Strava Premium segments

First.Aspect

rick_chasey said:

pblakeney said:

rick_chasey said:

Don’t think I ever came across it?

Guy died chasing a KOM (on a decent, never understood the naming) on a dangerous segment. Parents sued Strava. Parents lost.
https://www.velonews.com/news/strava-wins-dismissal-of-civil-suit-over-berkeley-death/

Sad story.

It’s not like people only started bombing downhill when strava turned up.

No, but in a small number of cases people chase what they perceive must be possible if someone else can do it.

Racing everyone else downhill is like trying to drive fastest. It becomes a challenge about who is the stupidest rather than who is the most competent. The strava times are either from closed roads or invincible young men.

bompington

So I had the first experience of the new strava yesterday. The only thing that makes any difference to me is that I always found it useful motivation to see how far up the leader board I was - top half on anything uphill is an achievement for me - and it's disappointing to lose that.

I never used the route planner anyway - Bikehike is amateurish and appears to be pretty much unsupported but has a couple of useful features, such as OS maps, and does all the route planning I ever use.

One thing any online service has got you with, of course, is that once you use them they hold the keys to your data. It actually matters to me how I do on various segments - I was genuinely chuffed to get a PR on one of my index climbs the other day - and migrating to any other service would break that, even if you could use the strava data dump.

Still, there are just a couple of climbs where I was just outside the top ten*, so I must see if I can make it into the big time one day. Although I have noticed one of those annoying differences between platforms - on the app you can see the top ten for any segment; on the website you can't - it just shows you your time and the KOM.


*very short climbs immediately following long descents

rick_chasey

First.Aspect said:

rick_chasey said:

pblakeney said:

rick_chasey said:

Don’t think I ever came across it?

Guy died chasing a KOM (on a decent, never understood the naming) on a dangerous segment. Parents sued Strava. Parents lost.
https://www.velonews.com/news/strava-wins-dismissal-of-civil-suit-over-berkeley-death/

Sad story.

It’s not like people only started bombing downhill when strava turned up.

No, but in a small number of cases people chase what they perceive must be possible if someone else can do it.

Racing everyone else downhill is like trying to drive fastest. It becomes a challenge about who is the stupidest rather than who is the most competent. The strava times are either from closed roads or invincible young men.

You flatter me too much

Pross

kingstongraham said:

davidof said:

It is quite a big loss of information. The best bet is to register as a woman as you still get leader boards. :-)

I'm a bit annoyed that I invested time creating a lot of the more interesting segments around here, there was nothing on Strava when I started so I kicked started things a bit. Still that's how things are.

From a techie viewpoint it is clear that their model uses a lot of resources. First of all I would lossy compress the gpx data that is uploaded - they preserve gps tracks as they are sent at we're talking hundreds of kb per upload (ok that maybe stored in a compact format). Then there are all the photos. It is a lot of data.

They clearly built their platform with just cycling and running in mind they tacked on other sports but these are second class citizens. You can't, for example, create a "nordic walking club" with a filter on this activity only. This suggests they got their original data model wrong and can't fix it easily, or can't be bothered.

They don't really understand a lot of sports that well. They wanted to cater for everyone, or at least "profit" without putting the effort in. "Oh yeah, Marcus, create a new tag for parcours, that will bring the lucrative urban teen segment in."

The segments are a total mess. They could allow voting so that unpopular segments get deprecated unless, this happens to some extent but we don't really need 1000 segments for l'alpe d'Huez. Segments that start i people's garages or gardens etc should be out! However as others have said segments for one sport don't make sense for another so you need to understand domain specifics.

Segments have never worked that well. Matching rides against someone else's shonky gpx track is not a great idea. Far better to let someone define a start and end point and any key waypoints on the route.

Searching for routes and segments in flakey.

Advertising, would have helped their revenue a bit but I doubt they could fund the platform on ads. It is not hard to build their own ad platform as open source solutions exist to do this if they won't want to partner. But running something like google ads on your website really just makes money for google in 2020

The social side never really took off, people don't seem to post many stories or talk about their rides. Probably most people are just uploading a track and a couple of pics from a mobile.

As someone above said, it might just be better to bin the whole thing and port what data they can onto a new platform.

A segment from (close to) my home to (close to) my work is only useful to me, but it's still interesting.

Isn't that the purpose of a private segment?

