Cyclists - SSO Strava Club

[Vyn]

Have been thinking about making this for a while, I know @Drew is a massive Strava addict as well. Anyone interested?

 

[Drew]

Fuck, sure, let's get something going! How many other Strava users do we have here?

 

[TedEH]

I've been using the app, but never used it for any of the social stuff. I just like having the stats for myself.

 

[Drew]

I've been using the app, but never used it for any of the social stuff. I just like having the stats for myself.

The social stuff, at least the purely social stuff, is sort of an afterthought for me. I'm very good about giving kudos to rides, and it's cool to see some of the more epic shit some of my friends I don't usually ride with are doing (and I know a guy down in NZ for the year who's been blowing up my feed with stunning scenery, which I'm all for) but for the most part it's not really huge to me.

Now, segment leaderboards... Different story. I live in a major urban area with lots of SERIOUSLY fast cyclists in the area, so I only have a handful of KOMs, but it's a strong training incentive and chasing KOMs and personal bests has made me a lot faster.

 

[Leon Schaefer]

The social stuff, at least the purely social stuff, is sort of an afterthought for me. I'm very good about giving kudos to rides, and it's cool to see some of the more epic shit some of my friends I don't usually ride with are doing (and I know a guy down in NZ for the year who's been blowing up my feed with stunning scenery, which I'm all for) but for the most part it's not really huge to me.

Now, segment leaderboards... Different story. I live in a major urban area with lots of SERIOUSLY fast cyclists in the area, so I only have a handful of KOMs, but it's a strong training incentive and chasing KOMs and personal bests has made me a lot faster.

 

[MUTANTOID]

I try to record every ride just as a metric for getting more fit. I'm exclusively riding mountain bikes tho so my numbers are whack in comparison to roadies.

 

[Drew]

So, any other Strava junkies here?

 

[TedEH]

Sadly, it's the middle of winter, so the snow and cold are enough to deter most cyclists around here. I legit miss my bike in the winter.

 

[Vyn]

I've been a slack bastard the last month due to illness. Blew up hard on a 170km ride, had to call the sad wagon 145km in. Immune system decided to go on holiday immediately after

 

[bostjan]

I ride my bicycle when the weather here is nice. What can an app do for me, though?

 

[ElRay]

BLUF: Sure, let's create a SSo Strava Club.

That said, I have not used it for quite a while. Middle of winter here too. Definitely want to get back to tracking. Not stuck in the office 9-5 (actually 7-5:30), not in spending more time traveling for work than actually at home, not in Afghanistan -- potential for a good cycling year.

 

[Drew]

I ride my bicycle when the weather here is nice. What can an app do for me, though?

Depends on your goals, really. (Also, up where you are, I'd HOPE you get out on your bike, good lord is the cycling awesome up there, man!). There's a couple things I like about Strava, in a few general areas:

Social Features: If you have a group of riding buddies, it's a cool way to share your adventures with each other. Every time you record and save a workout (unless you have privacy controls enabled to prevent this) it's shared with all of your friends in a feed, so they can see the GPS track of where you rode, general stats from the ride like average speed and total elevation gain, any pictures you want to include, any comments you want to include with the ride, etc. If you do a pretty cool ride, it's fun to be able to share that with your buddies, and when someone you follow does something pretty epic, it's pretty cool to share in your adventures. Right now one guy I follow is in southern Spain mountainbiking, a chick I know is on her way to Costa Rica to ride and I'm looking forward to seeing her adventures, and a pro rider I follow (who as a Vermonter you probably know, Lea Davison) is down in Tucson Arizona training for the coming season, and is hitting a few climbs I myself rode when I was down there last spring.

Tracking features: Ever wondered how many miles you rode in a season? Or how many total feet you climbed? Or how your mileage this month compares, month to date, to last month? Strava allows you to track this kind of stuff. I tried to ride 5,000 miles last season and fell 90 short, and had a friendly bet withh Quigley over which of us could put up the most total elevation gain last season. It's cool for stuff like that.

