Strava – A couple of questions…

I’ve very recently started using Strava and its surprised me how short a lot of the segments are. ie rather than from the bottom of a hill to the top, it tends to be just one section.

Last night I rode from the bottom of the hill to the top of the moor and I now have a KOM http://app.strava.com/segments/4930878 (if that link works)

Other people have set segements of sections of the same climb, but not the whole thing ?!?

Also I have notice on road climbs/segments I am average to say the least, but off road I am top 1/4 most of the time. Is it just that roadies are fitter?

Also is it not all irrelevant?? 😆 I can say that it may be helpful for seeing if my own personal fitness improves, but you have no way of knowing if the person who set the KOM turned up and just road that section, or if they had done it off the back of a 50 mile ride…

I was also amazed that some segments have been set up crossing junctions and traffic lights etc which I think is crackers !

you can set up the sections where ever you want. if you think from the top to the bottom is the most important section then look at that.

Round my area I have set up alot of off-road sections. I tend to set up a up section and down section, an up and down section and then maybe some up and down extended sections if they seem to run onto other things nicely.

Also I have notice on road climbs/segments I am average to say the least, but off road I am top 1/4 most of the time. Is it just that roadies are fitter?

Fairly unsurprising if your riding a mtb and your a mtber rather than a roady.

Also is it not all irrelevant?? I can say that it may be helpful for seeing if my own personal fitness improves, but you have no way of knowing if the person who set the KOM turned up and just road that section, or if they had done it off the back of a 50 mile ride…

if you go to the KOM page, click on the date of other people ride. Then click back to ride above the map you can see their whole rides so you do know this.

But thats not the point the point is who has done that section quickest however they have managed it.

Is it just that roadies are fitter?

or most MTBers are lazier 😆

Also I have notice on road climbs/segments I am average to say the least, but off road I am top 1/4 most of the time. Is it just that roadies are fitter?

Probably just what you are used to. I’m the opposite and generally place higher up leaderboards on the road than offroad (that’s climbs, I’m dead slow going down, but that’s how I like it). There is probably more variability in bikes off road though. So, if you are riding a light HT, for instance, you are going to beat all those folk on big rigs fairly easily.

I ride the Glen and Baildon Moor quite a bit but never ride that segment that you have created in that order, and by the looks of it no other Strava users do either 🙂
If I get chance I’ll go and do it.

I’ve flagged a few local
segments as dangerous and they’ve been removed.

is it just that roadies are fitter?

Bear in mind that some of the top roadies will be fairly serious and riding with very aero bikes/tri bars etc which makes a difference, and/or may be riding in groups rather than solo which also makes a difference.

Strava on the road is now a wind assisted pastime.

no point trying for a KOM if you haven’t got the wind, as you know the person who has got it had a great tailwind that day…

True!

Other people have set segements of sections of the same climb, but not the whole thing ?!?

There is a lot of “segment spamming” on Strava nowadays. Most popular climbs/descents have multiple segments which are either identical or smaller parts of bigger segments. You can always “hide” segments you don’t like so you never have to see them again! AFAIK if enough people hide a segment it becomes hidden for everyone by default.

Sometimes I create a new segment when I consider an existing one unsuitable for whatever reason (usually inappropriate/dangerous start or end points, or if it’s got a stupid or unimaginative name!)

most mtbers are fat lazy biffers who can’t ride, spend most of there time chatting in the car park about the latest tech, about how tweaking the suspension has made a HUGE difference.

Old school roadies, ride, ride and ride a bit more. The winter bike gets abused something chronic. There also tends to be a more masochistic tendancy, climbs are there to die on, if you reach the top able to speak you go back down and try again!

As for the proliferation of segments it can be a pain in the arse, some i get, between two major junctions and an overall, but some! one KOM i have, or rather 4!!! covers the same climb just very slightly different start and finish points.

no point trying for a KOM if you haven’t got the wind, as you know the person who has got it had a great tailwind that day…

Not quite true, your forgetting the chaingangs and TT bikes.

Which is fairer a KOM with a tail wind or the person i took it from who was doing a two up?

The segments get quite messy with loads being layed on top of each other, broken down into bits and pieces, but I guess that’s the beauty of user-generated content. Be good if strava could do a bit of house-keeping with them at a sort of minimal level – maybe they do that already.
I wouldn’t get involved with anything that crosses a major junction / traffic light. Could negatively affect your judgement.

