Strava is public for me - I like to think I’m fast, but I’m not nearly a big enough deal that I need to keep my ride data private for competitive purposes. If someone wants to spend the hours digging into my ride history to figure out how to attack me in a race more power to them (you can pretty easily get the same type of data based on race results which I cannot make private)
After many years on Strava with a few hundred followers/followed, I reverted to ‘all private’ this summer. I also had Strava customer service convert all my history to ‘private’ too. I still post all my stuff to Strava as ‘private’ rides and see my own segment times, but to all outside viewers, I don’t exist and have been removed from all segment leaderboards.
Why?
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I got snarky comments in my ride feed that didn’t think were appropriate, and realized Strava was basically one-keystroke removed from the cesspool of Facebook et al.
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I discovered that I was becoming the jackass on group rides and hunting for segments whilst sucking wheels on the back of a pack (ugggg) or doing some kind of stupid ‘hero pull’ when I was on the front.
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I spent too much time comparing myself to others (and vice-versa) instead of just riding my bike and having fun.
I’m a total data-junkie, and that hasn’t changed. But between TR and WKO4 and the uber-awesome ‘season match’ stuff, I’m not lacking for motivation to get faster. And just as importantly, I’m having a lot more fun.
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I used to be weirdo on Strava and hide my rides and runs. Now I dont care, and use it to find cool new routes. I will follow anyone, and let anyone follow me
Public for me too. I follow a few friends and people I have raced against. I’m not even close to being fast enough to care who knows what my training is.
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Guilty, I use Kudos as kind of a ‘I see you’re riding/running’, it would be nice if there where a couple of levels to give a bigger kudos to an impressive ride.
I will let anyone follow me that I have met in real life and usually follow them back. You quickly notice that the fastest people are usually the ones that put in the most work, I find it inspiring.
I use it as motivation. I only follow those that I know or have met a long the way and do not allow those I don’t know to follow. I do look into profiles of race segments to see how the “fast” people did to compare to how slow I am. I am new to the active lifestyle and use anything that can motivate me to continue pushing my limits. I do not have FB so Strava and Garmin Connect are my social media avenues.
Timely email this morning from CTS: 5 Ways Social Media Can Be Toxic for Athletes (and how to fix them) - CTS
I have a fair amount of followers, but they’re people I know in some capacity. I have it set where I must approve followers. I also have pretty extensive privacy zones around my house, work, etc. Granted, I know there’s back ways into finding out my rides through leaderboards, but it’ll at least keep the lazy creeps away. There’s been a few creeper guy accounts in the region I live in trying to follow all the females and leaving really weird comments, etc. Trying to avoid some of that, especially since I ride alone the majority of the time, and though it’s not a huge worry, always something to keep in the back of my mind.
Other than that, I really don’t care about people seeing all my training. I’ve considered keeping my FTP tests private, but then I realized I really don’t care. If my FTP motivates my competition, whatever. I’m primarily a mountain biker and cyclocross racer, so there’s so much more to winning a race than pure power and fitness.