I'm on Strava... now what?

fisky wrote:

It had to be a time trial over that segment, right?

I guess you could call it a "time trial" but it's really just banging away on the same segment in hopes of getting your name to the top. Just like all other social media the goal is to get lots of attention and have everyone look at you and tell you how amazing you are. If you're into that thing, go run some of your own "time trials." Otherwise, in my humble opinion, your best bet is to kill your account and concentrate on real training with real goals.

I like it, a lot. I use to

1. Spy on training of local rival runners

2. Observe training of elite runners

3. Store my own training

4. Share my training/racing (It is social media after all and adults like to play show-and-tell as much as kindergartners.)

Now choose a hill segment to be yours. This hill segment is one you should run every day. Hammer it. Make the record on it yours.

it's social media wrote:

fisky wrote:

It had to be a time trial over that segment, right?

I guess you could call it a "time trial" but it's really just banging away on the same segment in hopes of getting your name to the top. Just like all other social media the goal is to get lots of attention and have everyone look at you and tell you how amazing you are. If you're into that thing, go run some of your own "time trials." Otherwise, in my humble opinion, your best bet is to kill your account and concentrate on real training with real goals.

he has the right idea. now that youre on strava; quit!

Ignore the overall rankings (or at least don’t put too much worth in them). Focus on your PRs. The second time (and every time thereafter) you complete a segment Strava will take note and compare it to your previous attempt(s). Looks for trends, either improving or holding steady or whatever it is you hope your body is doing. Keep in mind that weather can play a big role in segment speed (especially wind on a bike, and for that matter, riding in a paceline) as can numerous other factors. Also, GPS is far from perfect especially on short segments. If the segment is under a minute times/paces can be quite inaccurate.

If possible, take note when you were feeling good and/or pushing hard and use that as your basis for comparison in the future. For example, you may find one day you go out feeling good but not pushing and almost PR. That’s an accomplishment. Or you feel terrible yet still run better than you have in the past when feeling good but not pushing. If you go out every time and attempt to PR every segment you’ll get sick of failing real quick. Same goes for chasing top tens against guys who spend all day every day training and cherry pick segments.

The cycling segments are amazing. It's one thing to watch the Tour de France and hear the speeds they're going. It looks so easy.

It's something else to ride up a hill all out struggling to stay above 14mph and know that all the top guys in my area are maintaining 21mph up the same hill. It's insane.

How long is your hill segment? Short hilly segments are prone to GPS error and have some outrageously fast times. I recently ran #6 out of 1000 on a nearby hill except I was doing hill reps at my usual pace, I just got a lucky GPS reading that dropped my time from like 34 to 27 seconds. FYI if you're a premium member they have segment leaderboards by age group.

Tired of paying $50+ to time trial a local 5k? Use your next taper for a snipe run. Haters gonna hate. Who cares. It's fun!

There was a segment a former NCAA national champion had the CR from a 15 mile run. I warmed up, walked to the start and hammered. Felt so good to be so absurd. Even got a kudos from him cuz its the internet and just for goofing off.

Join the let’s run club

Then you can see the leaderboard for a segment of the local people around you who use letsrun

It's 0.41 miles. My time is 4:26 (10:41/mile pace). The CR is 2:47.

But I see what you mean about the GPS reading. I did a bike segment this afternoon over some rolling hills. I got to the top and started downhill and the segment clock just kept ticking for another 10 seconds.

Hey - I recently wrote a blog post on how to use Strava, including a break down of the new Strava Premium/Summit features, and how to set-up Strava. I personally really like Strava to track my running training and mileage per week, finding new routes to run, plus my shoe usage. However, it does have different uses given the individual's needs.

Strava is a great way to track your running training, share it with your network, and club (yep, you can join real and virtual clubs), participate in virtual races and challenges and stay connected with your running community. Strava is in app form and also accessible via the website 

www.strava.com

. Many users utilize it to keep track of their training for their coaches to see, and not surprisingly, compare their efforts with other athletes doing the same activity.

Athletes have a variety of reasons for being active users of Strava. For some, it is about staying accountable for their training. For others, it might be about competing with friends, for coaches to track and monitor their athlete’s training program or plan, to discover new routes and trails, or to compete in virtual races. Virtual races are taking off right now, ignited by the recent world events. More and more clubs are posting individual segment challenges with prize incentives.

To read more about setting up Strava, and Strava premium + other features, click the link to read my post: 

https://larahamilton.com/how-to-use-strava-guide/

jamin wrote:

I like it, a lot. I use to

1. Spy on training of local rival runners

2. Observe training of elite runners

3. Store my own training

4. Share my training/racing (It is social media after all and adults like to play show-and-tell as much as kindergartners.)

All of those, plus segment hunting. Segment hunting for running in my area isn't really competitive though. Most running segment records are just resulting from some of the faster guys in the area going out for a tempo. I went segment hunting on a run one day (basically a fartlek with some longer recovery time based on the distance between segments) and I got the KOM for 3 out of my 4 attempted segments. I'm not that fast, so I realized that there's not much to the running segments near me and I lost interest in segment hunting on runs after that.

Segment hunting on a bike in my area is much more challenging. I imagine that this is true everywhere since segment hunting on Strava has probably been popular in the cycling community for a longer time.

Different people get different things out of Strava. I like that it logs my runs and I like seeing what people I follow are up to. A simple kudo means your friends know you're running. I'm not on facebook but I've heard it described as facebook for runners/bikers. Occasional pics, smart @ss comments, goofy run titles... For some reason the segments have never motivated me although I occasionally am tempted to do as someone above did.... Go actually "race" a segment to try for the CR.

Good points! I just joined Strava and have a Garmin Fenix 5S. I'll start using it although I don't like the social media comparison stuff. I may use it to upload my data (similar to MapMyRun). I did join a local running group in Columbus (MIT).

Segment stalking apparently is a real thing lol

You could simply train normally and just use it as a training log. I only compare segments against my own previous efforts.

same. I like to have a log of all my runs and the mileage graph is super helpful when trying to juggle months and months of 105-115 mile weeks without injury (I've found little spikes of mileage usually lead to an injury popping up pretty quickly if I don't downshift)... but the segments I just cannot get excited about. really have trouble finding the appeal but I also think if that motivates other people to run hard then it can't be a bad thing!

fisky wrote:

The cycling segments are amazing. It's one thing to watch the Tour de France and hear the speeds they're going. It looks so easy.

It's something else to ride up a hill all out struggling to stay above 14mph and know that all the top guys in my area are maintaining 21mph up the same hill. It's insane.

They could be group rides, benefitting from slipstream.

Some fast times are due to using phone app and gps.

Create your own running segments in less popular locations if you want to chase top-10s etc, or short segments 400m or so you can sprint, or very long meandering segments nobody will bother with

The premium version also gives you age group and weight top ladders.

I'm the OP. After a year off Strava (surgeries, etc), I decided to give it another try. I bought a Polar H10 chest HRM to track HR on Strava only to realize that I can't see HR when I'm running!

Now I need a smartwatch to show HR as I'm running. It's too much of a hassle to look at my phone. Any suggestions for an inexpensive smartwatch that will show my HR? I can't see paying $200+ for a Polar watch when all I want is to see my HR when I'm going up a steep hill trail.

Garmin Forerunner 55 or 245 should be plenty.