Single speed as a bike type

[Padge]

As a rider of a single speed bike (not a fixie but with a free wheel hub), I'd like to see that as a separate bike type. I go riding with friends on their standard geared road bikes bikes and keep up with them for the most part. I would think that my ride effort deserves to be assessed and separated out from those with gears to make their ride less strenuous. 

[eric]

For separate awards too, or just as a noted designation like they have "gravel" and "mountain bike". Personally I think a designation would make sense, but wouldn't necessarily want to see awards broken out. (I've seen a lot of kom's taken by SS's too)

[Padge]

I agree, that separate KOMs or similar wouldn't make sense. I'm not suggesting that, but it is just that, if they are going to have e-bike as a category, possibly suggesting the boost by the battery needs to be taken into consideration, then I think going the other way, a single speed bike ride needs to be recognised. How many times have you seen a single speed rider tackling a hill and you think, "I wouldn't do that!"? There is a difference riding a single speed so I think it needs a separate category. It would be interesting to see through research how much extra effort goes into riding a single speed and how that affects power estimates.

[eric]

I 100% agree, SS riders impress me more than any other when I see them on MTB trails. And I think there's something in the personality of most SS riders, they're not doing it for awards anyway 😂

[Smashley134]

Along with that, I would love to be able to compare the same segment on different bikes. I have 2 MTBs, one is XC, one is all trail. The trail one is heavier and I'm always slower, but I tend to use it as a training tool to get faster on my XC. I would like to be able to see my times on a segment and compare to only the times when I rode Bike A so I can see if I'm getting faster on Bike A. Right now that's difficult, as I'm never going to be setting PRs on that heavier bike so I can't really judge if I'm getting faster on that specific bike as all my segment PRs are set with Bike B (I hope that rambling made sense....). 

[Beard-on-fixie]

Some may think it’s pretentious but I like the idea and can relate as I frequently ride fixed gear on the road and single-speed on trails and feel the effort never looks quite as impressive once you save the ride. It’s only revealed that you rode fixed gear if you mention it somewhere such as in the title or description which makes it sound pretentious (and it probably is). For me, so it doesn’t come across as pretentious, I only mention ‘fixed gear’ in my bikes description which is hidden from the main feed.

The type of ride can be defined more than just workouts, races or commutes — usually it’s none of them. These details still don’t give you the complete picture of the type of ride. To me, the type of bike, or it’s drivetrain, that you did the ride on is more interesting and can say a lot about the type of ride you did.

I have often thought about how something like this could be implemented for rides and for all kinds of riders. To make it flexible, it would be good if there was an optional classification tag associated with your bike. This is where you could select multiple tags to give your bike a short custom classification like ‘single-speed’, ‘gravel’, ‘fixed gear’, ‘12-speed’, ‘unicycle’ etc or select multiple, e.g. ‘single-speed, gravel’, and this is what gets displayed on the feed if you choose to. It would give the feed, and your ride, some extra flare.

“Oh, you just completed a ride with 8,000m of climbing like 20 others on the feed. Wait, on a fixie?! You’re a fool but have my extra special kudos.”

Additionally, a lot of the the riders I follow usually put their bikes nickname, e.g. ‘Barry’,  in the bike description instead of the make, model or other details. While, yes, the rider could have added the type of bike to the bikes description, the optional classification tags would help to define what ‘Barry’ is if they wished to share that information. What kind of bike is ‘Barry’? Well it’s a [Single-speed, enduro].

[velocipederider]

As someone who spends the majority of my time here on unicycles or a penny farthing, I am all for this! 😉

[EAIゴジラ]

I also want this feature but meanwhile want to approximate the caloric difference by adding a percentage to the bicycle weight. Any suggestions? 20%?

[maaz]

I would like to see a single speed bike like that as a separate bike type. I keep up with my friends on their standard geared road bikes when I ride with them. I believe that my ride effort should be separated from those with gears to make their ride less strenuous.

[Padge]

So, Strava Engineers, do you agree, is it a goer, it's in, we'll see this feature in the next update?? 😇🙏

[ChrisBerry]

I ride the majority of my miles on fixed gear road bikes and I think it would be great to be able to identify my rides as something different from a typical road ride on a geared bike. 

[lovely02]

As somebody who invests most of my energy here on unicycles or a penny farthing, I'm in support of this!

[eh]

Will Strava add single-speed mountain biking as an activity type? Landing on segment leader boards while riding SS seems noteworthy. As far as the Strava aesthetic it seems odd to offer e-bikes before SS. It should be said, I only have love for the entire cycling crowd, but at least allow a SS'er to flex by offering some sort of designation that lets everyone know how BA we are. Anyway, it would be great to offer, and I'm sure others have had the same thought. Thanks.

[Jane]

Hello.

We wanted to let you know that your idea submission from August of 2022 will be archived. While this idea is interesting, we don’t have any immediate plans to implement this and currently aren’t able to prioritize this idea.

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.