Is Strava worth it if you arent fast?

chris_bass
chris_bass Posts: 4,913
edited August 2013 in The bottom bracket
i'll admit I'm not the fastest cyclist in the world, i've not really done the research necessary to find an exact position but i'd say i'm more than likely outside the top ten!!

Are there any benefits from joining strava if you arent the quickest? there is no chance of me getting a segment or a kom (unless i create one and end it in my flat!) so would it just be a bit redundant for me? I already upload to bikeradar active and garmin connect so can keep a track of my miles etc.
www.conjunctivitis.com - a site for sore eyes
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Comments

  • marcusjb
    marcusjb Posts: 2,412
    I'm never going to gain any KOMs either. Doesn't interest me in the slightest. Some people can ride faster than me, I deal with it.

    Where Strava has been very beneficial for me is in competing with the only person that really matters if I am getting faster against - me.

    It provides a great insight into how I am getting faster through the season - particularly on regular rides (for me, lots of laps of Richmond Park).

    I couldn't care less where I stack up on most segments. I'm usually near the bottom. But I am driven by other goals than speed.
  • ugo.santalucia
    ugo.santalucia Posts: 28,180
    It is a topic of conversation... but one that will alienate you from anyone you might want to talk to
    left the forum March 2023
  • sancho_uk
    sancho_uk Posts: 141
    Personally I like it.

    I like following my friends on it and being able to nosey at their routes.

    Its not all about the leaderboards but I do become addicted to those as well. I currently have an ongoing battle with a bloke who lives round the back of me for a KOM which is good fun.

    For me its not so much about that though as being able to easily track improvement.

    If you tend to ride the same circuit route. It just makes it easier to see how you are progressing time wise.

    You may not fly up the leaderboard but you do get to see if you beat you own time on the segments. Always nice to see a few PB`s appear as you get stronger / feel more comfortable.

    It has its pros and cons. Some people like it others hate it. I actually find it a nice little motivator.
    Focus Cayo 2.0 Ultegra 2012
  • markhewitt1978
    markhewitt1978 Posts: 7,614
    Yes it is worth it. I've not exactly troubling the KOMs either - in fact I'm not troubling the top 100 in many cases ;). However I find it extremely useful for tracing my own progress, as I like to do a slightly different ride each time but most of them will have common elements, so finding how my performance is on each segment is really useful.

    The biggest thing for me is that it gives me motivation to ride routes I've already done many times before. Otherwise I fear I'd get bored riding the same roads. But there's a converse in that riding a new route you won't get any PRs ;)

    That on top of just tracking my cycling in general.
  • Chris Bass wrote:
    Are there any benefits from joining strava if you arent the quickest?
    I use it as a very convenient method of comparing me with me over time on certain sections of road. The rest of it I'm not overly fussed about, especially when it comes to comparisons between myself and people I neither know nor care about.
    Mangeur
  • arran77
    arran77 Posts: 9,260
    Chris Bass wrote:
    i'll admit I'm not the fastest cyclist in the world, i've not really done the research necessary to find an exact position but i'd say i'm more than likely outside the top ten!!

    Are there any benefits from joining strava if you arent the quickest? there is no chance of me getting a segment or a kom (unless i create one and end it in my flat!) so would it just be a bit redundant for me? I already upload to bikeradar active and garmin connect so can keep a track of my miles etc.

    I'm never going to be the fastest either and I'm unlikely to get any KOM's but I still find it helpful as a guide to how much my performance against previous attempts is improving, or not!!!

