I have to admit that I’m really struggling with trying to find a positive way to process Strava’s actions here. You should absolutely watch DCR’s video on the topic. There’s a lot to unpack, none of it good. The TL;DW is that Strava seems to be trying to euthanize its position as a data broker/aggregator for everyone’s activities by cutting off 3rd party apps at the knees. If they want to pull…
Strava
What Is A Strava Activity?
Every so often I stumble on a Strava activity like the screenshot above, and by stumble on, I really mean someone I know puts it out there in a “WHOA! LOOK AT WHAT THIS PERSON DID!” kinda way. I get it, that’s part of Strava’s function; to get recognition for the cool fitness related stuff that we do. I also understand that like every other social media platforms, truth only gets in…
Strava Year In Sport, Paywalled
I totally get that Strava really wants people to pay, and I think that if you get value consistent with the price, $80/year, that’s great. You should totally do that. What I don’t get is how they consistently take things that used to be part of the “free” offering, and push them behind the paywall. They did it with segments, and now it’s Year In Sport.…
You’re just embarrassing yourself now, Strava
Please, just, stop, Strava. Those things you’re claiming that you can do with relative heart rate data, are exactly what you can’t do with relative heart rate data, and exactly why power meters exist. Heart rate is a great way to know how your body is doing on a given day (i.e. am I dehydrated, tired, under/over caffeinated, etc.), but you simply cannot use it to compare efforts for that reason. Too…
Cycling Utilities: VeloViewer
Veloviewer is one of my favorite cycling utilities, but it totally should not exist because it’s just a layer on top of Strava data, that fixes the limitations of Strava’s incredibly poor search and filtering features.…
Exploiting Strava Flybys Privacy Hole
I think Strava’s knee-jerk reaction to random guy’s freakout over Flybys is wrong given what Strava is, but that doesn’t mean I can’t also point out that they seem to have missed the bus around solving the thing they claimed to address by disabling it by default. …
Strava Improves Virtual Segments By Euthanizing Them
There’s really only one Zwift/Strava segment that I care about, so this doesn’t impact me personally, but I do have to wonder why Strava cares so much about the segments for Zwift that they felt the need to only allow one authoritative source. How is this different from the real world were the more popular pop to the top, and the less end up at the bottom of the list? Don’t they…
It’s not just you. Strava is borked.
You would think that somewhere in their vast pool of employee talent, Strava would have at least one person who understand how to keep the service up and working correctly. But, that’s clearly not the case even though their “am I up” page is reporting “all-good”. Hmm… Update: Strava is back online.…
Strava Segments are Broken
Last week I was early to a ride, so I decided to do some laps around the the parking lot, figuring it would make a neat Strava segment that I could KOM for a day. When my friend arrived, he saw what I was doing and decided to do the same, which naturally destroyed my chances for the KOM. Even staring defeat in the face, I still went ahead and created the…
Not cool Strava, not cool at all…
I’m not sure when it happened, but Strava has silently changed the amount they plan to charge me come December from the $23.99 I agreed to auto-pay, to the $59.99 they are now charging for Live Segments + a bunch of rubbish. Legally they are allowed to do this sort of thing, but it’s still shifty AF to change the price by 2.5x and not the automatic opt-in. Clearly they have the…