Guest Article: An Open Letter
Dear readers, let us take a break from the almighty Tour for a few minutes. I am the least qualified Velominatus to introduce an open letter concerning Strava as I’m too shame-based to post my rides to Strava. I have a Garmin on the bike for no particular reason, ok, maybe to occasionally see how fast I’m descending or to know the grade of the climb I’m presently suffering on. At some point it will ask me what should it do with all these weak-ass rides taking up Garmin memory. Oye.
@Artie has authored this open letter (our first?) and like the Rules themselves, @Artie is just trying to improve our cycling experience in this digital world. Thanks @Artie
VLVV, Gianni
Dear Keepers of the Cog and Curators of the Rules,
The Tour de France this year has had a few memorable moments. Cavendish moving behind only Merkx in Stage victories, Froome’s new descending style, and of course the bike-less sprint up Ventoux come to mind. But there has also been a subtler addition to my viewing this year. More and more cyclists in the peloton have been sharing their ride data on Strava. For example, scrolling down my Strava feed after a late afternoon ride, I now notice Greg Henderson’s data, and see that yesterday he was in fact descending like a madman, just as Rule #85 and Rule #93 implore him to do. This supplement to my Tour Digest bridges to a theme my friends and I have often discussed and I thought it time to share our thoughts.
Our over-connected world has reached a point, where the dubitability of any cycling accomplishment has become (almost) strictly correlated with that said accomplishment appearing on Strava. Did you climb Sa Calobra during an early spring training camp? Did you reach the summit of Galibier before your best friend? Did your race up Alpe d’Huez with such a murderous intent that locals began to talk about the ghost of Pantani that appeared one late August afternoon? Perhaps… but without a Strava log to prove it, who knows! But, it is not the virtues or vices of using Strava that I wish to comment on; many people use it and some don’t. Instead it is a much more mundane aspect of the app that has been the subject to our diliberations, i.e. the naming of our tours.
The default name Strava gives each activity are more than boring; “Morning Ride,” “Afternoon Ride,” or “Evening Ride.” “Morning Ride” sounds like a Monday morning commute to work. “Afternoon ride” is what I do with my girlfriend, when she wants to go on a picnic in the park across town. “Evening ride” is an excursion with my Holland Bike to the bar down the street and to the left. The blandness of these names do absolutely no justice to a properly ridden tour. If you keep your bike perfectly matched, kit in shape, and tan lines razor sharp, is putting at least a little creativity into your digital cycling life too much to ask?
I say that a proper tour deserves a proper name, and a proper name should – like all things – be casually deliberate. A quick comment about the ride would be a basic but satisfactory name, e.g. “Hard push up to Chamonix”. If you are racing, the name of the event would be fine; “Paris-Roubaix” is far superior to the default. A more sophisticated name would be that of the song you started to whistle while pushing through the most difficult bits of a climb. Such a title has a lasting effect. Each time those you rode with heard the song, they would be reminded of the pressure their legs felt as you climbed, and doubt would be further seeded into the moral.
I wish to avoid a long digression into the art of naming, although the horizon is large and well worth exploring. But, I do wish to assert that a cyclist who has gone digital should maintain his digital cycling life as he does his real life. Calling an afternoon conquering cobbles on your way back to Liege “Afternoon Ride” is a digital dirty chain; it is unacceptable, but luckily easy to fix.
Yours Kindly,
Arturo
Hamburg, Germany
@Barracuda
Plus, you can have your post ride coffee waiting and your tea in perfect cue.
@Ron
Uber works very well. I dig it. That and the Divvy bikes in Chicago. These things are a riot and a blast to get around when in town.
One of the guys from my club runs a Tuesday evening session where he leads a ride around as many horrible and steep hills in the local area as possible. Last time he did this he called his Strava entry ‘Tuesday night hurty lolz’ which made me laugh.
Another thing on Strava that I’m a sucker for is the estimated average power – when I’m training I like this number to be as high as possible.
I’ll just leave this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LoQuoSydK8
How can you not like this guy? Truly a breath of fresh air in cycling and the peloton.
@Dean C
Please leave my family out of this.
