The cycle network
Text: Ride editors. Article from the December 2012 issue of Ride Magazine.
Strava is the GPS app that can transform your riding, turn every climb into a race and looks set to change the face of cycling.
A curious phenomenon swept our office at the turn of this year. After-work rides had always been civilised, steady-paced affairs, but a new training tool caused a metamorphosis in our approach. Climbs were being tackled at full gas, all in pursuit of topping an online, virtual leaderboard and having bragging rights the next day. Training became full-blooded competition and it’s been nothing short of a game-changer.
This phenomenon is a website called Strava and if it hasn’t appeared on your radar yet, it’s only a matter of time before it does. If you’re not yet up to speed, here’s the basic concept. GPS is used to calculate your time on a stretch of road, known as a segment, to find the King – or Queen – of the Mountains. The leader gets to boast to mates until, inevitably, their record is broken, at which point the former leader tries desperately to reclaim it. This ‘gamification’ of training is an ingenious idea, yet so deliciously simple that it’s a wonder it took so long to become a reality.
All row together
To find out where it all began, you have to go back 20-odd years to the late 1980s and Harvard University. Friends and future Strava co-creators Michael Horvath and Mark Gainey rowed together, a sport unique in that the volume of training required far outweighs competition. Even when they did pin on a number, it was limited to six or seven races. This huge gap between events meant that the only way to stay motivated was to make training as competitive as possible.
This was the 1980s, remember. Training gizmos that we take for granted were years away, so when they graduated and lost their team, it was much harder to stay motivated and keep their numbers on track. College sport is huge in the US but the club scene is poor, so there’s little to fall back on. Increasingly, they looked to find ways to push themselves when there was no coach around.
After gaining a PhD in economics, Horvath taught at Stanford before founding a successful software company, Kana, with Gainey. It was around that time, in 1996, when they first got the idea that would eventually become Strava. Horvath refers to it as a virtual locker room, a place where athletes could meet in cyberspace to stay connected through workouts. It was a social network in every sense, years before the term existed. But without the technology to make their ambitions reality, the idea was shelved. After floating Kana, Horvath went back to teaching before returning to the entrepreneurial life.
It wasn’t until 2008 that the pair thought the time was ripe to revisit their idea. They built a basic version and put it into the hands of 10 cyclists. Horvath, now CEO, says even with this trial, Strava proved to be uniquely motivating – the 10 reckoned that they’d never ridden as fast. Two even joined the fledgling company.
It was created first and foremost for themselves, but as avid athletes – Horvath is a triathlete – they reasoned that if they found Strava beneficial, others would too.
Its growth was slow at first, but deliberately so – developing and refining it was more important. Their team, based mainly in San Francisco, grew steadily, and at the time of writing the firm employs 45 staff.
Fine-tuning the tech was top of their agenda and here, in a nutshell, is how it works. Each segment is defined by a set of latitude-longitude data points that has either been posted to the Strava network by a user or, in the case of categorised climbs, detected automatically. The method that they use is patent-pending, but they take individual points from a cyclist’s GPS data and match it to published segments to rank them on a leaderboard. Segments are usually climbs but flatter stretches of road are common, as are, somewhat controversially, descents.
Most are user-generated so the more people upload data, the more valuable Strava becomes. Topping a leaderboard with 200 names is more motivating than one with 20, and the more users there are, the fiercer the competition. While we can only comment from personal experience, segment leaderboards are noticeably longer now than they were at the turn of 2012. How did it get onto the radar of so many cyclists in such a short space of time?
“We found it works well through word of mouth,” says Horvath. “If you’re an athlete, you count on the opinion of friends, coaches and training partners. You rely on them for advice and recommendations. We don’t pay for advertising in the traditional sense.”
Topping a leaderboard with 200 names is more motivating than one with 20
They ran ads during this year’s Tour de France in the US, but rather than shoving a product in viewers’ faces, they wanted to create an air of mystery – a bid to speed up word of mouth, rather than a change of strategy. Like any social network, growth is dependent on users feeding back to others.
In the case of Strava, there’s no better way of doing this than to work with pro cyclists like Taylor Phinney. When Phinney joined BMC last year, he became one of their professional athletes. Ted King of Liquigas-Cannondale is another – a rider Phinney calls the biggest Strava addict in the peloton.
Having cyclists of this stature uploading race and training data to their Strava profile gives amateur users a unique opportunity to compete against them. Imagine taking a KOM off Phinney on his home roads of Boulder! There’s nothing that compares in any other sport.
A big attraction is the chance to test your strength against other users. It’s ironic then that its creator says it’s seeing his own self-improvement on climbs week-on-week that provides his motivation.
But what about normal users? What drives them to upload their training data? And how has it affected their training? Is it all positive or are there some downsides?
