[Jack Sexty]

Evening! We’ll be talking to Strava’s UK Director Simon Klima some time this week (via video call of course) about some big updates coming soon, and he’s also agreed to take some questions from our readers. Anything under the Strava-related sun will be considered, so if you have queries or even suggestions that you’d like me to put to them, post them here and I’ll pick some out. 

Cheers, hope everyone is staying fit and well. 

Jack 

Topic

[FatAndFurious]

What revenue streams come

What revenue streams come from the actual data we upload, and what controls do they keep on that data? The revelations that came out of the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica affair demonstrate that, once the data is out the building, it can be used for anything and to hell with license restrictions.

I’m curious to know what uses – good and Orwellian – it is put to. 

 

[ItsHuddo]

60% open rate is excellent. A

60% open rate is excellent. A number of mail clients (such as gmail) don’t track opens anyway.

[ItsHuddo]

Question for him: Do pro

Question for him: Do pro atheletes get paid to add their activities to Strava? Do Pro’s get any other features that us mere mortals don’t (other than a nice little badge).

What does he think of Veloviewer?

Can we add custom activity types? For instance I was doing skijoring (dog-assisted cross country skiing!) and dog sledding in Norway, and other similar activities such as dog-sledding. It would be great just to have ‘custom activity’ type so that we can add other things.

As for other features, I would love the ability to filter my feed. I have to delete lots of pro atheletes I would like to follow otherwise my feed is full of pros riding every day and I miss my mate’s rides. Equally it would be cool to filter out commutes, indoor rides and limit rides to those that start in a geographical area.

[fukawitribe]

Generally Strava does

Generally Strava does classify indoor (virtual) rides separately anyway, is there something specific this is about ? (I do agree with you about it not being the same, for the most part even the less strenuous indoor rides I do seem significantly more effort per km than their outside equivalent, e.g. there’s really not any chance for free-wheeling).

[Daveyraveygravey]

Probably too late now, but

Probably too late now, but why can’t indoor cycling be separated from outdoor cycling?  If I am trying to ride 200km a week, with no facility for riding indoors, I don’t want to compare myself to people who might ride the whole 200km indoors.  it is NOT the same!

[peted76]

I’d like to ask him whether

I’d like to ask him whether they plan for any updates to their ‘clubs’ support?

The cycling community replies on Facebook (which not everyone is on) and emails (which we currently get a pitiful 60% open rate from via the British Cycling broadcast system – which is also woeful btw) for communication with club members, Strava is in a unique position as an almost universally used to help club communications, promote rides, give updates etc.. and yet it’s nye on useless as it stands. I would pay for better ‘club’ functions or even a standalone club management app linking to strava. 

Do they have any ‘big plans’ in this area?

[Kapelmuur]

But I’d be lugging 4kgs if

But I’d be lugging 4kgs if battery and motor as a handicap.

[bertinol]

I gather from the comments

I gather from the comments section in today’s article on France banning cycling  that some French busybodies are scouring Strava to see who is still riding their bicycles and then sending them rude notes. And people wonder why I avoid social media …
 

[mdavidford]

John Be wrote:

I know what you mean, but arguably, if you are assisted on the climbs,  you will be fresher on the flat, so logging the whole ride as an ebike would be a fairer option.

Arguably, if you started your ride just before the segment, you’ll be a lot fresher than someone who did 100 miles before arriving there, so the whole ‘leaderboard’ thing is a bit meaningless anyway.

[werics]

You can hide anything. What’s
You can hide anything. What’s the use of actually deleting them?

[MUDAHIM]

I’d like to be able to remove

I’d like to be able to remove certain segments from a ride, like really short segments e.g. anything under a minute or 800m, or even better a combination like under a minute unless it has a gradient of >5%.

I’m only bothered about climbs or longer segemnts which mean something not having loads of segments where I might have done them in 17 or 18 seconds.  So if there was a choice of tick boxes with different criteria which you could exclude, that would be an improvement for me.

[pruaga]

There is a clever tool that

There is a clever tool that lets you automatically tag a ride between two specified places as a commute (https://blog.strava.com/powered-by-strava-apps-12402/ and http://commutemarker.com/), so can you make an option to filter commutes out of strava feeds? 

I log my commutes, as do some of my friends, but I don’t really want to see them every day and I’m sure other people don’t care about mine either!

[John Be]

I know what you mean, but

I know what you mean, but arguably, if you are assisted on the climbs,  you will be fresher on the flat, so logging the whole ride as an ebike would be a fairer option.

[RobB2000]

Two things I would like to

Two things I would like to see…… for cyclists with an ebike can a simple check box be inserted on the upload page, probably adjacent to where you select your bike, checking this should generate a little lightening sign adjacent to all your strava segment times in the leaderboards generated from that ride.

The other thing is removal of silly times set by people ie. 40 mph plus up 20% hills. With the use of a simple algorithm and a ceiling of say 125%, taking into account gradient, length and time, anything over the ceiling is not registered. 

[John Be]

Rouvy and I assume others

Rouvy, and I assume other training apps, allow riders to train in ‘assisted’ mode, in which it is possible to inflate your performance by > 300%. Rouvy recognises that this should not be used in leader boards, and consequently prevent these rides from being seen by other riders. Strava however, do not check if uploaded virtual rides are of this type, and consequently they are skewing Strava leader boards.

However they should not be hard to detect because there is a mismatch between watts and performance and I  would have thought that developing an algorithm would be reasonably straight forward.

As we will all be spending more time on our smart trainers during the present crisis, this issue will become even more important.

[Author]

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