E bikes and Strava

The Rookie

Maro wrote:

She has noticed recently how inaccurate it can be, in one instance it showed her being 30s slower than a friend during the same ride when in fact we had to wait for said friend to catch up

As Strava uses a moving time it deletes time spent at speeds below a certain threshold, its very easy to be the faster rider and have a longer moving time in those circumstances if you ease down and trundle while the slower person may have 30 seconds more cumulative stops.

Ferrals

I assumed that while strava cuts out stationary time, if you were in a segment it would take the entire time? otherwise if you did want to cheat, for example on a long hill climb, you could do it in a series of sprints and stationary rests rather than grinding it out?

bartimaeus

Most of the issues are down to poor GPS, or poor GPS reception and the stuff Strava has to do to accommodate for this. that's why short segments are a waste of time. Racing yourself it's great. Racing your mates it's a bit of fun. I would not know about the overall leaderboards as I rarely trouble the first few pages.

bartimaeus

Ferrals wrote:

I assumed that while strava cuts out stationary time, if you were in a segment it would take the entire time? otherwise if you did want to cheat, for example on a long hill climb, you could do it in a series of sprints and stationary rests rather than grinding it out?

For segments it uses your total time between the first and last points where it registered you were within the segment - as long as you match most of the segment (and with something like 40m grace for drift). If you look it shows your 'moving time' as well. Your overall ave speed for your ride is based on moving time, though.

The Rookie

As Barti says, for a segment its start to finish regardless, for the whole ride its moving time only, I think it's cut off is 2mph as well so you can walk quite a way slowly which then doesn't count as moving time even though you were.

Ferrals

Yeah I thought that must be the case.

I honestly don't think I'd have got as fit as I am at the moment without Strava as I find it great motivation both trying to get KOMs and comparing where I am against times of people whose names i recognise as having smashed me in real world races

njee20

It used to do some slightly odd things when you stop which can affect average speeds, if not times.

It basically ignored 0 values - so if it has a sample at 20mph, then you stop for 10 seconds and then the next sample is 3mph, as you set off, it draws a straight line between those two points. Doesn't seem to do it anymore.

A GPS like Garmin will use atmospherics to measure elevation and is more accurate.

Only the expensive ones have a barometric altimeter, and my Edge 1000 isn't all that accurate. Strava can correct elevation anyway, regardless of device.

paul.skibum

I use Cycle Tracks GPS app on my Windows phone. Had it on whilst riding the Gondola the other day and it seemed to accurately track my altitude as I ascended. I compared my times to my mate I was riding with yesterday and on a prolonged climb I was shown as 12 seconds off his time but I am pretty sure it took him longer than 12 seconds to get off his bike, get a water bottle out of his bag and have a p*ss! But he uses Strava direct on his android phone, different systems and different phones must make for different timings and accuracy.

Our local enthusiasts have been merging a bunch of the shorter tracks into some of the standard loops to make longer runs which might be to try and offset some of those Strava inaccuracies.

Ferrals

Well I had a great ride after work last night, made all the better by finding out afterwards I got a bunch of pb's, a handful of KOMs, a 2nd, a 3rd and a couple of other top tens :P :P

Although admittedly two of the KOMs were on ~5km xc training loops that I set up, one of which has only been ridden by me and and one that has a handful of attempts from others

ben@31

Angus Young wrote:

ben@31 wrote:

So where do these people get their money from? Full sus Trek e-bikes start at £2800.

What's the big deal about £2800 when you can easily spend twice that (and more) on a regular MTB?

Yes you could spend that, but do they?

The big deal is, how many kids on Strava actually have the money to spend > £2800 on just an ebike ? My point is, I bet there's not many.

Angus Young

ben@31 wrote:

Angus Young wrote:

ben@31 wrote:

So where do these people get their money from? Full sus Trek e-bikes start at £2800.

What's the big deal about £2800 when you can easily spend twice that (and more) on a regular MTB?

Yes you could spend that, but do they?

The big deal is, how many kids on Strava actually have the money to spend > £2800 on just an ebike ? My point is, I bet there's not many.

Go to any trail centre and you'll see countless people riding 3K bikes, so there's no shortage of people spending that kind of money.

Ferrals

It's not kids on strava, it's adults who should know better

If you believe the mtb magazines £1.5k is a budget bike so £3k must be fairly average!

combatsapph

The Rookie wrote:

ben@31 wrote:

So where do these people get their money from? Full sus Trek e-bikes start at £2800.

If you have a threaded BB you can get a mid mount motor to add to almost any MTB for around £750 that will give you upto 750W (geared).