I think a lot of people set segments for comparing their own performance, not public willy-waving. Which explains why certain areas have multiple segments.

Tail wind is fairer IMO, everyone can go out for a “strava run” when it’s a bit windy if they want. Could be like athletics WRs though where it doesn’t count if the wind is over a certain strength! There should definitely be a separate category for group road rides as well, Strava already knows when you have done a ride with someone else so wouldn’t be difficult to implement (but relies on everyone using Strava of course!)

Be good if strava could do a bit of house-keeping with them at a sort of minimal level

It will have to be done at some point or it will get ridiculous! You can do it yourself though by hiding segments.

I wouldn’t get involved with anything that crosses a major junction / traffic light. Could negatively affect your judgement.

You should flag these as dangerous IMO.

I think a lot of people set segments for comparing their own performance, not public willy-waving. Which explains why certain areas have multiple segments.

Segments can be made private for this purpose.

Not quite true, your forgetting the chaingangs and TT bikes.

It’s all fair game IMO. watched a guy on a TT bike fly along one of my KOMs, sure enough I got the dreaded email. I was tempted to go straight back out with my clip ons….

Also I have notice on road climbs/segments I am average to say the least, but off road I am top 1/4 most of the time. Is it just that roadies are fitter?

1) Yes rodies are fitter, on average by a huge margin. Very few weekend warriors who turn up once a week and do 15 miles. The least roadies will do is a 70 mile Sunday morning cake run and a mid week spin.

2) Roadies ride in groups, on my own I’d be ~60%, even in the slow group it’s ~30%.

Segments can be made private for this purpose.

People don’t do this though! I doubt many give privacy a thought.

Surprised quite alot of people here seem to want a reduction in the number of segments.

I like having alot lets you compare yourself to other riders in more detail. Must admit it get silly when segments are very short as the GPS devices wont be accurate enough to measure them correctly.

Short segments rock!

http://app.strava.com/segments/4714429

Click on Satellite and zoom in for the full glory 😉

is it not all irrelevant??

Yup.

Multiple segments can be down to the Strava app not picking up an existing segment on your ride.

Sometimes when I’m out, I’ll ride a section knowing it has a Strava segment and try and get a decent time.

You get home and find out that Strava hasn’t recognised any segments. So you create a new one to find out what your time actually was. I’ve done this a few times but I always make the segment private or just delete it. I guess other people just create duplicate segments

Surprised quite alot of people here seem to want a reduction in the number of segments.

Only where there are 3 or 4 overlapping which are to all intents identical.

Short segments rock!

http://app.strava.com/segments/4714429

Click on Satellite and zoom in for the full glory Martin Atkins = comedy god 🙂

There’s a short hill near me that’s a segment, takes about 20-25s to climb. I must admit I did take that into consideration when selecting it for interval training.. I got 10/280 or something. The KOM is a track cyclist who wins stuff so I guess he’s fairly quick 🙂

There’s another 10s segment I’ve also used but it’s a bit silly really.

@FunkyDunc, btw your Loadpit to Trig segment, I’m pretty sure I could ride along the Glen road rather than along the grass/rocks and still record a time…..but I won’t.

You get home and find out that Strava hasn’t recognised any segments. So you create a new one to find out what your time actually was. I’ve done this a few times but I always make the segment private or just delete it. I guess other people just create duplicate segments

This is me, my guess is if it doesnt pick it up for me it might not pick it up for some one else.

This is particularly true if you going fast as the GPX may look alot straighter than someone going slowly.

another problem with strava

What we have in the above example is a section of single track next to the road, but because the track is close to the road, road riders get picked up.

This is particularly true if you going fast as the GPX may look alot straighter than someone going slowly.

Possibly, I think what’s more of an issue is that a lot of people have shit GPS devices that don’t do 1s recording. They should be banned from making segments 🙂

If Strava did anything useful they should write an algorithm that takes account sampling rates for different devices. It is strange how a lot of the fastest people (but not all) use smart phones to record their rides. Not saying this is a deliberate ploy to get KOM but it does seem to crop up quite a lot.

I’d like a couple of extra filters on the KOM tables. One for ‘bike type’ but I guess that would need changes to the profile side of things. I’d also like to be able to filter my own times by the bike I was riding at the time.

