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Hi everyone,

I'm trying to improve my times on nearby segments using Strava Live Segments, but I’m struggling to get any real value from it in my region.

This might be fine in flat areas or velodromes, but as most of the people, I ride in a 3D world. In my area, it’s impossible to go anywhere without climbing or descending: 150 meters of elevation gain and loss every 10 kilometers is just a normal ride. But the real issue isn't the hills themselves. Live Segments could still be useful on a long, steady climb or descent. The problem is the alternation between flat, climbing, and descending sections, which makes pacing truly important, and the feature almost useless.

What I really want is to pace myself realistically against my own past efforts. I don’t care how others perform on the segment; I just want a real, effort-based comparison with my own ride history. I understand that Strava might not be able to show other’s pacing or strategy data due to intellectual property rights or privacy concerns, and that’s completely fine. But even when I try to "race against myself" on a private segment all I see is the same average-based pacing line, not my actual previous performance.

Am I misunderstanding what Live Segments are for? Is there a setting I’m missing, or is this feature simply not designed for performance-focused riding in varied terrain?

Thanks in advance!

What you describe is something that is only available on bike computers like from Wahoo, Garmin and so on. They compare with your real times of former efforts instead of with average speed. You could create an idea in the ideas section for enabling that in the Strava app. 

As a Garmin user, I can confirm that segment pacing based on past efforts does exist, but in practice, it's inconsistent. Segments often appear at random or not at all, and for weeks I’ve only seen a "Log in to Strava" message instead of nearby segments.

Even when it does work, segments are disabled while navigating which is usually the case, so I mounted my phone on the handlebar with a powerbank to use the Strava app for that, only to discover that the feature I was looking for is just a stub.

Regarding the suggestion to create an idea in the Ideas section, I honestly doubt that the Strava development team is unaware of the current limitations of Segments pacing in the app.
Most likely, there are objective reasons for the minimalistic approach: concerns about safety while riding, battery consumption, or just a straight lack of public interest.

When Strava introduced live segments a decade ago in the Strava app the first complains were that the comparisons were made against the former average speed instead of the actual former time progress. So yes, they know about that practically since ever but an idea to change that can’t hurt, maybe it got completely out of focus.

The Strava live segments in Garmin work well for me (outside of loaded courses of course) but if you encounter bugs maybe the Garmin forums or the following help article can be of use: https://support.strava.com/hc/en-us/articles/216918277-Strava-Live-Segments-on-Garmin-Devices

​@Strivike - whether they know about it or not is one thing, but the advantage to creating it as an “idea” in the forums is that it will give other users like you a place to add their support for the idea and give suggestions for how to refine it to be the most effective.  Consider it like a pothole on your street.  Yes, the road crews may know about it, but not be aware of how important that specific pothole is to get fixed.  If a thousand people speak up saying it needs to be fixed, then they may move it up on the priority list to get addressed.

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