And yeah, trolling on Strava is amusing.

rockmonkeysc

At least you didn't ruin a good bike. Those Club Roosts were awful things. Terrible rear suspension and wrong geometry.

combatsapph

RockmonkeySC wrote:

At least you didn't ruin a good bike. Those Club Roosts were awful things. Terrible rear suspension and wrong geometry.

Dunno what you're talking about - rear suspension is spot on and geometry is EXACTLY the same as a Santa Cruz Superlight.

Ah, nvm - just checked your sig - bike snob. Gotcha.

rockmonkeysc

Same as a Superlight is not a good thing! I had the misfortune to borrow a Club Roost for a weekend a few years ago. What a piece of crap. Terrible linkage rate meant absolutely zero small bump sensitivite yet dreadful pedal bob. Then there's the rear end flex and the weight of the thing.
Still, it wasn't as bad as the Club Roost downhill bike. That really was the benchmark for crap frames.

step83

Had a chance encounter with an Ebike when i was trudging up a hill in the local woods going i thought quite quickly. Nope came hooning past me not a hope in catching up. OK i see the advantages especially if your not physically able to do hills but if your just unfit i see it as lazy.

Strava as most poeple are saying i race myself an my mates we all use garmins and get very similar distances travelled.
Only thing that peeves me is when you see people set times that were either in a car or on a dirt bike.

njee20

Flag it then. Simple.

poah

why flag it?

njee20

Eh? Why wouldn't you flag if someone's left their GPS running with their bike in the car and got a load of segment KOMs? :?

poah

njee20 wrote:

Eh? Why wouldn't you flag if someone's left their GPS running with their bike in the car and got a load of segment KOMs? :?

I'd be impressed as I ride off road

however, a car is not an ebike

njee20

You seem to have an impressive inability to read more than the post above yours.

Read the last line of Step83's post - the one that precedes mine. About cars and dirt bikes...

FWIW, I'd flag a ride obviously done on an ebike though.

rockmonkeysc

Are there any rules against e bikes on strata? And does it really matter if anyone cheats?
Strata is really inaccurate, if you ever get the chance run it on a Garmin and a smartphone at the same time. The difference can be quite surprising.

njee20

It's unclear, but it's not in the spirit of it. Yes, it can be inaccurate, and if there's an obvious inaccuracy I'll flag that too, simple.

The odd bit of gps error comes out in the wash, short segments can be woefully inaccurate, but that's just one of those things. If you've got a steep climb, with the top 100 all doing (say) 8-10 mph, then someone comes along and does 15mph up it on an ebike, that deserves to be flagged IMO. But then I like getting KOMs on climbs, I wouldn't notice most of the time I'm sure, and wouldn't go looking.

rockmonkeysc

It's not just a little inaccurate,I have found a 0.8 mile difference over 16 miles. That's pretty bad.

Ferrals

Surely it shouldn't be strava itself but the gps in the phone. Things like a garmin should be accurate to les than 10m, I have no idea about phones but am guessing less accurate. One your 16 mile example what are you comparing it too? It's only a 5% difference so if you are comparing it to a map I think that is completely reasonable.

Most of the koms on local flattish or uphil sections are held by a handful of people who ride/train a lot so it would've pretty obvious if someone not training hard smashed them to smitherines.

njee20

RockmonkeySC wrote:

It's not just a little inaccurate,I have found a 0.8 mile difference over 16 miles. That's pretty bad.

Ok, I've not, and I know most people who have the segments around here, and know they're all quick. It's not like some fat nodder is coming along and getting a raft of KOMs, so, meh.

On occasion when I've expected my Garmin to go flat I've run my phone simultaneously and got very similar distances.

russyh

Like ferrals says it's not strava that's in accurate it's people using mobile phones to record data with. Use a garmin and it's pretty accurate. Even then though it's only a training aid and tool to race your mates. I love it, it does what it's meant to and does it well. I find it Spurs me on to try and get faster and has helped me improve my lines and technique by looking at how much quicker I should be going. Using an ebike is fine but really you should exclude yourself from the times. Holding a strava KOM never got anyone laid. So why cheat? If I saw something that was obviously an ebike, car whatever I would flag it!

The Rookie

Ferrals wrote:

Surely it shouldn't be strava itself but the gps in the phone. Things like a garmin should be accurate to less than 10m, I have no idea about phones but am guessing less accurate.

I think it is more likely to be Strava and its min speed setting, change that and you can change the distance quite a lot, especially if there is lots off slow speed stuff. No reason for a phone GPS to be less accurate than a Garmin as such (for a spot reading), it's only if there is big sampling rate difference that I'd expect it to create issues (by straightening corners), that may happen but it's a leap to assume it is there, it would be easy enough to see by zooming into the trace.

rockmonkeysc

Russyh wrote:

Holding a strava KOM never got anyone laid./quote]

Well that's me out then. What a waste of time.