Using Strava without segments?

Does anyone know if it’s possible to use Strava without being shown your segment times at all? So just having it track route, mileage, climbing and also sharing your rides.

After one crash too many I don’t want to think “ooh, this is feeling fast, maybe there’s a PR here?”, I just want to flow. But I like knowing how far and where I’ve gone and I like the social aspect because I’ve ridden with a lot of people in recent years and it’s nice to keep in touch with what my riding mates are up to, even if we’re not riding together much at the moment.

Just log it but don’t look at it while you are riding?

Turn off live segments on your GPS or phone?

I never look at it when I’m riding and I don’t use live segments. But I know where all the segments are on my local trails, so if I’m on a charge I’m like “hell yeah, I’ll just push a bit harder cos this is going well and AAAAAAARGGHHHHH FUUUUUUUCK!!!!”

In the privacy settings, there is an option for “Hide from Segment and Challenge Leaderboards”.

So your times won’t be listed in the overall results. But I think it will still count your own results, so you could get PRs.

Just use a different tracking app, because you know, strava is all about the segments, KOMs and willy waving. Other apps offer similar ?better? training and tracking info, privacy and so on, without all the segments, public leader boards, facebook wana be twaddle and masses of alerts and emails you need to turn off.

Strava is good for what it is, but what it’s not intended to be is a private diary.

The downside is that some of the (imo) better apps don’t synch with other hardware easily,  so you end up using strava anyway, with all the guff you can possibly turn off turned off, then it shows the intrusive “2nd” or what not achievements for my your bloody commute which is the last place I’m you’re (wanting to be) worrying about PBs but they niggle you know…

I feel your pain Alex, most of the crashes i’ve had have been chasing Strava times, or even worse, MatesRace which makes me crash off the bike every time! Since starting a family I’m much more aware of the consequences of me injuring myself out on a ride. I’ve made a conscious decision now to reign it in and try not to go as fast as I can all the time, it’s all about the flow, right. In doing so i’ve also managed to pick up a few more PR’s on Strava… so work that one out??!?

Endomondo should do the job then ?

I used to use Endomondo and had no complaints with it. I moved to Strava for the same reason that I reluctantly use Facebook – it’s where everyone else hangs out and for social rides, it’s nice to get grouped up there.

Being honest, I don’t have much chance of cracking any KOMs, but I do enjoy being able to track my own fitness improvement, based purely on seeing how my segment times improve. I make a point of only doing this for longer segments (10 miles+) so there’s no risk of my pushing too hard to knock that all important 1s off a 30s downhill time – something that has also had me off the bike in the past! Older and wiser, etc.

If you just want a mileage logger with none of the social aspect, I’m sure Endomondo would work fine. You didn’t mention how you record your rides, but Endomondo supports Garmin Connect sync in the same way that Strava does, so from a purely technical standpoint, I wouldn’t expect you to have too much trouble either using a Garmin, or the native app to record rides.

Set your ride as private, then you don’t get on the leaderboards. Not sure if it shows you your times against yourself etc

I’ve just had an idea!

If I set my MTB up as an e-bike it won’t register on the MTB segments!

“Endomondo should do the job then ?”

But we’re all on Strava – it is a social app, despite the naysayers!

Nathan, and the worst thing is it’s actual pain! 😉 I feel like a while back I hit a limit of both skill and bravery so getting quicker times just involves taking risks. With two riding mates suffering broken backs from getting jumps wrong in the last year, and then seeing pros on Instagram constantly suffering injuries of varying severity I know I need to just focus on flow and minimise risk. And I’m getting some satisfying progression lifting some heavy free weights in the gym, which is fulfilling my competitive tendencies (if making me somewhat slower uphill…)

I think Garmin Connect Sync needs a bit more work these days – GDPR ended the automatic updates to Strava for example. Not sure which side of the connection the problem is, might be an authorisation issue.

Strava started out as a purely (road) biking logger but since everything these days has to be “social media” they’ve been bolting all that crap on. I just ignore it. Like FB, Twitter, etc. they want you to stay in their walled garden for as long as possible.

If you just want to use Strava to log your rides and simply aren’t bothered about PBs, KOMs, etc. then go to profile->settings->Privacy and select the “Make my activities private by default” box. You can make individual rides public if you want. It’s the opposite of the default behaviour.

GDPR ended the automatic updates to Strava for example

WAT. Not here it hasn’t. My Garmin activities still push through GC to Strava with no additional steps. As a note, if you don’t have a date-of-birth set in Strava, it won’t accept any fitness data (e.g. heart rate) and filters this out from the data, but you will still see your activity.

