Feedback on Strava based sportive training tool

chris.m.prior

Firstly, I apologies if this is seen as advertising, I have read the Term of posting and don't believe this is as I have just developed a free to use tool which I would like some feedback on.

I wanted to let you know about a new tool, matesrace, that I have been developing and get some feedback.

http://www.matesrace.co.uk

It allows you to set up virtual events using multiple Strava segments and provides a leaderboard showing the overall times for each athlete. Think virtual sportive or even tour de france!

I've been testing it locally with my riding group in Brighton and we have run a number of events so far, all being loads of fun. Have a look here for an example event:

http://www.matesrace.co.uk/event/41

Matesrace is designed to be totally self service for the Strava club scene. I will not be running or promoting any events myself through the site.

I have had lots of feedback and usage from the Mountain Bike world, but wanted to get some feedback from you guys on whether you think the idea translated into the road bike world?

buckmulligan

This is a very good idea!

It took me a little while to understand what the purpose was, but it seems very useful. It might just be me being rather slow, but perhaps a walkthrough on your scrolling homepage thing (with some screenshots of the leaderboards and the maps showing the multiple segments maybe?) might make it easier for people to grasp initially.

I can see why it would have been born out of mountain biking, but arguably it has just as many applications for road cycling. I like the idea that you could pick out say the 5 big climbs on a regular route and create a league table of each rider's net time. The overpopulation of Strava with pointless and duplicated segments makes trawling through them to compare times with friends on the interesting parts an extremely laborious process. This does very well at cutting out all the crap.

I haven't signed up to give it a try yet, but one immediate question I would have is do you have a way to relaunch challenges once they expire? For example, if our club rides similar routes every week and wanted to have a recurring monthly matesrace, do you have to go through and set it all up again, or can you basically relaunch the same matesrace with new dates?

bobmcstuff

I think that is a really cool idea, I'll try to test it out soon. Choosing segments is tough!

supermurph09

Like the concept, I think it might work brilliantly for something I was trying to put together manually last year. I'll feedback some more later.

Calpol

I think this looks quite good. I know some guys in a local club who would benefit from this sort of thing. They set up a Strava Challenge last year ranking riders on some locally created segments and running the challenge over the summer months. It looked like good fun and a bit of extra motivation for them. They even created a road book detailing all the counting segments. the only problem you have with all this stuff is getting people to pay anything for it. Look at veloviewer. A nice little program but as soon ans it went behind a paywall I never looked at it again.

chris.m.prior

BuckMulligan wrote:

It took me a little while to understand what the purpose was, but it seems very useful. It might just be me being rather slow, but perhaps a walkthrough on your scrolling homepage thing (with some screenshots of the leaderboards and the maps showing the multiple segments maybe?) might make it easier for people to grasp initially.

I haven't signed up to give it a try yet, but one immediate question I would have is do you have a way to relaunch challenges once they expire? For example, if our club rides similar routes every week and wanted to have a recurring monthly matesrace, do you have to go through and set it all up again, or can you basically relaunch the same matesrace with new dates?

Thanks for taking the time to have a look Buck. I see your point about it being a little hard to understand and think it's a good idea to make this clearer with some visuals on the homepage. Watch this space!

At the moment there is no way to automatically relaunch the same matesrace, but it is only a single page to fill in with 4 questions, so hopefully it isn't too much of a laborious process to complete this again. It's a nice idea to be able to launch recurring events and if there was enough demand I would look at implementing it.

bobmcstuff wrote:

Choosing segments is tough!

Choosing the right segments has definitely been key to a successful event when we have run them locally. It tends to work best when they are well defined (in terms of start and end point on strava), and can easily be ridden together in a single ride. It also helps for them to be well known segments so it is easy for someone to take part. I think this is one area where road biking has an advantage as mountain bike trails through the forest can be a little vague.

Thanks for your comments guys, any more would be greatly appreciated

buckmulligan

I think people who already utilise the "starred segments" tool on Strava will find it easier to pick out segments. For your average, popular road climb in the UK you can have anywhere from 10 to 50 segments, all with different start and finish points, different sub-sections etc etc etc.

For the routes I ride regularly, I've starred one or two segments for each climb or section of interest and only ever bother looking at these. Strava is so inundated with useless segments that you have to find someway of filtering out the rubbish.

Thanks for the link, I'll give it a try at the weekend!

supermurph09

Had a bit more of a play and passed the link on to club mates, one other club I ride for has now created an event. Most people think it's a great idea, as do I. One thing you could change is the name of this post, it's not a sportive training tool, it's uses will stretch much further.

Again, well done.

chris.m.prior

Supermurph09 wrote:

One thing you could change is the name of this post, it's not a sportive training tool, it's uses will stretch much further.

Thanks Supermurph, unfortunately I'm not too familiar at the moment with the road biking scene so I guess I was struggling to explain it's use in this context. Just out of interest, how would you describe it's uses with regards to road biking?

Thanks

supermurph09

Well at the beginning of the year i was looking to put together a club hill climb competition, we had about 8-9 climbs we wanted to include but all the analysis would have been spreadsheet based, not ideal.

With this, one club I ride for has now chosen 4 or 5 segments, added a monthly time frame and asked people to take part. You could also use it for time trial courses etc so on first inspection it looks great. Some riders might favour short climbs, some long climbs, some flat segments, you can effectively create an all rounder event.
Obviously it will have it's flaws given that it's based on overall time, (by that I mean a short hill climb might mean I lose 5 seconds, but a longer flat section I could gain 2 minutes etc) but at the end of the day it's a bit of fun and good way to collate the data. You'll always get some people moaning, talking about waiting for no wind or good weather days etc, but that's being pedantic.

I'll feedback more when the events have taken place.

Paulf1566

I think this is really good idea too. Going to have a play with it over the bank holiday weekend. Can you add multiple clubs to the event, that would give some very interesting competition.

Paulf1566

I found the easiest way to create an event was to un star all my starred segments and then find a regular or well known ride or section of ride on Strava, that I wanted to create a Mates Race Event on. I would then star the best five segments to make up a logical "race". Then when you go back into MR, select all the starred segments. Easy. Once finished, go back into Strava and start again to create another. Wish you could pick more segments - although I think 10 would be enough.

I have shared this through Facebook to a few local clubs. Good stuff and well done!