Pross

The most annoying part for me is they are advertising subscriptions as £4 a month (when purchased annually) or words to that effect. This isn't unique to Strava, I see it a lot when people want their product to appear less expensive, but it is deliberately misleading. You can't get it for £4 per month, it's either £48 in one go or £5.99?? per month.

kingstongraham

Pross said:

kingstongraham said:

davidof said:

It is quite a big loss of information. The best bet is to register as a woman as you still get leader boards. :-)

I'm a bit annoyed that I invested time creating a lot of the more interesting segments around here, there was nothing on Strava when I started so I kicked started things a bit. Still that's how things are.

From a techie viewpoint it is clear that their model uses a lot of resources. First of all I would lossy compress the gpx data that is uploaded - they preserve gps tracks as they are sent at we're talking hundreds of kb per upload (ok that maybe stored in a compact format). Then there are all the photos. It is a lot of data.

They clearly built their platform with just cycling and running in mind they tacked on other sports but these are second class citizens. You can't, for example, create a "nordic walking club" with a filter on this activity only. This suggests they got their original data model wrong and can't fix it easily, or can't be bothered.

They don't really understand a lot of sports that well. They wanted to cater for everyone, or at least "profit" without putting the effort in. "Oh yeah, Marcus, create a new tag for parcours, that will bring the lucrative urban teen segment in."

The segments are a total mess. They could allow voting so that unpopular segments get deprecated unless, this happens to some extent but we don't really need 1000 segments for l'alpe d'Huez. Segments that start i people's garages or gardens etc should be out! However as others have said segments for one sport don't make sense for another so you need to understand domain specifics.

Segments have never worked that well. Matching rides against someone else's shonky gpx track is not a great idea. Far better to let someone define a start and end point and any key waypoints on the route.

Searching for routes and segments in flakey.

Advertising, would have helped their revenue a bit but I doubt they could fund the platform on ads. It is not hard to build their own ad platform as open source solutions exist to do this if they won't want to partner. But running something like google ads on your website really just makes money for google in 2020

The social side never really took off, people don't seem to post many stories or talk about their rides. Probably most people are just uploading a track and a couple of pics from a mobile.

As someone above said, it might just be better to bin the whole thing and port what data they can onto a new platform.

A segment from (close to) my home to (close to) my work is only useful to me, but it's still interesting.

Isn't that the purpose of a private segment?

Yes, I suppose if you are searching for segments it would conceivably make a difference. I don't think it would show up in many searches if only one person ever rode it though.

The problem ones around me are the segments around places like Richmond Park. A single lap of Richmond Park has well over 500 segments on it.

trivial_poursuivant

I noticed on my girlfriends strava feed (I've paid for years) that you only see the leaderboard and nothing else. The thing she is disappointed about is she can't see how many other people rode today. She found that her main motivation. If lots of people were out she would join in. Now she just gets top 10s and sfa else

pangolin

Pross said:

The most annoying part for me is they are advertising subscriptions as £4 a month (when purchased annually) or words to that effect. This isn't unique to Strava, I see it a lot when people want their product to appear less expensive, but it is deliberately misleading. You can't get it for £4 per month, it's either £48 in one go or £5.99?? per month.

I found that annoying too. For £4 I was tempted. You have to click start trial and amend the billing option to monthly to find it is actually £6.99 per month if paid monthly.

£7 feels too big a jump from £4, are they really that desperate for the cash injection of everyone buying an annual sub in the next 2 months? Maybe they are.

N0bodyOfTheGoat

pangolin said:

Pross said:

The most annoying part for me is they are advertising subscriptions as £4 a month (when purchased annually) or words to that effect. This isn't unique to Strava, I see it a lot when people want their product to appear less expensive, but it is deliberately misleading. You can't get it for £4 per month, it's either £48 in one go or £5.99?? per month.

I found that annoying too. For £4 I was tempted. You have to click start trial and amend the billing option to monthly to find it is actually £6.99 per month if paid monthly.

£7 feels too big a jump from £4, are they really that desperate for the cash injection of everyone buying an annual sub in the next 2 months? Maybe they are.

Ever since they introduced Summit and perhaps even before, Strava's cost per month was always substantially less for commiting to a year's subscription instead of a rolling month to month sub.

When they introduced the three Summit packs a year or two ago, I didn't mind too much paying £18.99 for the Analysis pack for a year, because of the features it gave that made use of my power data on the Cube outdoors and my turbo indoors.

My Summit sub doesn't expire for ~6.5 months, so presuming they don't force me to "upgrade" to £47.99 before then, it gives me some breathing room to see how this pans out before deciding what to do.

