Anyone else switching off from Strava..?

A couple of my riding mates and I were chatting about how we have distanced ourselves from Strava over the last year or so, has anyone else?

Don’t get me wrong, I think Strava did a hell of a lot to motivate,create social scenes and generally motivate us in the past few years and I’m not slating the platform at all

We put it down to a few things that contributed to our disengagement

  • constantly seeing Bkool & Zwift rides instead of outdoor rides
  • Crazy Kudos, many instances getting more kudos for race warm ups rather than the actual race
  • Automatic syncing of rides negating the need to ever having to log in, relegating Strava to just a mileage logger
  • Segment saturation

Has anyone else found they’ve switched off from Strava like us? I personally think that these platforms need to continue to evolve or they get left behind. This is what’s quite refreshing of TR.

Could we see a big name disappearing in the future?

2 Likes

Personally I like the social aspect to it. I also like keeping track of my competition. I do hide all my rides and then I unhide the ones I choose to. I haven’t got into chasing segments, but as an XC guy I enjoy looking back at how fast I’ve completed a trail loop. I’m not quite ready to give it up.

4 Likes

Im still a big fan of strava. i dont have nearly as many friends/followers as something such as facebook, so it only takes a minute or so to scroll through what people have been doing. and a vast majority of people are actual friends and team mates. i have only a few people i follow who i met once, such as in a race or something.

i personally use the segments as benchmarks for my ability, especially on my mountain bike. road biking is to influenced by who you ride with and the wind direction and strength for segment KOMs. i do a great deal of running too, and its still great for benchmarks on my fitness. i honestly dont pay any attention at all to how many kudos a run/bike/race i do gets, but i do give kudos to people who post cool pictures and do good rides/runs and races

6 Likes

Totally agree with that one. I rode GMR a while back and there were over 150 segments for a 50km ride! Kinda ridiculous imho.

I’m right there with you. I downgraded from premium because I found all the added features pointless. I do like seeing where others are riding or how they are training similar to how I like to keep up with old friends on Facebook. However, the KOMs, the trophies, the speed trends are starting to lose their glamor.

4 Likes

I actuallly had a ‘cull’ of people from Strava a few months ago, It does get a little more interesting during race season to see how your team mates and\or other racers are getting on

2 Likes

We discussed the social thing, we have a large WhatsApp group for our team which tends to get more replies following a race than the strava upload. Of course, other followers can’t see that group

I pretty much echo what evokevin has said. but I only follow like 15 people plus my teammates. I really like how strava logs miles for individual bikes and parts on those bikes. and FlyBys is a pretty neat feature. also the ability for comparing efforts on segments. lots of reasons for me to still use it.

2 Likes

Yeah, I’m off Strava except for the TR link. Too “Facebooky” for me.

2 Likes

I think strava sucks. I downgraded to to free account when they got rid of google street view. Their user interface has gotten worse and only recently did they add the feature to upload photos from your computer. So lame.

This thread is a continuation of the following thread…

2 Likes

Still on Strava and still use it but cancelled my Premium subscription this year. Not worth it for what you pay. I’m betting a lot of people have cancelled their premium sub.

4 Likes

A few years ago when I was poaching KOMs on my untrained single speed it was fun…just to see what I could do…how I stacked up… Now that I’m doing TR and racing again, Strava just seems kinda pointless (not to mention all the jokers pulling lame cheats to bag KOMs…really?).

2 Likes

That’s an interesting question.

Strava went from being my number one favorite app, to one that I tolerate out of necessity. All of my friends and all of my rides are stored there.

If a quality alternative comes around I will definitely switch.

I agree that an app needs to evolve or die. Strava has been relatively stagnant, and adding silly bells and whistles.

The biggest annoyance for me is the duplicate entries in ”Apple health”. This issue has been going on for 3 years and Strava only says “we’re working on it”. There is a huge thread on the Strava forum with hundreds of complaints.

…the bottom line seems to be that Strava doesn’t care.

…maybe I will cancel Strava premium today.

2 Likes

Love that feature for post race analysis.

4 Likes

My biggest problem with Strava right now is they seem to have stopped development completely. Have they added any features of functionality over the last couple years at all? And there are some desperately needed upgrades IMO, such as the ability to fix power spikes. My PD curve looked stupid after a ride and I had to find a third party utility to fix the spikes and re-upload, and doing a quick search, it looks like its been a repetitive feature request on their support site for years.

3 Likes

Strava is fine for logging miles, race recon with flybys, and the social aspect. I and I feel most people use TrainingPeaks to for your data

1 Like

Flybys is neat, but is also a privacy nightmare if left open to the public.

2 Likes

A lot of people worry about privacy this or that and I guess that stuff just doesn’t bother me.

2 Likes

I have moved a number of times so I like to see what my old riding buds are doing.

I also like to use it for scoping out places to ride when I move or am travelling.

It does turn in to a sea of TR and Zwift rides through the winter in Canada but I don’t look at it too often when those apps auto-upload.

I still enjoy jamming a KOM every now and then.