Which members here dont bother with Strava ?

Raffles

Ive no interest in it so I don't bother with it nor have it on my smartphone.

Anybody else here not bother with Strava ?

Wirral_paul

You clearly do have an interest in it - seeing as you posted your question about it on here!!

charlie_potatoes

Raffles wrote:

Which members here dont bother with Strava ?

Don't know

Raffles

Wirral_Paul wrote:

You clearly do have an interest in it - seeing as you posted your question about it on here!!

Ha Ha , nah just curious paul, there is a healthy interest in strava here at BR, im just curious about the numbers who aren't interested in strava and is it strava apathy or is there a strava alternative that is gaining interest.

antfly

I wasn't interested either, until I tried it a few weeks ago. All I can say is give it a go, it's surprisingly good fun and it's a good way of measuring progress if you want to improve.

Zendog1

No interest in Strava or acquiring a smart phone to run it.

rolf_f

Zendog1 wrote:

No interest in Strava or acquiring a smart phone to run it.

I use Strava, I don't have a smart phone.

mrfpb

I got Garmin edge 800 last Christmas and have been using Garmin Connect since. As a result of reading this forum, I signed up on strava a few weeks ago and uploaded some activities to see how it compares. The main difference is tbe segments, which I found myself in the bottom 10 to 20%.

Reading the forums a lot of people say (and so did I) that it's useful for monitoring PBs and they don't bother with the whole KOM thing. I now realise that's a lie. I'm quite capable of monitoring PBs without strava as is everyone else. The KOM factor is it's whole raison d'etre.

I still mainly use Garmin Connect to plan courses, and occasionally use OS getamap if going somewhere new,as I can read the terrain clearly on the OS mapping. However OS getamap is not able to upload to the Edge 800.

Davdandy

I use Strava and i love it.Ok,it let me down yesterday but today has been fine.

What i like is that you can see your improve,setting personal goals and achievements and as a solo rider it helps tremendously.Others knock it,that's their choice but i like it.If it wasn't Strava i would use one of the other apps like Endomondo for example.

If it helps me to better myself what harm is it doing.

danowat

No, I don't.

bernithebiker

Since getting onto Strava last year, I've doubled my mileage, time and enjoyment on the bike. What's not to like?!

I just wish it had been around 20 years ago....I remember my Raleigh Strika had a speedo, well mileometer, which was a little counter thing on the fork that got hit by a spoke tab on every rev, and turned the figures a bit more....looked like this;



Was as cool as an Iphone 5 round my way at the time!

ugo.santalucia

Never owned a GPS and recently ditched even my simple wireless computer... I kind of have an idea how far and how fast I go... seems to be enough

In the days I used to have a mileometer just like Bernie's.. it was a piece of crap...

Jim C

Not here. Not for me.
I'm pretty sure it would stop me focussing on what's really important in my bike racing

Philly8mt

Don't bother with it personally .. I'm still trying to ride the bike lol

Got a Garmin 200 recently and that's enough to tell me how things are going right now :shock:

Flâneur

Got it on my phone, however I routinely forget to start/stop it so rarely pay attention. I do like having my stats for distance/time/calories/watts etc and because of this I will often map my route in mapmyride and put in the time (+/- a minute).

KOM has little appeal to me, though I am competitive by nature, it doesn't tell you how often X is training the segment, weather, traffic or any other variables that can make a nice difference. Would have felt sorry for some people had my strava been public when I drove through several areas by accident at a pace it thought was legit.

volociroldster

Wot's Strava - i have heard of something called a cycle computer. Bike's heavy as it is without a tower, keyboard and monitor though...

jibberjim

People who are completely disinterested in strava - but appear to spend a lot of time creating and commenting on threads about it on forums - tend to focus purely on the KOM aspect, and completely ignore the social aspects - Being able to comment on rides, see what friends are doing, find places and even people to ride with when in a new area.