This conversation’s getting boring. Let’s light it up:
Missed it by thaaaaaaaaaat much…
How about the slogan? Strava or it didn’t happen? Unfortunately, these did happen:
You’re welcome everyone.
<canofworms> I’ve just discovered Veloviewer, don’t know how it’s eluded me until today. It’s Strava on steroids </canofworms>
@litvi
+ 1 for the pint glass (including the good-looking malted recovery beverage inside it).
But those knee-high socks are a travesty…. Your tan lines must look even stranger than normal.
@GordoGreatBelly
Oh! Whoah… hey… no no nonono… hold up there, champ. Those are NOT mine.
I keep it 100% goldilocks. (And straight up white, no logos or stripes, for what it’s worth.) Neither one of those shots is of me. But now I can see the room for misunderstanding – I assumed and didn’t clearly state. So whatever, no harm no foul.
But here’s what really bothers me: what do you mean by “even stranger than normal?” Are you implying there’s something abnormal about Rule #7 compliance?
@litvi
My apologies… That’s what happens when you assume (you make an ass out of u and me ).
If the second image was one previously posted on this site, I wonder if the transgressor will put their hand up or just keep quiet (I know which I’d do).
And as for Rule #7 – I don’t think there’s anything abnormal about my tan lines. Mrs GreatBelly on the other hand….
Strava.
Ugghh….
There IS such a thing as Too Much Sharing, and shit like Strava, iphones, and name-your-geek-assed-GPS-flavor-of-the-fucking-day all combine to take the fun out of just riding your bike. Who gives a shit how fast you sprinted to the last mailbox? Who gives a shit if you won the KOM at the local Tuesday Night World Championships for the eighth week in a row? Who gives a shit about how many watts you produced during the latest ass-kicking that you put on all of those other nine-to-fivers who showed up for the Saturday morning ride?
Oh, I guess most of y’all do.
Heavy sigh.
Look, here’s the thing: Cycling isn’t complicated. Air up the tires, put on your stuff, and just …well…..ride. For my money, all of the digital chest-pounding that’s going on is just fucking tiresome. Nobody wants to ride these days and just enjoy the miles. Instead, everybody has turned into a techno weenie-wagger, sporting a conspicuous bulge in your shorts to prove what a badass your are because, well STRAVA says so.
Well, good for you.
Now – here’s the truth: Nobody fucking cares that you spent $500 on the latest Garmin so that you can know with NASA-like precision how many watts it’s costing you every time you coast so that you can snap a selfie with your iphone and upload it to your facegag page while you’re on some 60 mpg descent on your aero gravel gravel – the one with the accents that coordinate so well with your $500 Sidis and $250 Oakleys.
Look – it’s not like I’m some fucking Luddite with a grudge against modernity. I like sealed bearings and streaming Netflix as much as anybody. And carbon fiber isn’t exactly the devil. So, call me crazy, but I get on my bike to Get The Fuck Away from being constantly connected. I guess it’s down to having started racing in the mid-1980’s, when the coolest gadget going was one of those Avocet 20 cyclocomputers, which gave you your speed only to the nearest .5 mile per hour. Now THAT was some fucking technology right there, boys and girls.
If I’m really diligent, I’ll wear my heart rate monitor. And I have a new-fangled Cateye computer that tells me how far I rode and my current/max/avg speed while I was doing it, and……that’s about it. Can’t download the data from my HR monitor and computer because they don’t have that option, and I wouldn’t own one if it did.
Data? Fuck data. Why do I need a GPS to tell me how steep a grade is? You either ride it, or you don’t. You’re either fast, or you aren’t. Who fucking cares, as long as you have fun?
I’ll tell you who fucking cares: Nobody. Well, except maybe you. And the other Strava donkeys.
Here’s a novel idea: Try unplugging all of the gadgets, and leave your smartass phone at home. And go out and just ride your fucking bike. No telemetry. No watts. No gradient info. No map that shows you how far to the next city limit sign so that you can go all Mark Cavendish on their assess and make it look oh-so-spontaneously casual while blowing up the Watt-O-Meter and setting a new Strava record. Try to remember what it’s like to just ride the bike and have a good time. Most of you will fail, because, well, you’re more interested in being entertained and showing off than you are in being really connected to what’s all around you. But maybe somebody will Get It, and realize that Strava is just one more thing that doesn’t do anything except distract you from a very simple sport.