    :)
    "Arran, you are like the Tony Benn of smut. You have never diluted your depravity and always stand by your beliefs. You have my respect sir and your wife my pity" :lol:

    seanoconn
  • Cleat Eastwood
    Cleat Eastwood Posts: 7,508
    It makes me smile when people name their rides with an apologetic tone - "quick ride with my brother", "cycle with the missus" etc as if they need to apologise for a 10mph average - don't make excuses - just enjoy the ride.
    The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns
    momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.
  • Brakeless
    Brakeless Posts: 865
    I just use it as a riding diary.
  • pirnie
    pirnie Posts: 242
    Even if I'm not troubling KOMs I do enjoy competing with other people I know and ride with, and even if you decide its not your thing, its free! What do you have to loose by signing up and uploading a couple of rides? Its easy enough to delete your data if you decide not to use it
  • cattytown
    cattytown Posts: 647
    I quite like it. It track everything I choose to. I feel it gives me clearer info than garmin connect. I am unlikely to KoM anything but I don't care. It does let me compare against myself well. It made me feel really goos a few weeks ago when I hit my then longest ride, but I also hit PBs on segments late in the route.

    Join as a free member, see if you like it. You don't need to carry on if you don't like it.


    Paul
    Giant Defy 2
    Large bloke getting smaller :-)
  • chrisaonabike
    chrisaonabike Posts: 1,914
    Brakeless wrote:
    I just use it as a riding diary.
    Yes, me too.

    Good for monitoring progress, not so much from ride to ride, more from month to month.

    I ignore the leaderboards (I'm almost always in the bottom third), except to gawp at some fast bugger's unfeasibly quick time, and go straight to "My results".
    Is the gorilla tired yet?
  • chris_bass
    chris_bass Posts: 4,913
    yeah might give it a whirl, is there any social side to it or anything?
    www.conjunctivitis.com - a site for sore eyes
  • marcusjb
    marcusjb Posts: 2,412
    It does also make it easy to produce maps of your riding - I find it really fascinating to see the roads I have ridden, and those I have yet to ride. Probably the coolest thing ever to come out of Strava in my mind!

    http://x.raceshape.com/heatmap/view.htm ... 551e49a55c
  • Chris Bass wrote:
    yeah might give it a whirl, is there any social side to it or anything?
    If you know others who're using it then there is if you (and they) want there to be. If not, no, it's just a load of random names. There's no forced social aspect to it though - if there was I wouldn't be using it!
    Mangeur
  • chris_bass
    chris_bass Posts: 4,913
    marcusjb wrote:
    It does also make it easy to produce maps of your riding - I find it really fascinating to see the roads I have ridden, and those I have yet to ride. Probably the coolest thing ever to come out of Strava in my mind!

    http://x.raceshape.com/heatmap/view.htm ... 551e49a55c

    I really like that actually! is that all your rides on one map?

    can you make mini leagues within the main body? sorry I'll just sign up and i'm sure all my questions will be answered!
    www.conjunctivitis.com - a site for sore eyes
  • marcusjb
    marcusjb Posts: 2,412
    It's not super configurable that one. Just takes all of your rides on Strava and makes a map with heat added to the roads you ride the most. It's very interesting. Mine's pretty incomplete, but gives a good idea of where I have been this last couple of years.

    There's another one that I think you can do date ranges on. Let me see if I can find it.
  • chris_bass
    chris_bass Posts: 4,913
    excellent thanks :)
    www.conjunctivitis.com - a site for sore eyes
  • MartinB2444
    MartinB2444 Posts: 266
    If you're second on the leader board the best you can improve is one poxy place. If you're 698th then 50 places are up for grabs, especially if you can catch a tail wind :D
  • mrfpb
    mrfpb Posts: 4,569
    I was initially disparaging about Strava on these pages. KOM is clearly an ironic title, and the whole thing can be taken way too seriously.

    However I carried on using Garmin Connect and Strava side by side for a while, and find it more and more useful. I like to vary my rides to avoid boredom and just to have the option when out of extending or shortening my intended ride, according to the conditions. But there are segments that I ride regularly, especially near the start and end of a ride, and I started monitoring how I did on those., But most of them were too short to be meaningful, so I started creating my own longer segments to get a more satisfying (to me) record of how I'm doing.

