Strava – how does it work?

Probably a dumb question…

looking at some people’s times on local hill climbs on Strava’s website, if I were to ride one of these hill climbs how would I now exactly where to start/finish. Does it just know when to start recording that section of the road via satelite grid refs or something?! I’m assuming it just kicks in when that section of the road begins.

It just logs the gps positions, then when you upload your ride it matches the gps positions to segments people have specified on the strava website.

Nothing “kicks in” per se. Whatever device you use to record your rides (smart phone, Garmin etc.) knows what time you were at each grid reference so to speak, and once you finish the ride and upload it to Strava, any segments that you happen to have ridden it will work out your time for and let you know how you did. The start and finish points have been arbitrarily created in Strava by the person who created each segment, so you won’t know as such when you go over one, unless there is an obvious landmark that is mentioned in the name on the strava segment page perhaps.

It works by making you feel inferior and worthless when you compare your ride to everybody else’s. Including that KOM guy who clearly did the route in a car or on a motorbike. 😀

So by being on it, it tells the watching world that you are a serious rider and have some sort of decent bike. It logs your routes, leading to and from where you live, so chavs know exactly where to thieve one or more of your babies from. Simples.

Often if you start and finish as per the segment but ride a different route Strava can put you onto that segment leaderboard.

Glentress red climb (from Peel to Spooky Wood) is a case in point, if you miss out Pennels Vennel and ride straight up the fireroad you’ll get a faster time on the segment.

Thanks, I can see how it could get pretty addictive.

mrelectric – Member

So by being on it, it tells the watching world that you are a serious rider and have some sort of decent bike. It logs your routes, leading to and from where you live, so chavs know exactly where to thieve one or more of your babies from. Simples.

Or just lock down your account and security settings?

Cheers Weasel. To be fair, I’d heard that plan too. Good PSA for everyone.

mrelectric – Member

So by being on it, it tells the watching world that you are a serious rider and have some sort of decent bike. It logs your routes, leading to and from where you live, so chavs know exactly where to thieve one or more of your babies from. Simples.

You can block your starting point from anyone else seeing it with a mile radius exclusion zone IIRC

Look for the segments in your riding area in Explore.
Select the segment by going into segment details
Zoom in at start of segment
Change your map to street view or satellite if off road to help you identify the exact start point
Do the same with the end point.

mrelectric – Member

Cheers Weasel. To be fair, I’d heard that plan too. Good PSA for everyone.

I’ve got my privacy circle thing starting in the next street so it’s not as if my house is bang in the centre of it.

Of course you could start recording your ride a few streets away from home etc.

I’ve got my privacy circle thing starting in the next street so it’s not as if my house is bang in the centre of it.

Interesting thought – not that I have an issue with where the privacy circle is centered, as I’m pretty sure it would be impossible to tell that from what you can see of my rides, but it would be handy to be able to move the privacy circle to include a nearby segment which at the moment I’m not on (I’d probably have a rubbish time on it as it’s always at the end of a ride when I’ve stopped trying that hard, but still interesting).

…so I’ve just moved my location a bit further away from the main road (which the only access to the 200 house estate I live on is from) – all of the part of my rides until I’m on the main road is still private, but I’m now included in the segment. Result!

It works by making you feel inferior and worthless when you compare your ride to everybody else’s. Including that KOM guy who clearly did the route in a car or on a motorbike.

I’m getting a number of KOM and high placings recently riding my road bike up MTB segments. 😉

If anything it’s got me going out in the wind again 🙂

Basically don’t take anything on Strava seriously. It’s fun though.

The main bit of use is it tracks your route, tells you the segment names, and you can compare your ride to your own previous efforts. Everything else you take with a pinch of salt.

Segments often match incorrectly so you’ll have people ranked super fast when they actually went past the trail on a fast section of fireroad, bridleway, tarmac etc.

GPS isn’t entirely accurate, especially on phones and within tree cover. It has errors and spikes and while Strava tries to fix them, some errors remain. For example doing a climb that should take a minute in 2 seconds because it only logged two GPS points and screwed up the times for them.

Altitude on GPS is even less accurate though Strava does fix that quite well based on known elevation data. Still, go ride with friends all using Strava, same trail and note the massive differences in elevation figures. More so with different devices but even the same ones can be way off.

Position is a biggie as if there are a lot of segments close together you’ll be placed on segments you never did.

GPS alone will get the distance off by a fair bit as it’s plotting points every few seconds roughly, rather than tracking all the distance rolled on the ground and all the bendy bits.

If you stand around at the start or end of a segment you might get matched as doing the segment, so can end up taking 10 minutes on a trail that should take you 2 and you actually did it in 2.

Where the segment stuff comes in handy, other than getting trail names, is if you do the same ride with friends and compare them. You can see then where the segment matches are obviously right and start/end times are good, and can get an idea of how you’re doing compared to each other. This has been the best judge for me as most people I ride with are all within the same range so I know the track is accurate and know I’m doing okay keeping up with them.

richpips – Member
I’m getting a number of KOM and high placings recently riding my road bike up MTB segments.

The new trails at Swinley are smooth enough to fly around with a road bike (I’ve seen one so far since the new stuff opened, and was doing pretty well too).

So by being on it, it tells the watching world that you are a serious rider and have some sort of decent bike. It logs your routes, leading to and from where you live, so chavs know exactly where to thieve one or more of your babies from. Simples.

all my rides are private. people have to request to follow me, and only then can they see my rides. and I have the start / finish radius set.

as one of my friends said last week “Strava is now a wind assisted pastime” don’t expect to get any decent (road) placings without a fairly hefty tailwond

Interesting thought – not that I have an issue with where the privacy circle is centered, as I’m pretty sure it would be impossible to tell that from what you can see of my rides, but it would be handy to be able to move the privacy circle to include a nearby segment which at the moment I’m not on (I’d probably have a rubbish time on it as it’s always at the end of a ride when I’ve stopped trying that hard, but still interesting).

I’m sure that if a segment is within your privacy zone you won’t show up on. There is a segment along a path in the woods at the bottom of my road, my privacy zone is just outside it. Of course I hold the KOM on it – and made damn sure of it. It’s the nearest segment to me!

I’m sure that if a segment is within your privacy zone you won’t show up on

That’s exactly my point, and why I’ve moved the privacy zone so the segment isn’t in it.

Set up privacy zones.
You can set up as many as you want so best to set a number of overlapping ones that cover the area were you live. Can be set on a postcode, address or a place name (seems to work on most place names) – also handy if you ride a few cheeky trails and don’t want the world to know you ride them. obviously any segments you ride won’t show up on in these privacy zones.

warton – Member
all my rides are private. people have to request to follow me, and only then can they see my rides. and I have the start / finish radius set.

AFAIK if a ride is made private only you can see it – so non of your followers will be able to see any details of that particular ride.

Also worth noting that if you appear on a segment leader board anyone will be able to see your route for that particular ride on which you completed that particular segment – including people who do not follow you. Obviously privacy zones still apply to these rides.