@Marshall Ellis
Well you got that bit right.
Your rant says more about a lack of imagination if you think that’s all people do with Strava and bike computers.
@ChrisO
For a guy who thinks there is such a thing as too much sharing that was sure a big bit of sharing!
@Marshall Ellis
Whoa…hopefully you get a chance to partake in this ‘simple sport’ so you can chill out some.
@ChrisO
@Oli
This.
First thought – troll. Second thought – knows a bit about bikes. Third though – troll on a bike.
Hopefully Strava has a Troll category/leaderboard. Probably a premium feature….
@Marshall Ellis
I disagree with your rant. But I will defend your right to rant whenever you want.
Go for it.
@RobSandy
I almost feel like having a rant about the lack of ranting just to give us something to rant about………
@Teocalli
I’ll have a different sort of rant about Strava…
I’ve just signed up for Strava Premium – my British Cycling membership gave me a 60 day free trial so I thought it was worth a go. My reason being, I would like to monitor my training and progress over the forthcoming training year (which for me, starts today!) and it seemed as if the additional HR-based analysis offered on the premium version would help me do this.
My main hope is that I can track my weekly training stress/intensity to see how hard training weeks affect me in the long term.
It seems as if the Strava tool which does this for me is the Suffer Score – from what I’ve read this is similar to the TSS used on Training Peaks, in that it measures how hard a ride or workout is. So far so good.
However, when I looked into the detail, the HR zones that Strava had guessed for me were miles out. I had to change them all drastically. Now, does every strava premium user who wants to use their Suffer Score do this? My guess is not, which means the whole Suffer Score premise for most people is flawed – it’s calculated from HR zones which are completely wrong.
@RobSandy
I guess the problem is similar to those on Gym Machines that HR zones by age are calculated from age/life “norms” but when you then take those norms into an athletic community then that community is on the ends of the norm curve and so the stats are bollox.
@Teocalli
It’s especially annoying as it seems on the face of it quite a useful tool, but probably mis-used by 90% of the people who have it.
I’m interested how it works to compare long, easy rides with short, intense workouts. We’ll see.
@Steve Trice
Slow Ride…a beat that translates into a cadence that would blow the competition away as you peddle in your big ring. Awesome!!! I just got back from vacation in the Alps. Along with seeing a bit of the last mountain stage of the Tour, I did a little bit of cycling in the hills. On the wayup Galibier, shortly after the end of Telegraphe, a massive thunderstorm appeared out of nowhere; the thunderbolts and lightening were very very frightening :-)
@Artie
Mamma mia, mamma mia, didn’t you think about taking Shelter From The Storm?
@Steve Trice
Now that’s the first truly useful application of this technology that I’ve heard. I know my wife would check regularly to see where I am and I doubt that would be a bad thing as, after 38 years, nothing I can do on a bike would surprise her anymore. If I were a hundred miles away and still heading the other way, she might give me a jingle to find out what my plans were–or if I had any. If we ever get cell service in the areas of Vermont where I ride, I’m definitely going to consider going live with my rides.
Otherwise, Strava is just an exercise in distraction, beyond its application as a social networking platform and fitness log. In racing, you’re riding against others under what is at least close to the same conditions, even in a TT. Assigning a KOM based on performances that took place on different days isn’t even remotely valid.
@RobSandy
It’s pretty rubbish IMHO. It doesn’t do a great job of comparison. You need to look at Intensity Factor which you don’t get on Strava.
I’ve used Strava Premium, Training Peaks and Golden Cheetah and GC is by far the best analysis tool – if you end up using 50% of what it can show you’ll be doing well.
Using Strava for the analytics is like reading Playboy for the articles and Scientific American for the pictures.
@Steve Trice
I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail
Poisoned in the bushes an’ blown out on the trail
Hunted like a crocodile, ravaged in the corn
Come in, she said
I’ll give ya shelter from the storm
@ChrisO
Hey now. I have a few Playboys from the 70s that friends have given me as gifts, since they feature a bicycle on the cover (along with other stuff) and they actually have some pretty interesting articles, especially the interviews they used to do. An ex-gal friend had a few with Roald Dahl interviews, as she really liked his writing. She was unique, not many women with 70s Playboys.
