on the phone or whatever is up to you. Doesn't really matter, except don't use Auto Pause functions if it has them. Strava depends on no pauses in the tracking at least during a segment. e.g. going slow on a climb and the phone pauses below a certain speed, then catches up later, it screws up the segment and you've done it way faster than you really had. Looks nice though, and gets you KOM

Paid subs - promotional codes. Gives you a trial of the sub. And another trial, and another

bluechair84

I was at Stainburn this weekend, spent the afternoon riding (quite enjoyed it but not much variety), then decided to check Strava out. Sure enough, the red was segmented and I put a run in, seventh place!! Well chuffed. And it's good to know you can just leave it running and Strava will pick up the segments automatically; I'm pretty sure you can enter onto the red with a ton of speed taking the road into it - but obviously not if you have to manually start the recording. I'll be doing it that way next time.
I did also put up a new segment for the black but because of the tree cover, the GPS lock was particularly poor. I'd be surprised if anyone competes on it.
I'm very skeptical about this idea that Strava is ruining trails because of corner cutting, people have always taken the line of least resistance which is most notable on the moors. It's not good, but it's nothing new.
From browsing around Britain, it does look like most people are using it for timed climbs, for instance I don't think there is a timed descent of Snowdon yet.

cat_with_no_tail

I'd also noticed it seems to be set up primarily as a hill climb app. Even the search bar when you're looking for segments has 5 different levels, 4 for different climbs, and just 1 for "Flat/downhill".

Seems to suggest it's been designed more towards roadies. Although I'm sure it will evolve over time.

bluechair84

Yeah, makes sense as a place to log descents if your a mountain biker due to the stop/start nature of climbing on singletrack. Plus, I'd think that mountain bikers would be more competitive over their descents...

edit -- plus, it's broken into four gradients of climbing and one of downhill, it could do with one for offroad too. I know it starts to raise questions about rights of access, but it's the way forward from a mountain bikers perspective. I've a suspicion that's why bikehike closed off its database.

Anonymous

It's pretty uncontrolled. By comparison, though Open Street Map is basically volunteer based information also, I've noticed only official trails tend to be on there. e.g. Surrey Hills you only find BKB and Summer Lightning which really are the only two official trails. Strava... everything is on there! Most are accepted unofficial trails that the rangers know about and allows natural or existing built and maintained trails. But there are many now on there that are questionable and have caused upset in the past when anyone publishes the GPS or photos of them.

This could either make the whole issue of access very public and push towards a Kinder Trespass kind of act to get better access, or could (more likely) end up with very heated and angry attitudes towards mountain bikers resulting in wide-scale bans. The latter given recent attitudes towards MTB being a bunch of vandalising hooligans (drunken ones even round our way apparently, so the news reported).

cat_with_no_tail

So with strava, do I need to go out and physically record a section first? or can I create a GPX or KMZ file on some mapping software to import?

Anonymous

You can import into Strava but that's for importing a route you've physically recorded already. There's no navigation / route following on the app and anything you import becomes one of your tracked routes. It wasn't designed for navigation, only for tracking.

Though there are Challenges. Not sure how they work. Think they're segment based.

Dazzler2409

Strava lead me to a Pronation External Rotation (PER) stage III

Or in simpler terms smashed tib & fib April 15th at Hamsterley pushing it harder than I ought to. Air ambulance out and still in cast since surgery and week in James Cook hospital until 12 June then got at least a month in air boot walking cast.

Be very careful with Strava and enjoy your ride and forget the competition side unless you stay within your skill level.

Darran

cat_with_no_tail

Lol!

You can't blame strava for you running out of skill.

GWS

oodboo

Strava had me out sessioning a local trail at the weekend to get a decent time for a website a friend set up. www.stravatrailracing.co.uk. I made it to number 8 on the leaderboard and I'm happy with that. I know my limits and I'm not going to push beyond them for the sake of some numbers.

Next month is a different trail but it's a bit further away so I don't know if I'll get to ride it, and if I do I don't think I'll make it to the top 10.

bartimaeus

Cat With No Tail wrote:

So with strava, do I need to go out and physically record a section first? or can I create a GPX or KMZ file on some mapping software to import?

