By now most mountain bikers have tried Strava, and they often either love it or hate it. I personally really like using Strava to track my rides, but there are a few things Strava could do to improve the service for mountain bikers.
1. Give us the ability to mark rides as “mountain bike” rides.
As it stands now, riders can only mark activities as “ride,” which lumps trails rides in with everything from road rides to urban trials. This seems particularly unfair given that Strava offers activity types for running, walking, and hiking, which pretty much all involve using your feet to move around. Even skiing and skating get multiple flavors.
Having additional ride type options opens a whole new level of analysis within the Strava app, but also enables third party apps like the Singletracks Tracker to ignore road rides and focus on linking MTB rides with specific trail systems.
2. Throw in some off road-specific challenges throughout the year.
Many Strava challenges involve riding a certain number of miles in a limited time period, which means the roadies have a distinct advantage in reaching the top of the leaderboard.
Strava is built on some pretty sophisticated mapping technologies, so one would think it would be possible to distinguish between tracks that line up with known roads and those that veer off into the dirt. Give us an MTB-specific challenge and enforce it by making sure everyone’s miles are being ridden off road.
3. Leaderboards based on equipment type.
Strava recently added a “bike type” field to the My Gear form that includes mountain bikes, which is a welcome addition. Using this data, we’d love to see leaderboards based on equipment type in addition to age/gender classifications. For example: fastest time on a mountain bike for a particular segment. And don’t forget about the singlespeed riders–those guys and girls already have their own category in most MTB races these days.
4. Auto-filter ski lifts at bike parks.
On a couple recent rides in Park City I let my Strava app run continuously, which means I was tracking the lifts as part of my rides. That made determining the amount of true climbing I had done impossible, and also gave me an inadvertent KOM on a climbing section that must have paralleled a lift.
Sure, I should have just paused my app during lift rides but the fact is, I didn’t. Again, ski lifts at most resorts have already been mapped, so it could be as easy as just checking rides against a set of known ski lifts and filtering out the data.
5. Enable friendly mode for mountain bikers who aren’t competitive.
The number one reason mountain bikers seem to give for not using Strava regularly is that they don’t like the competitive aspect of it. Either they end up taking the competition too seriously which takes the fun out of the ride, or they don’t like seeing their name at the bottom of a leaderboard every time they login.
Leaderboards are admittedly foundational to Strava, but if there was a way to hide or mute leaderboards for mountain bikers who simply want to track the trails they explore, this might be a good compromise. These same riders might also appreciate a field to enter the craft beer they enjoyed after the ride, ala Untappd. 🙂
Strava is already a powerful, easy-to-use tool for tracking and analyzing rides and by making just a few tweaks, it can become even more useful to mountain bikers. Which features would you like to see Strava add for mountain biking?
44 Comments
Jan 1, 2015
Jul 29, 2014
Aug 1, 2014
Jul 29, 2014
Jul 28, 2014
Jul 31, 2014
Jul 31, 2014
-Elle, Strava Support
Aug 1, 2014
Mar 28, 2016
The Garmin 1000 now can build you a road loop of your choice right from the device. It'd be great to head to a new place and have it build an instant route using trail or fireroad, or your choice of what you want.
Jul 28, 2014
Jul 29, 2014
Jul 29, 2014
-App works better
-Better battery life with Strava
-Better online analytics features after the fact
-Better social features with my friends
However, Mountain Bike Pro is definitely more useful for navigation, with offline map downloads from OpenCycle. That said, I prefer the Singletracks maps for navigation, so if I need to find my way, I just use Singletracks Topo.
Jul 31, 2014
1. Track my performance on Segments
2. Meet & Track friends
3. Find new trails to ride
What I find most frustrating is that Strava deliberately hides the DESCENT information. As a mountain biker, I find regularly hit the lifts or get a shuttle up to the top of an epic mountain (ie: http://www.strava.com/activities/171249372) but the DESCENT information is not available?
I have talked to Strava's support and was blatantly told that Strava is a tool for Roadies and they rarely care about this kind information?
This has put me in a position that I can't/don't use the native Strava App, I use Wahoo Fitness App instead and upload to Strava as well as Garmin Connect in order to get all the information I need.
It's just plain annoying that they refuse to acknowledge MTBing as a valid form of cycling!
Jul 31, 2014
There are some big conversations happening right now about our dirt friends on Strava, and it is development we take very seriously. For example, we're discussing how to differentiate mountain bike trail/routes in the Strava Route builder, and how to differentiate segments as dirt/pavement. Early discussions are already starting around how to give mountain bike activities more individuality vs. general cycling activities or road bike activities.
Coming from the Support team, I would suggest you take a look at some of the discussion forums we have in our community section, and add your feedback. In fact, there are existing feature suggestion forums on pretty much all of the topics in the blog. Enjoy, and thanks!
Jul 31, 2014
Jul 31, 2014
Also, Strava HAS run some challenges in the past that were targeted at mountain bikers and marketed for mountain bikers, but as Jeff mentioned above, the way the stats were logged and analyzed still allowed roadies to have a good crack at it.
Jul 28, 2014
Jul 28, 2014
Jul 28, 2014
Aug 1, 2014
Aug 1, 2014
Jul 28, 2014
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Jul 31, 2014
Jul 29, 2014
Or maybe it doesn't need to be--37% is great! In the MTB industry, I'm thinking only Shimano or SRAM can claim a penetration rate this high. Not even Trek or Specialized can claim this much market share.
