Sounds great, right?
Well Strava in logging your efforts, it records and ranks your times and speed. People are also free to create segments within their ride,which enables them to track and compare their performances with other cyclists over a given segment of their ride, and topping the performance charts (known as a KOM - king of mountain) is highly sought. The Strava website, is also a little bit facebook-esque, and your efforts are shared with your cycling mates, and many a thumbs up is given for logging a new personal best, or even better, racking up a KOM.
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| Screengrab from Strava website post ride |
Between the competitive nature of humans, the enthusiasm to improve and the slaps on the back from your friends, people often strive to best previous efforts on Strava. For many it becomes a surrogate race. It did for me.
The problem being the traffic and the conditions on a typical commute don't tend to play ball with your surrogate race, and one can tend to push a bit too hard (perhaps going too fast for the conditions) and run a few risks (taking gaps that are too small, ducking through lights that you should really stop at) trying to rack up that Strava PB. Not good when you are trying to set records AND ride safely.
So my suggestion - put Strava to one side for the daily commute, and don't turn on the bike computer or phone app (or at the very least block the created segments that are unsafe) and instead focus solely on riding safe. Save full on Strava for (weekend) rides under safer conditions. If you want to track your kilometres from commuting, enter them into the Strava website manually. No you don't get the cool little map, nor record your vertical ascent or receive the kudos, but it will make you a safer cyclist.
Hear hear...! These so called 'super commuters'. And yet the QOM record along Bourke St cycleway is over 30km/h! Imagine doing that with the number of pedestrians and cars going along there. I won't pretend to be innocent of chasing records, but I am well aware that my safety is more important than any Strava segment.
ReplyDeleteA lot of segments on my commute are also dependent on traffic lights being green! Any cyclist who thinks going through a red light for a cycling segment than stopping for their own safety needs to have their head read!
Although, just to clarify, I will still be using Strava on my commute to log the km's. It's a challenge in itself to see how many you can do for the month.
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