Sadly, it does seem Strava created its own unique niche as regards segements and leaderboards and now wants to hold the user group to ransom after ~10 years. I can't help but think they would generate far more income by charging something nominal such as £1-5 per year just to have full access to segment leaderboards and then ~£20 per year for additional features.

I could have sworn that a similar app to Strava had some segments, but it was extremely limited compared to Strava, anyone any ideas? Not Garmin, something along lines of RideWithGPS.

Ben6899

N0bodyOfTheGoat said:

I could have sworn that a similar app to Strava had some segments, but it was extremely limited compared to Strava, anyone any ideas? Not Garmin, something along lines of RideWithGPS.

Veloviewer Pro is £20 a month and will pull through Strava segments, but I don't know to what extent. Never really used it.

kingstongraham

Ben6899 said:

N0bodyOfTheGoat said:

I could have sworn that a similar app to Strava had some segments, but it was extremely limited compared to Strava, anyone any ideas? Not Garmin, something along lines of RideWithGPS.

Veloviewer Pro is £20 a month and will pull through Strava segments, but I don't know to what extent. Never really used it.

I think veloviewer have said that their functionality will only be unchanged by Strava's changes if you have a paid Strava membership.

wongataa

Ben6899 said:

Veloviewer Pro is £20 a month and will pull through Strava segments, but I don't know to what extent. Never really used it.

Veloviewer is £10 or £20 per year, not month, depending on what subscription option you go for.

wongataa

trivial_poursuivant said:

I noticed on my girlfriends strava feed (I've paid for years) that you only see the leaderboard and nothing else. The thing she is disappointed about is she can't see how many other people rode today. She found that her main motivation. If lots of people were out she would join in. Now she just gets top 10s and sfa else

This is per the new changes. You can't see much if you don't pay now.

Pross

N0bodyOfTheGoat said:

pangolin said:

Pross said:

The most annoying part for me is they are advertising subscriptions as £4 a month (when purchased annually) or words to that effect. This isn't unique to Strava, I see it a lot when people want their product to appear less expensive, but it is deliberately misleading. You can't get it for £4 per month, it's either £48 in one go or £5.99?? per month.

I found that annoying too. For £4 I was tempted. You have to click start trial and amend the billing option to monthly to find it is actually £6.99 per month if paid monthly.

£7 feels too big a jump from £4, are they really that desperate for the cash injection of everyone buying an annual sub in the next 2 months? Maybe they are.

I could have sworn that a similar app to Strava had some segments, but it was extremely limited compared to Strava, anyone any ideas? Not Garmin, something along lines of RideWithGPS.

I think it might be on Map My Ride / Run. They were a bit too late introducing it and the sort of people who would be interested had migrated to Strava by then but this could be a chance to attract users back. Those apps are owned by Under Armour now so possibly have a bit more money backing them.

wongataa

Pross said:

N0bodyOfTheGoat said:

pangolin said:

Pross said:

The most annoying part for me is they are advertising subscriptions as £4 a month (when purchased annually) or words to that effect. This isn't unique to Strava, I see it a lot when people want their product to appear less expensive, but it is deliberately misleading. You can't get it for £4 per month, it's either £48 in one go or £5.99?? per month.

I found that annoying too. For £4 I was tempted. You have to click start trial and amend the billing option to monthly to find it is actually £6.99 per month if paid monthly.

£7 feels too big a jump from £4, are they really that desperate for the cash injection of everyone buying an annual sub in the next 2 months? Maybe they are.

I could have sworn that a similar app to Strava had some segments, but it was extremely limited compared to Strava, anyone any ideas? Not Garmin, something along lines of RideWithGPS.

I think it might be on Map My Ride / Run. They were a bit too late introducing it and the sort of people who would be interested had migrated to Strava by then but this could be a chance to attract users back. Those apps are owned by Under Armour now so possibly have a bit more money backing them.

Ride with GPS & Garmin have segments.

N0bodyOfTheGoat

wongataa said:

Pross said:

N0bodyOfTheGoat said:

pangolin said:

Pross said:

The most annoying part for me is they are advertising subscriptions as £4 a month (when purchased annually) or words to that effect. This isn't unique to Strava, I see it a lot when people want their product to appear less expensive, but it is deliberately misleading. You can't get it for £4 per month, it's either £48 in one go or £5.99?? per month.

