Four Miles Fighting Strava

As I mentioned earlier in the week I recently succumbed to Strava. I’ve only done it in a mild way and won’t be using the live tracker directly, but I have taken the data from rides I’ve done before and uploaded them into the site to see how they look. This was a surprisingly easy process and I imagine I will continue to do the same for future rides.

Now, Strava is all about racing people who aren’t really there and I have been excited by the top-tens I’ve broken into and the riders I’ve apparently beaten over places (mostly climbs) that I ride. It seems, from all the very in-depth analysis I’ve done, that I’m roughly in the top 10% on most of the trails I regularly head out on and that seems reasonable.

What’s perhaps more interesting to me is that the application also reveals a fair amount about other people who ride in the same places. On the trail centres that’s no surprise and there are thousands of logged times for all of them, but on my local trails where I’ve not seen another mountain biker for months (and just the odd tyre track) it’s strange to see details of people riding them regularly, creating “segments” and naming the sections I already have unspoken names for in my head.

So, no, I’m not going to head out and blast away at the designated climbs any more than I already do in an effort to beat people, nor am I going to worry if the local-shop sponsored Vet rider takes back the king of the mountains prize on that one hill near Henley but I am likely to be more aware of the other riders who share “my” trails. It feels like both a trespass and a community at the same time as you see that someone else rides the exact same tyre tracks as you. I think it makes me want to know more about them, and perhaps go for a ride with them, if they’re nice.

While we're sort of on the subject of racing there was Stage 17 of the Vuelta to consider. Wind was the decisive factor as the group was split before a sprint that Mollema leaped ahead of. All of the favorites stayed together.

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