Here I am thinking a Cateye computer WITH cadence is "the bomb" when along comes Strava. I think geeking out is the appropriate term. With a Droid or iphone 4 or better you can just geo-record a ride, and it even has a go at figuring out power. You can also clip parts of your ride like an audio segment and see how you did for TT times or compare with other Straveurs. Very cool and free.

i've been getting very curious about this

who on our club has used Strava?

report, please!

i've used it - i think the power numbers are probably pretty dubious. i'd be curious to hear how they stack up against an actual power tap.

but overall it is a very, very cool app. i like how you can compare times on pre-determined climbs (i.e., the col du bump in prospect park) against that of other riders once you upload the completed ride to your profile. it determines the start/end points - but would be pretty fun to use for all of the chest-bumping on here on the alpine climb.

i've also been trying out the Cyclemeter app, to geo-record the rides while tracking heart rate/cadence/speed with a basic polar cpu. Cyclemeter works much the same as Strava on the iPhone - tracks speed (average and fastest), climbs, distance, gives you splits and also tracks cumulative miles on a calendar. has some other features that i haven't explored yet. it's $5 - i wouldn't say it's $5 better than the strava, but i do like the interface better.

We should try and get a team discount...

I'm on Strava. You don't do it for power, you do it for it's mapping and social media features.

I don't think the power approximation thing is terribly consistent. The idea is the program can see the course you ride in terms of hills and such. What it can't see is wind, road conditions, who you're drafting, and so on. I've been putting in my cx races into strava, and when I set up the power feature, it had be averaging way below where it should have been--I believe the program assumed I was riding on paved roads rather than grass, dirt, sand.

The mapping is pretty straightforward. But what's cool is the program categorizes climbs. 4th cat and so on. And it can tell you how you rank against your previous efforts on the same hill or the same ride and how you rank against others on the same hill or same ride.

the "competing" against others is a mixed bag. I don't think people want to show their lousy efforts, but I could be wrong. Also, people have uploaded what must have been times when their GPS was on but in their car, as in a few places, I've been "beaten" going up rises on 9W, the the one by the gas station in Englewood Cliffs going south, by people who were doing 60mph. The flip side is, if you want to impress people, either hang onto a car, or have your non Strava-uploading friend carry your bottles, pump and bag and you can really attack a climb like a race.

I spoke with Craig Lewis, a pro formerly of Highroad, who is sponsored by Strava. He was riding with a Garmin 500 in his pocket to get race data to post (the team was sponsored by SRM, so the Garmin would only reside on his stem during training). Problem was, the 500 would only inconsistently pick up power, so he could do a 5-hour stage in the mountains and have an average power 0f 100w. People would contact him and ask about this so often, he finally turned the power off on the 500.

So sharing rides is great, and I think I'll be traveling with my 500 to record rides in different places (I did it for Las Vegas already), but I don't know about putting every ride up.

I did, however, upload my ride from the NYC marathon. I've gotten "kudos" for that. The data makes it look like I rode the marathon in 2:40 or so.

I also should add that CycleOps has TrainingCamp as a social media platform. They should be getting their GPS unit out soonish.

http://www.cycleops.com/trainingcamp/

And MapMyRide has its fans.

Bump. just downloaded this. who wants to be my friend!? I'll add a kissena club also.

ha!

just friended a bunch of you jabronis without even seeing this

holler!

my handle is William D-C

I have a Garmin, and have been using their "Garmin connect" jim-jammy. Is strada free?

Strava.

Posted By: chrisbloomeStrava.

Yep, you can upload from your garmin, not sure how far back you go, in terms of old rides going into the "bank", but check it out. When you register, for free, go to strava.com/register and put in "odd2011" as a promo code and you'll get 3 free months of premium.

stack this promo code "NM3M11" , that and the other code, 6 months premium free.

I'm on there as is Murray and the guys listed above.

I use it occasionally. It's good for finding the pitch of various climbs and how long they are and how they're rated. It's also decent if you're interested in seeing how your best efforts compare to others on well-used roads. For example,when Neil and I rode to the top of Clausland, we discussed why the final rise is so difficult. Looking at the upload, I found that in the final tenth of a mile, the road hits 15-18%. This is not easy to figure out on Garmin Connect for a few reasons--their program doesn't look for the climbs and doesn't figure out the pitch for you.

Some things I've experienced on Strava...

I rode the NYC marathon route and uploaded the strava file for some reason. I got "kudos" for my effort. It was something like a 2:20 finish time. I think those not paying attention thought I ran it.

