Word?
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
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I'm a fan of Strava and definitely name my rides. Really only care about my own progress/times since I'm too old to be out there hunting for anything but completion. Thinking about what to name a ride is one of the things I've grown to appreciate while on the ride. When I look at rides from the past, the titles do tend to bring back memories of just what went down.
Definitely agree with those who go towards sarcasm and self deprecation, but then again, who wouldn't?
I don't use Strava.
I don't ride with people who use Strava. They are a pain in the ass between their bragging because they "have" some KOM title that nobody give a fuck about, their erratic, unlawful riding because thay have some timed section crap and the fact that they are narcicist.
Probably a few exception out there, but Strava users where i live are freds, best avoided.
I may be an exception, but when I'm riding, I'm not thinking about segments, times or anything like that. I'm mostly thinking about turning the pedals, breathing, and how much I'm suffering (or not, as in the rare times I experience 'La Volupte').
When I get home, and upload to Strava, I will glance at some of my segment times, but purely to see whether my perception (i.e. I was trundling or flying, depending on the ride) matches with reality (how I was really riding). It's testament to the often contradictory nature of our pursuit that I'm wrong more often than I'm right - I either feel awful on the bike, but end up riding relatively good times, or I feel like I'm riding well, only to find that I was slower than previous sessions.
I reckon most people who use Strava do so for the social aspect (following people you know, including those in other areas/countries) and the individual record-keeping & measuring of one's own progress.
End of the day (as mentioned by @markpa above), rule #43 should be observed. And to @LeBelge - you may ride with people who use Strava but who don't make a big deal about it...
@LeBelge
I think like most things there are users, and then there are abusers. Most people are Strava users, glad to have it but well aware what it should and shouldn't be used for.
The people you have described sound like Strava abusers, and punishment should be being hunted down by cyclists who race properly and beaten senseless with mini-pumps and partially inflated tubs.
I'm definitely a Strava user - I love it as a method of properly tracking improvement and as a motivational tool. But segment chasing? Stupid. And I always name my rides, mostly so if I want to go back and check something out I can find a particular ride easily.
@LeBelge
No problems there. I doubt I could ride slow enough to stay with you anyway.
I will say this: Strava is the only Social Network which is apparently not presently flooded with politics.
@ChrisO
+1
@frank
I knew there was something missing when I was checking up on my Strava feed over the weekend. Hope you didn't just subliminally (or whatever the opposite is - liminally?) implant that idea into everyone's head...
If Strava works on my small *htc android and is not perceived as turning me into a Strava slave, then it should all be good. I work better on a principle of *service in silence, so I won't feed me Strava post to Facebook like most other riders that I know. This may be the reason that Strava has annoyed me in the past. If I have a happening ride and no one is around to know, then I'm probably the only one that cares if the ride happened. Now if I can use Strava to show my wife that the ride was successful in real-time then we might have something here.
@frank
Shhhhhhh! Don't tell Donald Trump that! He'll be all over it and, of course setting HUGE numbers and beating everyone, everywhere. No-one is a better, faster rider than the Donald. No-one.