Strava remorse wrote:
Glad Im not alone. Sometimes I feel like it's a race that never ends. I get that it's supposed to be fun and friendly.
No, it's not. It's designed to attract competitive users in the way you describe. They have gone to great lengths to incite users to be competitive.
A long time ago, you could change your screen name. I changed mine to something random nobody knew and just use it occasionally.
Yes. I was pressured to try it and it was the most stressful running week of my life.
Everyday I was competing. Ditched it after 6 days.
...Might as well plug my Strava-powered app.
https://heatflask.herokuapp.com
It's an activity explorer that renders multiple animated visualizations on a map. Blue for biking, red for activities on foot. Select a date range, number of most recent days, number of most recent activities, or give it a list of (your) activity ids.
If you hold the shift key while dragging a rectangle it will zoom to that rectangle. You can hover over an activity to highlight it and click on an activity to get more details about it, then view it alone on Strava or in my app.
High-resolution data rendering is free for now but I think I will charge a few dollars for it in the future.
I've got a few hundred users from around the world.
I'm constantly working on it so let me know if there are any features you want to see. Also I'm looking for collaborators, especially front-end.
Cheers!
oh yeah... I've tested it on Chrome, Firefox, and Safari for macOS and iOS. It doesn't work well on Microsoft Edge ot MSIE. If you try it and for some reason it hangs or acts weird for you, please let me know.
Yeah I used it for about 2 weeks and stopped. I just didn't like the aspect that it was making every run like a race, all accumulating to an overall pace.
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8hundred wrote:
Yeah I used it for about 2 weeks and stopped. I just didn't like the aspect that it was making every run like a race, all accumulating to an overall pace.
Everything that most of you know about training should tell you that focusing on overall pace of all your runs is not a good way to train. So just ignore it, let it go, like many have already said. I know some personalities will have a hard time doing that, so if you have to drop Strava to avoid racing every workout, so be it.
I like Strava, and I like that I can choose to be competitive for some segments if I want, and not go for segments when I don't care to. The guy I find most entertaining to follow on Strava does his hard workouts by going for segments, but his easy runs can be slow as can be. That's one good way of having fun with Strava without messing up your training. Make the hard workouts that you would be doing otherwise coincide with segments that you want.
I wish they had a garmin that did not show your pace.
Shimmy Mack wrote:
You should probably go ahead and quit, because you have completely missed the point of Strava.
You also sound like the type of person that takes himself way too seriously. Here's the thing: nobody cares. Not about you, or your pace, or what shoes you wear.
Get over yourself.
That's a lot of judgement from one post, impressive.
Strava is no different than an old-school training log.
In high school/college/post-collegiate before college, I would run the same workouts, courses, etc., and be able to compare to previous fitness, etc., to help me determine where I'm at. Same with Strava. I keep my account Private. At one point had over 3300 followers, but realized my competition was learning my training, so shut that feature off and unplugged everyone so it's pretty much just a hi-tech digital training log, which is really cool. Plus, it's basically my Instagram, as I upload all my pics that I feel relevant and want to keep that pertain to the runs.
easy loper wrote:
I wish they had a garmin that did not show your pace.
Really?
Almost every Garmin allows you to set up your data fields just like that.
easy loper wrote:
I wish they had a garmin that did not show your pace.
xcjason wrote:
Really?
Almost every Garmin allows you to set up your data fields just like that.
Black electrical tape also works.
Shimmy Mack wrote:
You should probably go ahead and quit, because you have completely missed the point of Strava.
You also sound like the type of person that takes himself way too seriously. Here's the thing: nobody cares. Not about you, or your pace, or what shoes you wear.
Get over yourself.
This is great advice. You should be a therapist. You have such great insight into what makes people tick.
not on Strava. the overall weekly pace and sad face after a recovery run both sound lame. Garmin Connect is ok.
bummer trip wrote:
Shimmy Mack wrote:You should probably go ahead and quit, because you have completely missed the point of Strava.
You also sound like the type of person that takes himself way too seriously. Here's the thing: nobody cares. Not about you, or your pace, or what shoes you wear.
Get over yourself.
That's a lot of judgement from one post, impressive.
I agree, that almost hurt my feelings.
I've never felt any pressure from Strava. Some people are faster than me and some are slower. I see it as Facebook for runners and use it to give/receive advice and support from friends. I like following some elite runners to see what their workouts look like. I also follow a few 2:15-2:22 marathoners which is great to see what training looks like to get to an OTQ.
I used to LOVE Strava and going for CRs on segments. It was the perfect competitive add on to road racing - no cost, you can run whenever you feel strong, and you can immediately go back for a second chance if you fall short.
Last year I set a Strava CR on a massive hill in a pretty populated area. A few days after I did, the guy whose CR I beat had gone back and beat my time by a few seconds. Fair enough, I thought. Strava has the tool where you can compare your pace on segments with the CR holder, so I looked to see where I had lost time. But strangely, my pace was faster than the CR holder, which didn't make any sense. I looked a little closer, and this guy had purposefully started the segment about 15-20 meters after I did and stopped it about 15-20 meters short of the top of the hill. GPS is imperfect, so the segment still registered, even though this guy had cleverly skipped between 30-40 meters of running.
To confirm I wasn't losing my mind, I re-uploaded my Garmin file to a new Strava account and "cropped" my run to match this guy's abbreviated segment. Sure enough, my time was faster, and I was again the CR holder.
At this point I realized just how ridiculous "digital racing" is in comparison to actual competition. I literally set a record days after having run the segment by cropping my run file. This was in response to a guy who had short cut the segment, knowing there would be no repercussions. Real road racers would laugh at this type of BS.
And "let's see who can run the most miles" contests are ridiculous. The purpose of training is to run faster races. Period. Running a fast 20-mile tempo run is pointless if it means you'll burn out for your actual marathon.
I almost never use the social aspects of it.
It connects automatically with my Garmin, so it makes a nice log (one which I prefer over Garmin Connect).
I used to get really into the social aspect when I used Daily Mile. It was pretty ghey
I think the social aspect is great when you're out of school, when you're likely to do 99% of your running alone. I like seeing what my old teammates and training buddies around the country are doing. I also like connecting with people I might otherwise only see at local races. It heightens the sense of community out in the real world. Post-Strava, I'm much more likely to do my cooldown with other local runners who aren't in my training group.
One weight loss cubicle dude I met on Strava went from couch to Strava fiend on an "amazing" performance curve, knocking 2-3 minutes off his 5K every month or so. He'd friend the entire field in whatever race he did over the weekend and then start liking & commenting on every workout, and suddenly he had a thousand virtual running buddies giving him 24/7 feedback, BS advice, and encouragement via Strava. Within a year of learning how a Garmin works dude's already thinking past his BQ 'thon debut and looking at 100 mile trail events. Guess how this story ends? Yeah, horrible overtraining injury. Guy can barely walk and may never run again. Strava's the noob slayer. Anyhow, why do we even need it? Doesn't Garmin Connect do the same thing, except you don't have to sync your Garmin with some external server? Strava's just hype, BS and marketing. The only other good thing (besides noob baiting) it does is, when you pass some hot chick on the rec path you can cyberstalk her on "Flyby" when you get back. Hot chicks always link their Instagrams to Strava too, so you're good to go.