cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
JustinJones
Shkhara
Status: Archived

Given that riding in a group or on a TT bike artificially enhances performance, why doesn't Strava separate those riding in a group into their own category for segments (it already knows when you have ridden with someone else) so that it's more of a level playing field for those riding solo and, in a similar vein, give those on a TT bikes their own category to select...like eBikes? Riders in a group or on a TT bike end up holding a pace at least 20% above their performance on a normal bike, or when riding solo...it doesn't enable performance comparisons against themselves (what's the point in having a PR on a segment if you did it as part of a five-man chaingang or on a TT bike?) or against other riders. 

24 Comments
Jeter
Mt. Kenya

Many of my personal bests come on group rides. Riding those same routes solo, however, I don't even come close to them. It would be nice to select the kind of ride you're doing for that day (solo vs group), and perhaps have a separate set of statistics for each type of ride. That way my personal bests on a group ride aren't jumbled together with my personal bests on a solo ride. This is also important for overall leaderboards, which do show the fastest riders, but don't show whether they were aided by being in a group ride.  

Thanks for your consideration. 

Jeter
Mt. Kenya

Group ride times are much faster than solo ride times. Yet there is no way to tell if a Leaderboard time was accomplished on a group or solo. The Leaderboard then can be very deceiving, mixing fast times accomplished on group rides with slower times done solo. 

A 'Ride Type' indicator would be nice feature, allowing the cyclist to select which type of ride they took that day, group or solo. The Leaderboard could also have a toggle allowing users to switch between group ride personal bests and solo ride personal bests. This would remove the inaccuracy of combining all ride times, whether group and solo, onto one Leaderboard.

paulo67
Mt. Kenya

I'd like to suggest that road bike activities differentiate between solo rides and group rides.  This is important when it comes to Leaderboards and KOMs.  A solo rider simply cannot compete with individuals posting numbers when they were riding in group running a paceline.  It's understating the work and accomplishment of a solo rider capturing the #1 position on a leaderboard - or setting a new KOM - only to lose it to another athlete that is riding that same segment in the slipstream of a club group or race peloton (i.e., it's not an apples-to-apples comparison if a KOM is set by an athlete sheltered from headwind).

I personally would like to track my data that way as well.  I would benefit, and I think the entire cycling community using Strava would benefit from tracking Solo data and Group ride data separately.

anchskier
Denali

This has been discussed in a few different threads here.  There are a few problems with this idea.  The biggest is that there is just no way to accurately determine if a rider is solo or as part of a group.  The GPS accuracy is not nearly good enough to determine this by itself.  Strava's algorithm for whether you rode "with" someone is terrible for something like this.  How would you ever know if there were others riding with someone who didn't record their ride in Strava in the first place, so no way to see if there were others riding?  What if someone was only slightly ahead of the group hammering a segment solo, but the others were just seconds behind them, not helping in any way, but still part of the "group" for most of the ride?  The other big problem is even if you could determine solo vs. group from here on out with some new feature, you would never be able to go back and apply that to the 10+ years of historical data.  

paulo67
Mt. Kenya

I hear you anchskier and thanks for commenting!  A couple of follow-up thoughts on it though.  I agree that it may be hard to determine if someone is riding solo or in a group but, in my experience with the flyby function, that GPS data is pretty darn good.  I use flyby to review group rides and crit races and in the final 50m sprints, I can still see that I'm losing by 3 feet 🙂 

Otherwise, I think the honor system has it's place - not any different than trusting someone to log their eBike rides as an eBike activity.  Using the honor system, someone hammering the front of a group ride could subjectively, and guided by his/her own character, mark it as a solo ride as they see fit.  I think the overall value of making the distinction would outweigh the scenarios that may make such a function difficult or carry with it a few inconsistencies.

Lastly - yes...fully acknowledge that if such a distinction could be made and determined to be in the best interests of the Strava community, it would be a hard cut over in your data set.

anchskier
Denali

Keep in mind that a vast majority of riders don't even bother to identify what bike they are using, yet you would be asking that all users identify whether it was a solo or group ride.  Another issue is that what if some part of a ride was solo while others parts were as a group?  I often go riding solo and then either incedentally or intentionally join a group for a portion of the ride.  I may hammer a segment or two solo and then be riding in a pace line with the group later.  I think there are just far too many reasons that trying to separate them would not be practical.  

susuncorda
Mt. Kenya

In cycling, we all know the HUGE difference between riding alone or in a group (relays), not to mention the difference between riding alone and racing in a big peloton pack.

So it is very demotivating and complete nonsense that a single rider's effort comes out in the same classification as races (sometimes professional) and relay group efforts. 

Because it is obviously unfair and it is impossible to fight such an unequal battle.
If something is impossible, it cannot be a challenge or motivation for us.

Being that the segments are one of the premium features that Strava relies on to get people to subscribe, I don't understand how after years of asking for this separation of classifications they still refuse to do it.

I'm sure it's not technically difficult to implement, given that it's been detecting group activity for years.
Even we users could mark or place a tag on these activities, since we all see that in a classification several riders appear on the same day and at the same time, almost in the same segment time, evidently it has been a group.

Jan_Mantau
Denali

That was many times discussed here and it always led to nothing because:

-Solo ride doesn't mean you rode alone (not everyone records on Strava)

-Group ride doesn't mean you had an advantage on a segment because it can be that you were front or the others were to far before you

- There are other issues with it like crosswinds negating slipstreams, older rides would be favored because of fewer Strava members then and solo rides can have the same advantage as group rides due to tail winds or motorized vehicles before the rider

Status changed to: Archived
Jane
Moderator Moderator
Moderator

Hello.

We wanted to let you know that your idea submission from August, 2022 regarding separate categories for groups and TT bikes has received little support from the Community, and will not be added to our Product Roadmap in the foreseeable future.  The idea submission will be archived.  

Please note that your feedback is valuable to Strava. As stated in our Community Idea Guidelines, we receive many idea submissions each week, and realistically, there may be various reasons that prevent us from including an idea on our Product Roadmap.  

We want to thank you for taking the time to submit your idea and we look forward to your continued contributions to the Strava Community.  


Jane (she/her)
STRAVA | Community Hub Team