Wanting to be the fastest on a particular Strava segment...

[HLaB]

Wait for a strong wind, stravaepo, do it in a car or with the aforementioned iphone; thats just some of the reasons I cant be bothered with KOMs or King of the Short Flat Bit

 

[MrGrumpy]

Strava haterz the lot of you but yes the phone apps are pure crap. My m8 managed 35mph up harbour drive !! not friggen likely! Use it to record your own PRs achievs etc

 

[HLaB]

Strava haterz the lot of you but yes the phone apps are pure crap. My m8 managed 35mph up harbour drive !! not friggen likely! Use it to record your own PRs achievs etc

Your mate is Chris Hoy I prefer RWGPS for comparison of my own rides but it and GC dont do Privacy Zones like Strava, I feel more comfortable sharing it on Strava.

 

[Garz]

The phone recorded an avg speed 2mph higher overall and I bagged a KOM on the phone whereas the Garmin was 13secs slower on that segment putting me in 3rd place. When I see people doing 35mph up a 10% hill sprint from a standing start (but obviously not using a car or motorbike...

I did not know this but found some strange observations on how people got these results. Thank's for pointing this out I shall not beat myself up about it then. Strava also could do with filtering out Pro/Elite and high cat riders to a separate dataset.

 

[redcard]

Wait for a strong wind, stravaepo, do it in a car or with the aforementioned iphone; thats just some of the reasons I cant be bothered with KOMs or King of the Short Flat Bit

Most Strava records are made with the benefit of a strong tailwind or the slipstream of a double decker.

A tailwind can really fool one into thinking they could have been a pro!

 

[MrGrumpy]

Lol not always B-)

 

[Upstream]

Get a life ?

I have a life. However I do question how sad a person must be who, with an inability to post anything constructive, takes the time to post such a ridiculous comment!

 

[Upstream]

If you use a Garmin set the data recording at 1sec, but phone app records every 5secs, therefore strava has to match the nearest datapoint recorded to the start and finish GPS co-ordinates, thereby introducing a large amount of error. The shorter the segment the more pronounced the error when using a phone.

As an example I recorded a ride on both phone and Garmin. The phone recorded an avg speed 2mph higher overall and I bagged a KOM on the phone whereas the Garmin was 13secs slower on that segment putting me in 3rd place. When I see people doing 35mph up a 10% hill sprint from a standing start (but obviously not using a car or motorbike...by looking at the rest of the data for the ride) it's always using a phone and I discount it. I've given up contesting Strava KOM's as the variation makes a joke of competition.

The reason why Phone apps tend to have longer recording intervals is all about battery life...shorter intervals slaughters phone batteries.

Ah... Which Garmin do you use by the way?

 

[jdtate101]

Ah... Which Garmin do you use by the way?

800 set to data record every 1 sec as I have a power meter.

 

[jdtate101]

http://www.wheelsuckers.co.uk/profi...which-one-garmin-or-iphone?xg_source=activity

As you can see from this guy's tests the longer segments track quite closely, however the short sprint segment is quite far out (as a % of the total time 8-10% error). As the higher % of short segments reside in urban areas and are sprints, this is usually where most errors occur.
Not sure what Strava could do to correct this as the phone GPS chipsets have a small antenna and aren't that accurate in terms of GPS lock. They are designed for static location services not really high speed tracking. As they track the device field of every upload they could introduce a filter to remove phone devices (like they filter on age/weight/contacts), but the majority of their user base uses phones, so I doubt they would do it. Veloviewer might do it though.......

 

[pplpilot]

http://www.digitalepo.com/

 

[VamP]

I have a life. However I do question how sad a person must be who, with an inability to post anything constructive, takes the time to post such a ridiculous comment!

Lighten up pal. I think Zofo's right on the money. Strava is just ''a bit of fun''. It means nothing. If you're trying to work out a segment beating strategy on a piddly flat sub 3 minute segment on an internet forum, and you demand only constructive and serious responses, then you are taking yourself way too seriously.

 

[Ghost Donkey]

If you want to go faster/same speed for less effort downhill and flat bits make your frontal profile as small as possible. The resistance against air on your body is one of the biggest forces you're working against.

 

[vickster]

The frustration with Strava is you steal someone's KOM/QOM and then the bugger goes out and wins it back as s/he was just out for a stroll the first time I get more satisfaction from faster average times and beating my previous bests...oh and enjoying the ride and not getting squashed by crazies!

 

[Upstream]

Lighten up pal. I think Zofo's right on the money. Strava is just ''a bit of fun''. It means nothing. If you're trying to work out a segment beating strategy on a piddly flat sub 3 minute segment on an internet forum, and you demand only constructive and serious responses, then you are taking yourself way too seriously.

Hi,
I agree that Strava is just a bit of fun and I didn't expect to only receive serious comments - some here are very funny - for example the digitalepo link. What I wasn't at all expecting though was the sort of comment from that user which was neither helpful or funny but just appeared to be a personal attack. I may have taken the comment the wrong way but I expect that most reasonable people would probably have interpreted that comment in a similar way that I did.