I found that annoying too. For £4 I was tempted. You have to click start trial and amend the billing option to monthly to find it is actually £6.99 per month if paid monthly.

£7 feels too big a jump from £4, are they really that desperate for the cash injection of everyone buying an annual sub in the next 2 months? Maybe they are.

I could have sworn that a similar app to Strava had some segments, but it was extremely limited compared to Strava, anyone any ideas? Not Garmin, something along lines of RideWithGPS.

I think it might be on Map My Ride / Run. They were a bit too late introducing it and the sort of people who would be interested had migrated to Strava by then but this could be a chance to attract users back. Those apps are owned by Under Armour now so possibly have a bit more money backing them.

Ride with GPS & Garmin have segments.

I had a feeling it was RidewithGPS, but I've looked at the route builder several times since this news broke and couldn't see anything about segments... I lose the Krypton Factor observation round!

morstar

Ride with GPS was establishing itself well as the dominant platform I believe before Strava came along with Segments.
Ride with did introduce segments after a while but the migration to Strava was already well underway.
Segments definitely were there though.

slowmart

I've signed up the annual subscription, I’ve subscribed in the last and let it lapse but with the added features the platform is a more polished product and I’m enjoying the additional features.

Darius_Jedburgh

wongataa said:

Ride with GPS & Garmin have segments.

Can I ask where segments can be found in Garmin?

bompington

Another gripe: it might not be anything to do with the new setup, may of course be caused by my ancient, knackered and overly-tinkered-with phone, but battery use of the strava app (on android), which never used to be a problem, has rocketed.

kingstongraham

Darius_Jedburgh said:

wongataa said:

Ride with GPS & Garmin have segments.

Can I ask where segments can be found in Garmin?

On the Connect, under Training, there's a bit called "Segments". I've got it set to Strava segments on the App, but you can set it to Garmin segments.

On the website, you can see the Garmin segments in the same place.

cruff

Darius_Jedburgh said:

wongataa said:

Ride with GPS & Garmin have segments.

Can I ask where segments can be found in Garmin?

Garmin Connect site.

Don't bother - it's shite.

First.Aspect

cruff said:

Darius_Jedburgh said:

wongataa said:

Ride with GPS & Garmin have segments.

Can I ask where segments can be found in Garmin?

Garmin Connect site.

Don't bother - it's shite.

There's an app as well. In some ways its better than Strava, but as with other platforms, once Strava came along I think they stopped developing the segment functionality. Main issue seems to be that it doesn't reliably pick up that you've crossed a segment. Seems to be too sensitive to your exact road position.

Also, there are hardly any segments on there. But the ones on there have thousands of times against them in my area because people are uploading all their rides via the app for every Garmin device.

I'd keep an eye on it to see if people migrate back and induce some improvements. Garmin will surely be spotting an opportunity to offer something for free that also nicely advertises all of their hardware.

joe2019

First.Aspect said:

There's an app as well. In some ways its better than Strava, but as with other platforms, once Strava came along I think they stopped developing the segment functionality.

I think Strava had the original segment idea, Garmin just tried to copy it.

Pross

I've gone for the trial with a reminder to cancel it the day before the 60 days are up. If it feels worthwhile I'll leave the payment to go out. So far, after a few days of use, I'm not seeing a lot of benefit over what used to be provided free (the other function that seems to have disappeared on runs with the free version is the 'gap' time adjustment for gradient). Analysis against past runs on the same route is the only thing I think I'd really miss.

joe2019

Pross said:

Analysis against past runs on the same route is the only thing I think I'd really miss.

Screen grab the 'My Results' pages of the 'important' segments while you have your premium trial.

You could then add new times to the page manually as you do them once your trial is over, rather than pay for this feature.

I agree that is the only deactivated feature that I would miss too.

morstar

I think this does play into the hands of the hardware manufacturers if they choose to up their games.
Strava became de facto standard with a desirable feature and cross platform compatibility.
They’ve just introduced charging for one feature that was free and reduced cross platform functionality.
Harmon has already bought Tacx to expand their remit and should now up their game with connect.

capt_slog

I've just had an email from Strava about Local Legends.

Basically, if you have ridden a particular, qualifying segment the most number of times in the 90 day period, you get a sort of KOM for that. Sounds okay, but not that worried really.

The bit that has got my goat is that it's NOT available on the strava website, you have to do it via a phone app. Why?

I'm not a smartphone owner/user, can't stand the 'king things.