Are you sure something isn’t broken for you here?

Garmin > Strava still working absolutely fine here too

You’re blaming strava for something that’s going on inside your own head. You need to switch that off rather than strava

I gave up trying beating my own times a while back, if it happens : so be it, if not :so be it.

Possibly something with my setup. It did stop working a couple of weeks ago when GDPR came in without me changing anything and I’ve had to manually upload activities to Strava. I’ll reset the connection and see what happens.

I knew there was a reason why I almost always only have interest in uphill segments… Trying to maintain ~300W up cat3/4 hills to typically travel at 10-15mph is far safer. 😉

I know flat and downhill segments are there, but 99% of the time I couldn’t give two hoots about my times and power on them.

But as suggested already, Endomondo is a decent non-Strava option, or try Ghostracer (Pro is only a one-off £3 option, you can choose to link to Strava or not).

“You’re blaming strava for something that’s going on inside your own head. You need to switch that off rather than strava”

I’m not blaming Strava at all. But I’m keen to see if removing those measured PR goals will help me focus on flow rather than speed.

If you know anything about sports psychology then you’ll know that it’s an incredibly complex and subtle field and just saying “switch that off” won’t work for 99.999% of humans. There’s a reason that someone like Aaron Gwin or Serena Williams is such a dominant competitor and much of it is their mindset. I don’t have that kind of mind – I’m a good teacher or coach but I struggle to get the best out of myself in the moment when under pressure.

Can you not just train yourself not to scroll down?

The stats you you want are displayed at the top, don’t scroll down and you won’t see the rest…

As above, this issue is in your head not the app.

“I knew there was a reason why I almost always only have interest in uphill segments… Trying to maintain ~300W up cat3/4 hills to typically travel at 10-15mph is far safer.”

So true! I wish I was more keen on the uphill bit – happy to do it for the descents and fast-ish to get it out of the way but I’m not exactly XC speed uphill, especially now. I do like a good technical climbing challenge but we’re rather short of them in Sussex!

“As above, this issue is in your head not the app.”

See what I said earlier about sports psychology. IT’S NOT THAT EASY! If it was we wouldn’t spend half our time when watching sport tearing our hair out because our favourite team or player isn’t thinking right!

All of my KOMs and top tens are on uphills with one exception through a twisty bit of woods.  I run Strava on my phone and it is in my back pocket so I don’t know how I have done until I get home.

Yeah I get that it’s not easy, but my point (which I didn’t articulate) is that if the issue is in your head it’ll likely still be there even if you ‘hide’ the segments.

as you said, you already know where the segments are locally and people naturally segment bits of trail in their head, so you will probably still find yourself repeating the behaviour even without the display in the app.

if you want to change your behaviour you need to work on *that* rather than looking for another fix. Hiding visual triggers might help but ultimately you need to address the behaviour (if you want to).

There’s a few scenarios and I’m struggling to figure out which it is that you are having a problem with.

A) Live segments where your GPS/phone tells you that you are ahead/behind a PB/mate/KOM

B) Knowing you are on a segment and pushing it to get a PB

C) Seeing the data on the activity post ride.

For A – turn the feature off. For B – if it’s uphill then get a HRM and set a low limit on the GPS so that it beeps at you when you over do it. If it’s downhill just chill. For C – don’t look!

I mentioned on another thread that I’ve suffered from overtraining this last winter, I used every ride, including commutes, as a virtual race and I was just going backwards. I dusted off my HRM and now ride ALL my rides in one of two HR zones. My commutes are all in Zone 1 or active recovery, weekend rides are limited to the top BPM of Zone 2 – Endurance. The goal of any ride is not to have the GPS beep at me. Any Strava PBs or cups are purely coincidental and probably because I’ll only have ridden that segment once or twice before so would get something at whatever speed I rode it.

If you know where the segments are without having to look at it, then strava isn’t your issue. I don’t doubt it’s hard, but it’s still a head rather than technology problem you’ve got.

Every time you crash on a segment, flag it as dangerous.

Your mates will stop you using it fast enough.

I find the (road at least) down hill segments too dependent on traffic/weather conditions to bother with. Although the ones on my commute I’ve done 1000+ times and getting a PB is very rare, and needs favourble weather and road conditions even uphill.

I think the number of times I’ve done these things is why I find it easy to just not try and get a PB. I’ll almost always have done it in better conditions.

The trick for those segments on your commute is in the first week to absolutely blast them so that you get PB, 2nd & 3rd times then don’t bother. If you do get good times after that then it’s just a fluke.