“It certainly encourages me to work harder and for longer,” says Carl Pasio, a pro and KOM on Suikerbossie. “Intervals are determined by a pre-defined point that you can’t change on the fly because it’s starting to hurt.”
It requires an all-out effort to get anywhere close to most KOMs, making Strava ideally suited to off-roaders like Charles Keey, leader on the Tokai’s feared radio-mast climb, who trains on the road to improve explosive power. “For some riders, whose disciplines require long periods of steady output, I can see a case for arguing that segment chasing could have a negative impact on performance.”
Jeff Jones, the 12-hour time-trial world record holder, agrees. As a cyclist who is fed structured training plans by a coach, chasing hill segments can be detrimental to what he is trying to achieve.
“When I first started using it, I was returning from illness and the unstructured training meant I could let loose and bag a few KOMs,” he says. “It’s a lot of fun and brings out my competitive instincts, but going too hard on a structured session can lower its overall quality.”
It’s different for pros like Phinney and Team Raleigh-GAC rider and former Box Hill KOM Liam Holohan, who was out-boxed by the Olympics.
While Holohan works with a coach on specific sessions, he says it’s sometimes in the back of his mind to go full gas towards a record, particularly with the Strava rivalry he has with teammate Jamie Sparling.
Unlike a social network, it can’t just be virtual. You have to get out there
Phinney himself is a convert. Strava’s technology allows him to explore both the mountains around Boulder and his adopted Tuscany in detail. It’s also a great way for him to stay connected with his supporters and give them an alternative view into the world of a pro.
“I post mainly race data because it’s way faster than anything I could ever do in training,” he told us. “My best achievement was taking the KOM on Oude Kwaremont [the infamous cobbled climb from the Tour of Flanders] – then Ted King raced over it and blitzed my time!
“The main thing I worry about is that people will think I’m really slow going up mountains. I’m just really not that fast. Some of you crazy Sunday warriors could probably take me!”
Going downhill fast
Taking a KOM on a climb is what we all aim for, but having descent leaderboards is more contentious. News broke in June that the family of a Californian man who died allegedly chasing his own downhill segment record is suing Strava for encouraging him to speed. Strava spokesman Mark Riedy said his death was a tragic accident but that “based on the facts involved in the accident and the law there was no merit to this lawsuit”.
Jones believes they aren’t a good idea and was moved to delete a downhill segment of his own creation after hearing about the lawsuit. “I felt it was irresponsible to essentially encourage people to break the speed limit and give them the green light to take risks.”
Mark Oliver, KOM on Porlock Hill takes a more balanced view. He questioned what would happen if someone pushed themselves so hard on a climb that they had a heart attack – would the finger be pointed at Strava? “People need to take responsibility for their own actions,” he insists.
Strava has sought to clarify its position oh descents, updating its terms and conditions to state that anyone who registers recognises that activities carry a risk of serious injury gr death and that you won’t hold them responsible should an accident happen. They even changed the wording on the email that alerts users to the loss of a KOM; where it once bombastically read “Better get out there and show him who’s boss!”, now it’s “Now get out there, have fun and be safe”.
They admit the site is far from perfect. Eradicating “segment spam” – multiple versions of the same road – is high on the agenda and they hope algorithms to highlight those that are popular with users and hide those that aren’t will stop the problem.
Security is another issue, with more than one Ride reader pointing out that as most rides start or finish at your front door, you are making yourself a target for thieves who have access to your profile. There is a privacy setting, though it’s not set that way by default. Many users we’ve spoken to were oblivious to its existence. Strava will soon start sending out prompts to set privacy zones.
Smooth stuff
Glitches aside, it’s a slick operation that has cyclists hooked. Paul Graham, current champion of Hardknott Pass, says he’s in the habit of uploading his data every day as well as checking through the day to see what his club mates have been up to. Is Strava becoming a Facebook for athletes?
It’s an analogy that Horvath agrees with – up to a point. “Absolutely there’s a social component, but I’ll say this: unlike a social network, it can’t just be virtual. You have to get out there and be real. You have to engage and tell your own story of your life as an athlete. It’s an interesting twist.”
The similarities will only increase as Strava develops.
More online training tools:
Map your routes, get training plans and join an online community of cyclists with similar goals.
Cycling Plus has a training group, so why not join us online here? http:// training.bikeradar.com
2. Training Peaks
Team Sky and British Cycling are official partners of this resource. Virtual training plans are expensive but there is a vast library of training programmes specifically for road cycling. www.trainingpeaks.com
3. Mapmyride
The makers of MapMyRun have branched out into cycling with this app for smartphones. Map your route, record a training log and integrate your historical data onto the MapMyFitness website. www.mapmyride.com
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