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I’d love if you’d split the sport of Nordic Ski into the sports of Skate Skiing and Classic. They are very different sports and many people do both based on varying conditions. Thanks!
For cross country skiing there is a pretty substantial speed difference between skate skiing and classic skiing. It would be nice to have a tag option to label which type of ski a activity is, then a way to filter the leader board by which type of skiing was used for the segment attempt.
If enough people are logging nordic ski on strava, this could make sense. In general, skating is definitely faster than classic.
Some things to think about...
Separate leaderboards are not kept for road bikes and MTB. Rather, any bike can ride any segment but the most appropriate bike type will probably be the fastest. In that sense, an argument could be made that separate leaderboards should not be kept for skate vs. classic. Most likely, skate skiers will hold the top times for ALL courses that accommodate skating. At the same time, a huge percentage of all XC ski trails are not groomed for skating, so there will naturally be a lot of segments that are held by classic skiers. (So this would be reason to NOT have separate categories)
To argue against that point, I do think there is a fundamental difference between skating and classic that makes it a different case than say, road bike vs. mountain bike. Road bike vs. MTB is a difference in equipment AND skills/technique. Skate vs. classic is a difference in equipment and technique, but ALSO a significant difference in biomechanics. Different muscles are used in different ways, whereas road and MTB generally use the same muscles in similar ways. (So this would be reason TO have separate categories)
To further muddy the waters, we could then compare to swim strokes. If we follow the above logic to breakout separate categories for skate vs. classic, we would then be setting a precedent for swim categories such as freestyle, backstroke, and butterfly, which also have significant biomechanical differences.
So that brings me back full circle to the top of my post: user demand. For me, it seems the clinching factor would be whether enough nordic skiers are using strava and whether they want this.
@eric The muddy water is why I'd think it should be a flag that can be applied, so that a user could filter by technique, but it would all still be part of a single leader board. Think something similar to filtering by age/ weight. This would allow seeing for instance, just the fast classic times, but by default people could see everything.
I've traveled a fair bit for XC skiing, and found classic only trails to be a rare treat rather than a common occurrence. So for the vast majority of groomed trails, allowing segments to filter, like they do for MTB, isn't really as valid. I will certainly take your point for swimming though.
As for separate leader boards, while biking has one set of unified segments, trail running on the other hand is all broken out (in a way that I don't personally love). In addition to using "Run" there are also activity types for "Hike" and "Walk" and if you are looking at sufficiently hilly trail running, different people will randomly decide which to use, and they all end up in separate leader boards.
I can't speak for exactly how many people use XC skiing on strava, but I think there's a fair few in Scandinavia and I imagine strava has all the data they need to determine if its worth their time.
@cburnham15 I like your idea of tag and filter, rather than a whole new category. Thumbs up from me.
FYI - All the legit trail runners I know, including myself, will always select run, not hike. I don't think most trail runners derive glory from the hike and walk leaderboards 😆
Nordic ski is great for Strava segment functionality. However, without the split into classic and skate it doesn't make too much sense as these are completely different categories in a same way as MTB and Road cycling.
Every few years I join the chorus on this one. There are very different sports and are not comparable in the way strava thinks it is. Maybe strava could hire someone who xc skis.
Please do split them, it’s a big difference in both technique and speed such that classic skiers will never be able to hold records on courses with skate skiers.
One more thing about this. If I want to compare my own efforts, I can’t distinguish between skate and classic. So if I’m using some of strava’s subscriber tools, they aren’t available when it comes to Nordic. Say I’m doing long intervals. I’d like to compare classic today with classic over time on the same segment. But I can’t. Maybe that was a slow skate day. I wouldn’t know. Please hire a xc skier or consult with one on your team. This is so long overdue. And when you do it, a bulk edit tool would go a long way to switching all Nordics into one or the other. Just search, click all, and change sport. Thank you.