This past summer, I was looking over a ride that took in 9W. I saw that I got beaten in an uphill sprint by someone going 60mph. Guess the car dashboard mount has some investors.

I did a ride in Los Angeles, the Donut Ride out of Redondo Beach. And I found out that a descent on the route is a segment people time and race. The nice thing is that my friend had wanted to rip the descent anyways and show off how he can take the switchbacks without braking. I followed, had to brake in the second of the fast switchbacks and that cost me about 5sec on my friend. I came back from the ride, uploaded my ride and found I had the 7th fastest time of the almost 2000 attempts by a total of about 200 riders. My friend was 5th fastest. He's going to have to brake in the turns to make up the 15 seconds between himself and the current leader.

I showed Strava by my brother when I was at his house. We discovered that the hill he lives on has been made a segment. It's a 1.4 mile climb and goes up 451 feet. I did it at tempo and was the 11th fastest recorded time up it. He wanted me to win his climb as a pride thing. Mt. Wilson was more my goal so I didn't make a second attempt, something he was disappointed in.

Just uploaded winter training thus far. Joining the Kissena club as we speak.

@ Stearns and other iphone people who need extra juice.

I had a problem where I couldn't make it back from Nyack without draining battery and the kicker was bad data that made me lose a couple of rides.

Here's your $6.27 answer: http://www.amazon.com/Stitchway-UltraPower-iTouch-EXTERNAL-PORTABLE-RECHARGEABLE/dp/B0035R2QS4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327431909&sr=8-1
There's more robust solutions but they all start around $40.

Get two (or more for your friends!). It's a little bit of a pain because it adds height in your pocket and it's not super "locked in". I think it'd just detach if you leaned on it, but that might be something to keep in mind too. I just plug it at coffee in Nyack and that gets me thru the whole ride.

No app for Windows phones sooooo...


not so cool.

It is ON. Prospect Park Hill.

26.3 mph -- a good target for Kissena train.

Just uploaded the Devil's Kitchen stage from 2011 TOC.
This will be much cooler when you can hide yourself from everyone *except* your team.

Kudos!

Don't be jealous haha. For those using android strava, they finally rolled out a v2 update. Get it! Or else risk aquatic excursions.

Max speed 382.2mph!

Late to the thread and the game, but just started using this and noticed that some of my recorded data is way off base. Specifically, my lap times are off by a pretty significant margin vs. what was recorded by my Garmin. Anyone else have this issue? I loved how it presented the ride data, but if it gives me incorrect data it's pretty much no use.

Adam, Is your garmin set to 5 mile laps? I never changed the default setting of 5 miles as a lap, maybe you are having the same issue?

I had found a few bugs and contacted strava about them a few years ago and it all came down to issues with time stamps. Essentially I was using the start/Stop during my rides and not just setting a lap when I stopped. Who knows if it still has issues with this but I never do that anymore I just hit a lap when I stop and lap when I start and ive not had any issues again.

Interesting. I clicked the laps manually, so I don't think that was the issue, and each lap was less than 5 miles. I discovered that one discrepancy was because Strava included the paused time, but the other laps were parts of 2x20s, so there was no rest. I submitted a bug report, so we'll see. I saw in their forums a seemingly significant number of users have had issues with time and distance data when using Garmin devices. Apparently, Strava doesn't think the Garmin data is very accurate. At any rate, I'll post if I hear anything. Thanks Mike and Ashley!

Saw that. Strange.

I know South Park Drive in the Berkeley hills. I like descending quickly, but that road is scary. The kind of steepness where I lose confidence that my brakes are capable of actually keeping my bike under control. And it isn't very curvy at all, so there is no reason (except safety and common sense) to use your brakes much. It is also closed part of the year for reasons that I don't understand very well.

Seems to me that the survivors are looking for someone to blame.

Real men try to set the Strava record going UP South Park Drive, not down.

http://app.strava.com/segments/304329

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=south+park+drive+berkeley+ca&hl=en&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=55.981213,70.751953&hnear=S+Park+Dr&t=m&z=15

That's really sad and strange. I've never ridden down South Park, but I've certainly raced up it many times.

OK, Here is another Strava segment which involved a dead pedestrian. Bay Area cycling scene seems to be struggling with aftermath of pedestrian accidents.

http://sfcitizen.com/blog/2012/04/06/did-strava-com-help-kill-pedestrian-sutchi-hui-whats-your-time-on-the-castro-street-descent-aka-castro-street-bomb/