Without the social aspects I wouldn't bother with Strava at all - and I do like riding up hills as hard as I can - and am just about fast enough to take a "KoM" if it's not too competitive a segment, but even that is about monitoring performance. And yes it's perfectly possible to monitor performance without using it, but that would pretty much end up with me rolling my own near identical feature set (being able to monitor performance on a hill trivially is very persuasive a feature).

Mikey23

Social aspect for me. I think it's cool to see what my buds are up to and that keeps me focussed and motivated. Not overly fussed about KOMs as they are out of my league but I pay for the premium and therefore have age related stats and am actually doing quite well... The challenges have encouraged me to do far more riding than I would have otherwise done in a cold windy winter. Love it

goonz

I like it. If nothing else its telling me how many miles I'm racking up and that's good enough for me.

thefd

Dennisn doesn't. It's like playing on an Xbox apparently!!

MountainMonster

I love Strava, and I believe with most things in life that you must properly try something out before knocking it.

houston26

I had it but its far too unpredictable on an iPhone, crazy top speeds, wrong mileage, and at one point I was biking in the Atlantic Ocean! I have up and now use runtastic which has never given me any bother

Shame it doesn't have any KOM segments tho, I liked that feature, just a shame a lot I people cheat them

superfourben

I have a polar cycle computer that tells me speed, distance, ride time, HR and cadence and I do tend to plan my routes on a map beforehand (yep an old fashioned paper thing with contour lines so you can see the steep hills) and rely on memory, however I use Mapmyride and Runtastic Road bike to GPS the actual route in my jersey pocket if I feel like it or if it's a new route. Have heard a lot about Strava on here but have never used it, maybe I should? Sell it to me, why is Strava better than the above mentioned and what would I gain by trying it?

Mikey23

see my post about 4 back!

mechanism

If your ride doesn't end up on Strava it didn't happen, simple as that.

t4tomo

bernithebiker wrote:

Since getting onto Strava last year, I've doubled my mileage, time and enjoyment on the bike. What's not to like?!

I just wish it had been around 20 years ago....I remember my Raleigh Strika had a speedo, well mileometer, which was a little counter thing on the fork that got hit by a spoke tab on every rev, and turned the figures a bit more....looked like this;



Was as cool as an Iphone 5 round my way at the time!

Yep I had one of those on my old 10 speed racer.

I also had a an old raleigh flat bar bike that used to be my Dads or my uncles which My uncle did up for me - that had a full speedo (think motor speedo) driven by a cable and cog to the front axle. The speedo went up to 40mph and we used to have great fun hurtling down steep hills to get it "off the scale". Upto a few years ago my uncle was still riding that bike, which must had been built in the early 1950s.

slowbike

superfourben wrote:

Sell it to me, why is Strava better than the above mentioned and what would I gain by trying it?

It depends what you're trying to achieve in your riding.

Do you club ride? Do you race? Do you want to do either? Are you bothered about your speed? Speed/timing and ranking is the main element of Strava - if you're not bothered then perhaps it isn't really for you. KOM's are just a bit of fun and you have to evaluate the effort/validity of the KOM eg there's a downhill segment (-15%) near me that the "KOM" has a speed of >70mph on. The segment is 0.1 miles long and took me 8 seconds (at 50mph) - the KOM did it in 5 seconds (calculated speed of 79mph) and a cadence of just 79!. Is that really a valid KOM? Ok, he was possibly "fastest" but 3 seconds difference when talking about GPS recording is probably not true - especially if the GPS is only recording a position once a second - so IMHO it's not a true reflection.
On the flipside - there is another segment 1 mile long with an average gradient of 8% - the KOM has done that in just over 5 minutes and my best time is 7:32 - nowhere to hide in that (it's sheltered so not much wind assist available either) and a second or two "error" in the GPS Log isn't going to make a huge difference - I'm 1/2way down the strava field and I know I need to get better at climbing - so I have both my own time to beat and I can pick a target rider and aim to beat their time too - and be confident that the timing is about right.