    I've made some of my segments public, but I'm not sure I'm adding anything noteworthy to the community.
  • mrfpb
    mrfpb Posts: 4,569
    Duplicate!.
  • HiCadence
    HiCadence Posts: 40
    My averages are usually around 11 - 12 MPH on a 24 mile route that has about 2000ft of climbing only in it so i know i'm pretty slow at riding and it doesn't really bother me too much because it's about how i do and not over-doing it so that i'm too sore the next day to have another ride! :)

    I use Strava but will probably never win any Segaments of any kind but i do love to track my progress throughout the year and set myself 'targets' of certain miles to aim for by December and little things like that :)
  • supermurph09
    supermurph09 Posts: 2,471
    Its also good when you belong to a club, bit of competition in that. But as other have said the best thing is to compare yourself to yourself. That's all that really matters.
  • Bozman
    Bozman Posts: 2,518
    I've used it for a couple of weeks and I find that it distracts you from the ride.
    I was just happy using my Garmin until a friend mentioned Strava, first time I used it I ended up 6th on a segment.... next time I'm out I nail it down that four mile undulating road..... I'm second but It throws me off the last ten miles of my ride, then I find out that the bloke at the top rides for a team, I'm a burnt out 45 yr old so what chance have I got.
    Then bugger me, I'm out on Wednesday and the same bloke did me again on a climb, It's miles away from the original segment and it's even in a different County.
    Some how I've gained a couple of kom but what are they.....you can say that you're kom but that's purely on Strava, there's hundreds of folk out there that don't/won't use it that'll be quicker, if I can get to second out of a couple of hundred folk on a segment, it can't be a good view of the local pace.
  • awavey
    awavey Posts: 2,368
    oh definitely there are benefits, Im never going to trouble anyone elses times, and frankly some of them I do marvel at how they did that on a bike,equally Im not always last either, though Im not going to worry if someone betters my times.

    But it lets me track my rides, mostly glitch free as I use the phone app which can be a bit flakey on GPS sometimes, and I can see how or if Im maintaining my fitness and whether Im getting better or worse over the same segments, I seem to have been a lot faster when it was cooler than of late 8) but its a handy way to just measure your own riding and progress.
  • gbredneck
    gbredneck Posts: 16
    I'm another one who is never gonna set the world alight with blinding speeds etc, but i do love the whole strava thing, its great for finding other areas / roads to ride by seeing what other people are doing.

    Its also great for tracking the miles done on all of my bikes.

    So yes definitely worth it imho.
    Road - Raleigh Airlite 400 : Hybrid - Sirrus Comp 2013 : MTB - Orange Clockwork (2013)
    And still not quick enough!
  • Bozman wrote:
    it can't be a good view of the local pace.
    Kinda depends on where you are. If you're in a heavily cycled area (Surrey Hills here...) then there's enough honest and accurate traffic to make it pretty representative of what a decent quality group run or, one a fair few segments, pro race can do. The latter is decidedly WTF, especially on segments where you know they're not giving it extra beans e.g. Angela Rippon's carpet vole
    Mangeur
  • ednino
    ednino Posts: 684
    I'm not fast, but even I have 4 KOMs. How long they last I don't know lol
  • chris_bass
    chris_bass Posts: 4,913
    well i've joined, uploaded what was already on my garmin and it looks kinda similar to the others i use but i'll give it a go fora while!
    www.conjunctivitis.com - a site for sore eyes
  • Bozman
    Bozman Posts: 2,518
    Bozman wrote:
    it can't be a good view of the local pace.
    Kinda depends on where you are. If you're in a heavily cycled area (Surrey Hills here...) then there's enough honest and accurate traffic to make it pretty representative of what a decent quality group run or, one a fair few segments, pro race can do. The latter is decidedly WTF, especially on segments where you know they're not giving it extra beans e.g. Angela Rippon's carpet vole

    The point I was aiming at is that I've noticed that a fairly busy route shows only 14 users on the segment logged, yet you see plenty of riders on that route, due to the nature of the route I'd say that the riders aren't in the beginner area they generally look like they're at a decent level(in reality who knows because you can't judge a book by its cover).

    Well used, tough out of town route with hardly any users, does this relate to the type of cyclist that uses Strava?
    I'm guessing that it's different down south where there seems to be one hill(Box Hill) and it acts like a magnet to every man and his dog.