Jul 29, 2014
Jul 30, 2014
Jul 31, 2014
Jul 31, 2014
OK Singletracks...there is your challenge! Test these babies and give us the ugly truth if you dare!
Jul 31, 2014
Re: running a test. The problem is there is no good way to do a test since there is no device that is "right" to test against. I can ride the same exact course with a Garmin a hundred times and every time it will give me a different distance. Same with a smartphone. No need to do a test, I already know this happens every time. :)
For official road races, USTAF mandates the courses be measured using a wheeled device so a wheel-based cycling computer is probably your best bet if you want to maximize accuracy. Still, tire pressure, surface contact, and other factors mean this is not 100% accurate either.
Strava actually does some work behind the scenes to normalize GPS data no matter the source. For example, you may have noticed the climbing stats on your rides get updated a few hours after you post your ride. This is b/c Strava is comparing the elevation data your device collected to known digital elevation data and correcting it (for example, you can plug in any lat/lon pair to lookup the actual elevation at that point rather than relying on what your GPS reported). I also suspect Strava may be "path fitting," especially for road rides to cut out any wonky data points that show you leaving the road briefly and returning.
Aug 1, 2014
Jul 31, 2014
That also applies to these different services - ie: take your one ride and send it to Strava, Garmin Connect & MapMyRide and you'll be amazed at the differences! Where these websites really fall apart is when your riding around a body of water - lake or river - this will really jack up the elevation profile!
I ride with an iPhone mostly, but when it critical I get good data I use my Garmin Oregon 600 - it does a much better job!
Jul 31, 2014
I have noticed one thing in my own experience. My buddy who has a Samsung Galaxy always ends up with 4 or 5 tenths of a mile more (over a 18 mile MTB ride) versus my HTC. This is with us riding together on the same trail at the same time!
So, his Strava always shows more miles than me!
Jul 31, 2014
Wheel size should now be a feature,more so in the UK where 29"ers are becoming more common.
Gripes - Inaccurate mapping giving out wild times,road segments near trails .App users getting ridiculous times.Why can i ride my segment 5 times and not get a time on it ?
Strava is shite,someone better it soon please.
Jul 28, 2014
And hey, Strava, don't forget a fat bike category...we are growing everyday too! :)
Jul 28, 2014
Jul 31, 2014
Jul 31, 2014
except the opening poster, "holdingcawfield", aka chris campbell, deleted all posts and submitted 'hillary clinton 2016' (he is a republican)):
from mtbTB:
"Heard this through a reliable source: "My friend learned today from MTRP’s ranger Mel that all of Oak, Spring and all the feeder trails will be closed to hikers and bikers in 3 weeks. After that time, the rangers will be actively patrolling the canyons writing what they say are $1,700 tickets.
Apparently the catalyst for all of this is twofold:
-First there’s the interloper from Colorado [guess who? (chris campbell, my addition)] who’s been butchering the brush on our trails so he can ride them faster. He’s also the guy who knocked off the top of the jumps on Blazing Saddles and the top of Toads, and he’s now butchering the trails out in Sycamore.
-Second is Strava. While Strava is a fun way to track your time on a given trail, it strongly encourages you to be fastest and become “King Of The Mountain”. If you have the fastest time on a trail, Strava sends you a congratulatory e-mail telling you you’re King Of The Mountain. If someone beats your time, it then sends you an e-mail encouraging you to go out there and reclaim your title. What this has done is turn our favorite trails into racetracks, which is why Colorado boy is butchering and tearing up our trails: so he can have bragging rights as the fastest.
All this means the trails are getting torn up and guys are riding like idiots, which only stirs up the trail Nazis and encourages them to take radical action.
Trail closure seems imminent. Without so much as a hearing or community involvement from the biking community, MTRP will be closing the area in 3 weeks. Unless we speak up.
If you want to ride keep riding in MTRP, you MUST get involved and speak up."
So you can thank CC (chris campbell- my addition), the self-centered jackass, for ruining it for all of us. Next time you see him knock him off the trail and break his bike in half. And no, I don't care that I'm old and slower than you, Chris. I ride because it's fun - especially blind corners in the bushes. Unless you built the trail, you have no right to modify it in any way."
Aug 2, 2014
On top of that, gps drift is a huge huge problem with smart phones. I to this day have a KOM from a trail that runs rather parallel to the trail I was on, but when I received the KOM I didn't even ride that particular segment. Others in my area all have the same issue, getting KOM or leaderboard on segments they didn't even ride when using a smart phone.
I have done side by side testing and the GPS is way more accurate. I use a Garmin 510 edge. Sure you can argue the obvious rhetoric that it's not accurate or that there are still factors, but think about it. The Garmin is a dedicated gps with a better refresh rate. Not a phone with endless other things going on where gps was intended for driving apps and maps, not a competitive cycling program / app / website. It's insanely lopsided. Way more than you can even comprehend until you do some more testing with two devices on your own. Phones cheat.
Aug 2, 2014
One more hardware note: dedicated GPS units can only use GPS to determine your position but smartphones can also tap into wi-fi, cell towers, and even bluetooth to get a better fix than GPS alone. This isn't a huge help on most MTB trails but in urban areas where GPS signals are blocked by buildings, those additional signals give smartphones an edge.