Agree it’s hard to switch of mentally. I have been making an effort rather than chasing faster and faster times. Admittedly I don’t always manage it and still chase the odd pb. But in general I’m not letting strava segments dictate the flow of a ride or stopping points (eg to let people catch up or to session features). I’m focusing on riding better and smoother, and incidentally with that has come speed and some pb’s, but aiming for the pb isn’t the focus riding better is.

it’s all about the flow, right. In doing so i’ve also managed to pick up a few more PR’s on Strava… so work that one out??!?

True. Speed can come from riding better not just harder.

“as you said, you already know where the segments are locally and people naturally segment bits of trail in their head, so you will probably still find yourself repeating the behaviour even without the display in the app.”

I think a key thing is that our local singletrack is super tight, so getting your fastest times involves some fairly high risk gambles of shooting gaps between trees that are only fractionally wider than your bars, or taking inside lines on corners where you almost scrap the bark off. And because it’s not that steep, putting in pedal strokes as you exit corners before the bike is upright and with roots and stumps and all the other natural unofficial trail hazards waiting to catch your pedals.

If you’re just enjoying a fast ride you can back off on these because they’re the risky bits. But if you’re chasing a PR or leaderboard place, then you can’t or you’ll lose too much time. It’s silly and pointless but it’s easy to get sucked into!

I am a better and flowier and more technically able rider than when I set my best times around here – but I’m also more risk averse, a little older and riding wider bars (better most of the time – but not when you catch a tree at speed) – and my pedalling endurance is off its best too. Gravity prefers me downhill now. 😉

Rob on Bike198 blogged about this something like five years ago before live segments were a thing.

He called it ‘Strava Induced Crashes’.

Personally, I locked my Strava profile down to never publish unless instructed and only upload after getting home. Maybe even on a different day.  I’m interested in the analytics but not bothered enough to seek out the better tools I know exist and like the flexibility of being able to share if I want with my Strava obsessive mates.

I’ll be damned if my bike is going to be a game controller though.

Some people are just naturally more competitive, even against themselves. I know a few who just can’t resist Strava segments.

Myself, maybe because I’m crap and never have a chance against anyone else anyway, I just see it as going out for a ride and enjoying the countryside and trails. I track it on Garmin and sync to Strava. I prefer to view it on Strava as it’s a relatively nicer and more responsive interface, though there are tonnes of things wrong with Strava (lack of MTB acknowledgement for a start, but then ignoring segments and challenges the type of bike is kind of irrelevant).

Garmin has too many bugs and so slow sometimes, though it’s the source of all my uploads.

I was syncing Strava to Trailforks and I prefer Trailforks kind of for segments because there’s now a degree of trail management and regulation. Though it was ending up blocking the entire ride from sharing if you went on one tiny segment that was marked sensitive.

I’m mainly concerned with sensitivity of trails though and hide from leaderboard on Strava now. However I do want to be able to share just between friends and better private groups (been asked of Strava for years and ignored). Nearest I can get is enhanced privacy and hide from leaderboard, don’t use groups and limit followers to those I know and trust.

Getting to the point where I may bin Strava though, but others have few of my friends on and sharing with them via links but without making everything public is often tricky or not possible.

An interesting and thought provoking discussion to read over my coffee this morning, thank you CGG 👍

A while back I set the default to hide my times from leaderboards mainly as I was a bit bored of people telling me they were 2 seconds faster than me on a segment that day even though the reality was somewhat different.

Chasing Strava PRs and comparing who was faster can be fun but is ultimately pointless as there are so many variables that mean you may or may not beat that previous best. What type of device you use, the nearest timestamp from the start or finish of the segment, whether it’s actually even picked up the segment.

This still doesn’t stop me trying to ride the singletrack as fast as I can (when I’m in the mood), so as said above I don’t think not having the segment times will stop you trying to ride fast.

What we need is a new app that does leaderboard segments by actual power meter readings, not times, eliminating wind and group slipstreaming assistance.

Please PM me for Paypal details for my 20% intellectual property commissionon each app sale, for sharing my idea while you make a working app. 😉

“What we need is a new app that does leaderboard segments by actual power meter readings, not times, eliminating wind and group slipstreaming assistance.”

Clearly you are a roadie!

What we actually need is an app that eliminates faster times due to adjacent fireroads, short-cuts or parallel trails!

I think just the process of realising this PR driven accidental over-competitiveness has had quite a powerful impact on my mindset. Also had a handlebar and geometry related discovery but that’s for another thread.