Other than the timing elements - another benefit of Strava (if you set it up) is that it will log the mileage of your kit & components (under Settings/MyGear)

So I know my road bike has logged 3800 miles. The wheels have done 1800 of those (new last year) but the brake pads and pedals have only done 800 (new this year). I can also see that I've done more miles on my CX than roadbike this year.

All in, Strava is a useful tool if you're looking to improve on your riding speed (elements and/or overall) - but you need to look at the results in context and not worry too much if you loose a KOM.

Johnpsanderson

I used Strava for the first time on Sunday. I used to have a cyclo-computer but gave up several years ago, relying only on a watch and RPE to record the about of time I was training / the effort of a given ride. Sometimes I used a simple HRM for training - but nothing that recorded data.

Strava (and GPS full stop) still seem like a novelty toy to me. If I want to try a new route I just take turnings i've never used before. I'm not that interested in a detailed record of my mileage or my routes, I can record the amount of time i'm spending on the saddle quite easily with my watch, and if I was serious about benchmarking my performances I wouldn't be doing it through the KOM function - with all the unknown variables that sit alongside other peoples performances...

That said, it was mildly interesting to see a trace of where I'd gone on the map. And it might encourage me to try different combinations of roads if I can see where I go on a map on a regular basis.

MountainMonster

Johnpsanderson wrote:

I used Strava for the first time on Sunday. I used to have a cyclo-computer but gave up several years ago, relying only on a watch and RPE to record the about of time I was training / the effort of a given ride. Sometimes I used a simple HRM for training - but nothing that recorded data.

Strava (and GPS full stop) still seem like a novelty toy to me. If I want to try a new route I just take turnings i've never used before. I'm not that interested in a detailed record of my mileage or my routes, I can record the amount of time i'm spending on the saddle quite easily with my watch, and if I was serious about benchmarking my performances I wouldn't be doing it through the KOM function - with all the unknown variables that sit alongside other peoples performances...

That said, it was mildly interesting to see a trace of where I'd gone on the map. And it might encourage me to try different combinations of roads if I can see where I go on a map on a regular basis.

The KOM function is not the only way to measure performance through Strava, you also get personal records among many things, and you can see how you stack up against yourself on different segments.

slowbike

Johnpsanderson wrote:

Strava (and GPS full stop) still seem like a novelty toy to me.

Nothing stopping you from riding without looking at GPS/map data. Most of the time I don't ride with the map on display (800) - most of the time I don't bother with HRM either.

Is a GPS a toy? Almost certainly yes ... you don't _need_ it - any more than you _need_ those carbon forks, frame or saddle rails or even those 20 gears - you could ride on anything with 2+ wheels and a method of propulsion.

Personally, I quite like having the map data available as most of the time if I'm doing a new route I've checked out where I want to ride beforehand and just use the map to ensure I've taken the route planned - or if needing to detour then it confirms where I'm going - no major hassle if not, but it's nice to have.

So, the GPS is only of use if you want it to be. I don't have any method of showing the start/finish of a strava segment(s) whilst riding so I do those from memory - hence just the ones I'm interested in.
If all you want is logging & mapping then there are loads of options available without having to use strava ...

sancho_uk

Agree with the social aspect and tracking performance through PB`s.

Yes you dont need Strava to track PB`s but it takes all the effort out of it.. upload and BOSH you have your results.

Also i`m sure many of us are in the same boat where our friends we follow on Strava have different strengths.

Friend 1 - Quick on Flats
Friend 2 - Good Climber
Friend 3 - Good average on long runs

Its a nice tool if you ride the same / similar routes to see exactly how you match up with the people you ride with. If you start closing times down etc then you know you are on the right track.

Plus its always nice to get Kudos and Comments from people with the same interests, I dont think anybody on here can say they dont like the odd pat on the back from time to time for the effort they are putting in