@wiscot
You could almost believe Bob was a cyclist ?
@Steve Trice
So long as “cyclist” is in quotes! http://starcasm.net/archives/51564
@Steve Trice
Oh, and be careful using those emojis! Emoticons are banned around here and Frohnk might take a dim view of their shorthand brethren.
@ChrisO
Chris, that was my first impression. The form/fitness thing is pretty laughable, particularly as the graph it’s drawn me is based on completely guessed HR info.
We’ll see how I get on though – it’s something at least. I made big improvements last year using Strava basic, a HRM and a Joe Friel book.
What I really want is a power meter, but that’s not going to happen this season. Probably not until I get a new bike (and then if you have a training bike and a race bike, do you need a PM on both?).
@RobSandy
If you understand the concepts, which you will have from the Joe Friel book, then you can work out some basic stuff like Efficiency and Intensity. But it helps to track them over time so you have to record them somewhere and of course TP or GC will do that for you and show it graphically.
Their versions of the Form and Fitness graph are much more useful with Chronic and Acute Training Load and Training Stress Balance. And I also find it useful to track my weekly TSS as a way to balance my training and make sure I’m not just grinding out week after week.
But yeah all that becomes a lot easier to measure and track with a power meter. It’s a real change in approach and I think once you start with it then you need it on all your rides. Even if you don’t look at it during a race you’ll be wanting to analyse the data afterwards.
If you have multiple bikes your best option is something like the Powertap P1 pedals. It’s literally as simple as changing the pedals, unlike the Garmins which require careful torquing and calibration. Alternatively use a hub-based system but then you’re stuck with one wheel.
@wiscot
Emoticon advice duly noted, thanks.
Please people, it’s “pedal” not “peddle”. We’re moving our bicycle not selling it.
@ChrisO
You mentioned Intensity before – how is that defined in a Training context?
One thing I didn’t do last year is do anything to measure my progress. I wish I had as it’d be pretty satisfying (think I added about 25 watts and lost about 2 kilos). if I’d done that and tracked it over time I’d also have a better idea what sorts of training had the best results.
So I’m planning to do that this year. It’s the good thing about a Training Plan – once you’ve set your goals and worked out the periods you don’t really need to thin about it to much – you know that you’re doing the right things at the right times, and being a time-starved cyclist I really need to make the most out of every minute on the bike.
Intensity is the ratio of Normalised Power to Threshold Power, and Efficiency is Normalised Power to Avg HR.
They’re most useful in comparing similar rides although they can also be useful in aggregate. So for example two weeks might have a TSS of 400 but one has an Intensity Factor of .625 and the other .800. The second one was actually a harder week in the sense that there was a much higher percentage of time working harder.
It’s another way of tracking periodisation really.
At an individual ride level obviously something like a 10m TT would be above 1 and it can be useful to compare those.
The Efficiency is really good if you have say a base aerobic ride that you do regularly. So for example I frequently do a ride of 90 minutes in a very narrow HR target of 130 bpm +/-2. It’s a good measure of fitness over time to see the Efficiency of that ride – early season I’ll have an average of high 230s/low 240s but at full fitness it would be high 240s/low 250s so I can see my EF creeping up.
But yes following a plan takes a lot of that away. I’ve been doing my own plans for the last year so I’ve had to pay more attention to it, although I think next year I might look to get back into some set plans or use a coach and make a real effort to train specifically for TTs.
@ChrisO
I’ve recently downloaded Golden Cheetah and whilst it looks like a very comprehensive bit of kit I’m completely baffled; the help section isn’t entirely helpful.
I’ve also been reading Training and Racing with a Power Meter by Allen and Coggan. It’s taken a bit of getting into but it is helping to make sense of training with a power meter.
I’ll stick to reading Playboy on the train home, though. The technical nature of Training and Racing with a Power Meter is also good for ensuring that you get all the sleep you need. Not exactly helpful when my station isn’t the last stop on the line.
@Marshall Ellis
Someone taking cycling too seriously? Pot, meet kettle.
@wiscot
Sagan is the new Cippolini.