[/quote]If Strava did anything useful they should write an algorithm that takes account sampling rates for different devices. It is strange how a lot of the fastest people (but not all) use smart phones to record their rides. Not saying this is a deliberate ploy to get KOM but it does seem to crop up quite a lot.

I can see this might affect short segments but surely anything over a couple of minutes it should nt make any difference and anyhow depending on the terrain and the time sampled it may hinder rather than help.

It is strange how a lot of the fastest people (but not all) use smart phones to record their rides

I’d say a lot of fast and slow people use smart phones as this is what people have.

In fact I’d say many more of the fast people will use a Garmin that the slow people as by definition these are more serious cyclists who will be more likely to spend £100s on a cycling specific GPS.

I’d say what you have experienced is confirmation bias when viewing the kit people use.

Martin Atkins, been thinking about doing this. You ARE my hero!

I’d say what you have experienced is confirmation bias when viewing the kit people use.

To an extent I’d agree but when you have been riding side by side with someone over various segments and they invariably end up with faster times than you, it does raise one’s suspicions somewhat.

I got a weird one on a run (sorry) yesterday – my PR for a segment is faster than the CR (running equivalent of KOM). 😕

Very odd – I want my place at the top of the board!

Strava can throw up some weird results, but generally my faster mates get faster times and the slower ones slower times.
Ultimately it’s a load of bollocks, but it can be a lot of fun.
I mainly use Strava to measure my performance against my past performance not everyone else.

You get home and find out that Strava hasn’t recognised any segments. So you create a new one to find out what your time actually was. I’ve done this a few times but I always make the segment private or just delete it. I guess other people just create duplicate segments

Just ping the support guys the segment you are missing and they stick it in quickly. Avoid creating yet another segment on the same bit. It is getting silly round the surrey hills. And don’t get me started on the number of names for the same bits of trail…

I use the same device all the time, and use Strava mainly to compare my own times, so any errors will likely be consistent to me, which is what im really interested in.
Its fun to compare against friends, but its not that serious. I does motivate me to push harder, but there is always going to be someone faster, so its not the end of the world.
It does annoy me that there appear to be some people out there who go looking for segments to go KOM bagging. There’s a fast roadie round my way which seems to have bagged KOMs on MANY trails in the Isle of Wight. Not doubting is obvious fitness, but it strikes me that he’s going out for bragging rights, because he’s shit going downhill.

Strava on the road is now a wind assisted pastime.

no point trying for a KOM if you haven’t got the wind, as you know the person who has got it had a great tailwind that day…

I own most of the local (within 2-3 miles) road KOMs – all achieved on different days, depending on the direction 8) One I’m missing, so might have to get the TT bike out.

It does annoy me that there appear to be some people out there who go looking for segments to go KOM bagging. There’s a fast roadie round my way which seems to have bagged KOMs on MANY trails in the Isle of Wight. Not doubting is obvious fitness, but it strikes me that he’s going out for bragging rights, because he’s shit going downhill.

I thought that was the whole point? Presumably somewhere he’s complaining about the people who can ride downhill faster than him bagging the DH KOMs, which they don’t deserve because they’re shit at climbing. Or maybe he’s not actually that shallow.

I should point out that I only have one off-road KOM, which I took riding a unicycle! (mainly because I rarely ride a bike off-road)

There’s a fast roadie round my way which seems to have bagged KOMs on MANY trails in the Isle of Wight. Not doubting is obvious fitness, but it strikes me that he’s going out for bragging rights, because he’s shit going downhill.

Simple solution, add a new segment on a popular downhill and name it after him…

“xxx may be quick uphill but he wont get KOM down here”

or similar (there are probably size limits to names so you might have to get creative). If its a popular trail it should pop up on loads of peoples rides 😆

I think maybe there are fewer MTBers just going for strava points than roadies, I know I’m generally out there enjoying the ride as much as poss.
having said that, I guess off road comparisons should be more like-for-like as there may be less drafting effect and less wind assistance (generally).

going on to strava – sadness,
One thing I noticed after a road ride the other night with a group of local strava-baggers, we’d done a generally quick ride but one segment particularly slowly because we’d gone past the ‘start’ then ended up waiting a while for a puncture or something.
(sad I know) but I checked the other guys on the group’s time for comparison, and I couldnt find it just on that segment – I think they’d actually clicked HIDE segment, presumably to not look bad- WTF???