Competitive inspiration: Strava segments. Users create "segments," or defined stretches of road or trail, and any time you ride over one of them, your time is added into a database of every rider ever who's ridden that segment, and your personal best time is included in the overall leaderboard. So, if you ride up a long climb, save and load that ride to Strava, you can go home and see that, say, you're the 191th fastest rider out of 1,642 to have ridden it, and if you go out and train really hard and hammer it, maybe you can get that up a bit, and even potentially crack the top 10 or snag the KOM, King of the Mountain, for the fastest recorded time on a segment. Even if you don't want to go after KOMs, it's cool to see how you stack up against other riders, and see progress over time as you get more fit and faster and faster. I grew up right at the base of Mt. Greylock, and over the years I've gone from one of the slowest times on the easier side, to now in the top quarter of times on the harder side, and I'm looking to shave a few more minutes off this coming season. It's a great way to quantify progress on the bike, and because there are a whole bunch of active and retired pros on the platform, you can see how you compare to some of the best in the business (for example, adopted Vermonter Ted King now has the KOM on the easier side of Greylock, and has done a few gravel events that I have so I can see how I compare on segments to a guy who has raced in the Tour de France

Analysis: Strava actually is a bit weaker in this area than some dedicated analysis platforms and I think there's more they can do... But I've been riding with a trainer capable of measuring my power output since 2015 and with a power meter on my bike itself since last summer, so it can give me pretty detailed information on, say, how much of a particular ride I spent in particular training zones, what my power curve over time looks like and what I SHOULD be able to sustain on, say, a 2-minute max effort (which is pretty useful to know if I'm chasing a KOM where the top time is around 2 minutes), how my training load has been over time and if theoretically I need to ease up a little or can keep pushing, etc.

Idunno. For me, seeing my buddy's rides and seeing the adventures they're up to is pretty awesome, as are strava segment leaderboards and being able to measure my progress over time on climbs or sprints around me.

 

[Drew]

Sadly, it's the middle of winter, so the snow and cold are enough to deter most cyclists around here. I legit miss my bike in the winter.

Do you have a trainer? They suck... but Zwift really has made riding indoors a lot less soul-crushing. Worth a look, and you can usually find Kurt Road Machines on Craigslist for not-stupid money, $200 or so, and that;s what they used while developing their zPower model so I found it pretty accurate when I made the jump from a Kurt to a smart trainer with integrated power metering.

 

[TedEH]

I don't know that I take it seriously enough to get into something like a trainer. I'm not really competitive or anything like that. I just like it as a way of getting around, an excuse to be outside, beating traffic, etc. It's just sort of.... nice as an activity I guess. I can make up for the physical activity by doing other things.

 

[NickLAudio]

I've thought about using Strava once or twice. I mainly race bmx and downhill mtb, but I use an app called Trailforks for the latter which is basically a neutered version of Strava but aimed more toward trail/mountain riding i suppose. My problem is finding a handlebar mount that doesn't eject itself or my spare riding phone on long doubles. I've tried many, ranging in price, but the cheapo walmart ones i find work the best, until they don't.

 

[bostjan]

Oh ok, hanks for explaining that, @Drew . Yeah, I love riding around in the middle of nowhere, but the middle of nowhere in northern New England has no cell reception. I'm also nowhere near fast anymore, especially climbing hills, so coming in the 15th %ile probably won't motivate me that much. But I'd love to share photos.

 

[Drew]

Well if you sign up, track me down - I'm a reliable source of Strava kudos.

 

[Wrecklyss]

I'm interested. I'm not a competitive cyclist, but I switched to cycling a couple years ago when I trashed my knee from running over stress. I originally had a hybrid bike (mountain bike style frame and handle bars with road tires) but just traded it in for a mountain bike because it's better for my style of riding.

I'm not super competitive, but I like to do 3 or 4 of 1.5-2hr rides per week and try to beat my own personal bests.

 

[TedEH]

I'm just glad that it's gotten warm enough to take the bike out sometimes, as an excuse to get outside for a little bit.

 

[UV7BK4LIFE]

No Strava club yet?

Anyway, I destroyed an ebike engine within a year of commuting (60 km per day). Then I got a road bike. Then I quit smoking in 2017. Then I got a real midlifecrisisbike, a Colnago V1-R. And in 2019 I started doing competitive cycling, open crit races mainly. And in 2020 I joined a cycling club (as in real life offline not strava club). But I can't cycle with the club because Corona virus.

So if someone wants to chat about cycling, road and mtb, great!