Add Winter Fat Tire Ride/ Fat Bike as activity type in Cycling Sports

[Solonamtb]

Right now there are a number of Cycle Sports, including “Ride,” “Mountain Bike Ride,” “Gravel Ride,” “E Bike ride,” “E-Mountain Bike Ride,” even “Velomobile ride!” But no Winter Fat Tire Bike ride. 

This is a problem because winter fat tire riding on single track trails is **much** slower than on a Mountain Bike in the summer.  

This feature request is to add “Winter Fat Tire Ride” so people in cold weather climates can effectively track winter rides. 

Without this feature, the app is far less useful for outdoor riding in the winter—we can’t track our progress, see PRs, see how we are doing on leaderboards etc. 

[mtbdudex-MikeR]

I fully support this, fat bike winter riding uses so much more watts that non winter.  It’s a real deal for many of us fat bike riders in the northern areas.  Fatter tires, studded tires , very low tire psi - some down  to 2-3 psi.  
We do this for months at a time.

pictures for proof

a bigger group ride

Here’s me breaking trail thru fresh snow 

this shows the power meter watts vs Strava watts .. there’s another thread on that fiasco 

 

 

 

[TammyLeeMTB]

Yaaas! Please. I’ve been fat biking for 10 years now and using Strava for 9. Would love to see fat biking have its own category. 

[hatchersheri]

Yes please!!!!

[hesteban12]

Sad that this triviality has been open for over a year.   It's really important that it's a different "sport" so personal bests etc. are differentiated from mountain biking when done on the same trails in different seasons.  

[Scout]

Hello and thank you to everyone who has taken the time to add your votes and comments to this request. 

We want to let you know that we do not intend to add more activity/sport types to Strava in the foreseeable future, and this feature suggestion will be moved to a status of not currently planned.

We appreciate and understand this is not the answer you were hoping for. We strive to be as transparent as possible and provide updates to our Community when they become available. 

Please remember that we receive a large number of idea submissions, and even some  popular ideas may not make it to the implementation stage. The number of votes an idea gets is one factor among several that’s considered when our product team develops the roadmap.

For more information, review our Guide to Ideas.

Additionally, a status of not currently planned does not mean this feature suggestion goes away. It will remain open to votes and comments, and may be revisited at some point in the future.

Lastly, we sincerely hope you will continue recording and uploading your activities to Strava. Here is a list of the Sport types that we currently support. It’s always an option to set your activity to sport type “workout” and indicate more specifics in the activity name.

Thanks again for your contributions.

[PatSchneider]

Well that's a shame. This is not asking for a "new" activity, but rather have a different type of ride. You have something called "Velomobile Ride" but it would be too much to add Winter Bike Ride?

Trailorks has it, MapMyRide has it, as one of the most popular sport tracking app I don't understand why you don't have it.

[hesteban12]

Super frustrating that this request wasn't even really reviewed.   The issue is that it's two sports on the same trails but at different seasons.  Why have gravel ride and road ride but not mountain and fat?  It's dumb that I'm having to pay for subscription fees with lack of attention.    Maybe Strava needs a product manager that lives somewhere with seasons.  

[RoadXCGravelFat]

Very disappointed in the response, Scout, to not include the addition of winter/snow fatbike. Winter/snow fatbike is my primary sport 3-5 times a week from December through to March, and, I am not alone who practices this sport. It was a rather unknown and unpracticed sport 15-20 years ago, snow bike riding, so back then when I was practicing it I would have been " understanding" of your response. Fastforward to 2024 with agile project management techniques combined with customer centric product management, we can do a lot of good things to satisfy our product community. Or, we can completely shut them out and encourage them to take their money to competitors, that is always an option I gather.

The suggestion to use the "workout details" is rather unproductive given the premium I am paying annually for Strava; I could do the same using MS Outlook in "notes", or MS Excel and compile my data annually and build graphs, too.

As someone has previously suggested, you should consider outsourcing to a Product Manager all your winter related product backlog features and product management improvement to someone who lives in the other 2/3 of North America where winter/snow is a reality for many cyclists. 

Disappointing, very much so. Hoping you actually read, consider and act upon your user community and SOONER RATHER THAN LATER add winter/snow fatbike. Really, I do. 

[kgkicker]

It doesn't make sense that Strava is putting this on the back burner. It is a minor change that would add significant value for those of us that spend our winters fat biking. Fat biking on snow is significantly different than mountain biking or any other available activity type.

[BruceInOttawa]

Just echoing the frustration of others here. In eastern Ontario fatbike season can last from December to April so a significant chunk of the year. The snow really smooths out some of the rougher trails so even if you are riding the same trail as you would in the summer the ride is a different experience. 

[jharchitect]

Come on Strava!  What is the hold up from adding this?   

[Solonamtb]

How is there a velo type but not a winter fat bike 🤡

[anchskier]

@Solonamtb - I think there is some confusion among a number of people in this thread.  With regards to velomobiles, they are considered an entirely separate sport type.  They are not included under the larger "ride" category, but rather stand along due to them being noticeably different than a traditional bicycle.  They have their own segments and separate leaderboards.  The other types of cycling, such as mountain bike and gravel, are just variations of the traditional bicycle and fall within the same overall "sport" type of "Ride" and all fall into the same leaderboards.  

Some here seem to feel that winter fat biking should be listed as a whole separate sport so that it would have its own set of segments and leaderboards.  This is very problematic for a number of reasons.  First, there is a decade or more of fat biking rides already loaded into Strava as regular "rides" that would not be corrected, meaning if you separated out fat biking as a separate sport, the existing leaderboard would still be littered with fat biking stats.  Second, only a fraction of people actually specify what type of bike they are using in their activity uploads.  Any leaderboard limited to just fat bikes would be missing a ton of legitimate fat biking activities as a result.  

I could see winter fat biking added as a sub-set of the "ride" category, in the same way as mountain and gravel.  This seems like a good way for people to denote their rides and even would allow them to set goals specific to winter fat biking (distance, climbing, etc...).  This woudln't, however, do anything with leaderboards.  They would still be competing with all other bicycles on the same set of leardboards, just like mountain and gravel bikes.

[hesteban12]

I think separate sport is the ask here as many of the segments are the same but the sport is fundamentally different.  Also due to seasonality it would be default sport for several months and ride would be default for rest of year.    I don't think a subset within ride helps that much.   

I don't buy any of the "data quality" arguments above.   If it were a separate sport fat bike times could be carved out and kept long term.   Within "ride" they all fall to the bottom or mix in with slower mountain bikers and kids.   There are few long-term leaders on fat bike within "ride" as they are much slower so mountain bikers quickly overtake them later in the year.   In January-March fat bikers have leaders for "this year" on segments but these all get replaced once the snow melts and the trail dries out.  

We have a separate sport for XC Skiing from running and this is no different.   Running and XC Skiing happen on some of the same trails but we don't expect all of the summertime runners to have their times washed out every winter by much faster XC skiers.  

[SLRD]

Agree with roadxcgravelfat…. Strava is obviously not interested in supporting customers.  

Well, since I live in MT and half my riding season is fat bike riding, I guess I am annoyed enough about this decision to just cancel subscription, which is too bad.