As soon as you or anyone else creates a segment then Strava builds the KOM table by searching through all it's stored files... so I uploaded a ride, created a segment, then uploaded the last 18 months of GPXs and now I can see all my times.

I think you can create a segment by uploading a GPX of the route only - but I've not tried it... I've always uploaded a ride and build segments from there. Some people do create segments with very odd start/finish points... anyone who starts a segment 10m before the normal drop-in, or finishes one 10 metres after the normal stop-and-grin spot is clearly looking to poach a few KOM points.

You can also export Strava rides to GPX (apparently) using this - so it turns out that it's a really good ride sharing tool. You can see who rides your local trails, and you can see if they know any routes that you don't know... and you can contact them if you want to meet up for a ride. So initially I thought this would be a slightly geeky app for obsessing over your favourite challenges, but it's more fun than that.

Dazzler2409

Cat With No Tail wrote:

Lol!

You can't blame strava for you running out of skill.

GWS

I guess you right but it did encourage me to push beyond my limits, which are well above the basic I assure you.

At 40 yr old I began to think I was racing BMX again!!! Haha!

My point was speaking from experience word to the wise in that I think people need to be very careful making a transition from weekend plodder to weekend warrior!!!! ;O)

I shan't be using it again put it that way, amazing technology for those who can control their limits mind.

craigw99

for me its a bit of fun - i just placed 19th down the runway at carron valley at the weekend - not bad for my 3rd time down it going safe on sketchey tyres(yes back on the oem mountain kings) turns out im not as fast as i used to be but im not as slow as i thought i was either :-)

Mccraque

Strava Update from Coed Y Brenin - Several of our group placed in the top 10 on Pink Heffer and Big Dug! - everyone was piling through it at silly speed....

one of my mates nicked a KOM on the Gravity Enduro section too...he's rather pleased!

njee20

I really like it! Lost 2 KOMs over the weekend though annoyingly, one by 1 second, so have to go and get that back, although I can't quite work out where it starts and finishes! It's somewhere near the bottom of Summer Lightning!

Anonymous

Bottom/End of the official bit of SL or end of the section down side of Wolvens Lane? Or even end of the descent to Westcott. Just hammer the whole lot and it will work it out.

Though guess you're talking about climbing in the other direction :P

RevellRider

Bartimaeus wrote:

Cat With No Tail wrote:

Some people do create segments with very odd start/finish points... anyone who starts a segment 10m before the normal drop-in, or finishes one 10 metres after the normal stop-and-grin spot is clearly looking to poach a few KOM points.

There's one of these on my commute to work, the guy who created the segment has it finish in his factories carpark so no one else can beat him on this KOM

njee20

Though guess you're talking about climbing in the other direction

Nope, descent, I'm not that slow ;-)

Was 4th on the bottom part of SL, think I've dropped a few places now.

It's here, it's between the bottom of SL and the top of Wolvens Lane, fairly sure I know where it is, after the sandy switchbacks as you turn left to head towards the bottom part of Wolvens Lane down to Wotton.

bartimaeus

"Uh oh! xyz just stole your KOM!".... that's Wednesday evening's route decided, then!

Anonymous

Yeah, looks like just after the sandy switchbacks. Goes along fairly straight apart from a dip, and this takes the left branch down to the bottom rather than the right branch up to Wolvens Lane. Not often I go down there. I prefer the bank on the side of the lane (which officially I don't ride of course ).

Good thing about a stolen KOM is at least it confirms it was actually an achievable KOM and not a false one.

njee20

Yep that's right, ends where you can drop left into the dark track down to the road to Friday Street, which is where we tend to go.

I got an email saying I'd lost one by 3 minutes 55 the other day (it's a road climb of about 8 minutes), it'd already been deleted by the time I logged in to look, so they can be pretty good at getting rid of spurious segments. Clearly a few on the descents around the Surrey Hills though!

bluechair84

Strava is confusing me. The first time i used it, it logged my run down a segment and placed me seventh. The following weekend I went back and tired it five times, each time creating a new segment. how on Earth do you avoid that happening?