Unified leaderboards and segments for running/walking/hiking

[marcoregalia]

I do a lot of trail running, hiking and mountaineering and realized there are different leaderboards and segments for each type of activity: that creates a lot of confusion when choosing the activity type as this choice will modify the segments available and the position on the leaderboards.

I noticed that in bike sports there is just one leaderboard (and segment category) for all the bike activities (road bike, gavel and mountain bike) and that makes things much simpler.

I suggest to unify leaderboards and segments for all the foot-based activities (run, walk, hike, trail run and climb): this would simplify activity selection and make leaderboards more meaningful and complete.

Thanks

Marco

[Jane]

Hello,

Thanks for submitting your idea. It has been reviewed by our moderation team and is now open to voting.

[zecanard]

It’s a bit tricky, since walk/hike and run/trail run are inherently performed at different speeds. At the same time, it would be very easy to “cheat” the walk/hike leaderboard by jogging here and there (which many hikers do anyway whether or not they care about leaderboards), until eventually anyone seriously competing just starts jogging the whole way.

So merging them all does seem like the best solution.

[Silentvoyager]

I tend to agree with this. In a big scheme there is no difference between walking, hiking, and running. Trail running in particular can easily combine all 3 in a single activity. It makes absolutely no sense to have 3 separate sets of segments that duplicate each other on popular trails. I am not sure about the leaderboards thought. Perhaps leaderboards could be filtered by activity type, but at the same time it would be very easy to cheat and run a walking or hiking segment. So I also see a point why the leaderboards should be combined too. 

[Spyros]

There are different segments for run, walk, hike. An idea is to put them together in the same list.

[drtdogger]

I think this is a great idea and would add that ideally we could track yearly and weekly goals by combining walking/running/hiking. A easy trail run is a hike, where as a easy bike ride is still a bike ride. Honestly for me this creates a weird pressure that I don't feel on the bike. On a bike ride if it's an easy day I just go easy and know I'm still getting in miles and hours and doing what I need to for my training. If I'm doing a "trail run" as marked in Strava there is some pressure to be running when you can, but maybe that day you really should be taking it easier which turns it into a "hike", but Strava tracks hikes and walks totally differently, but for our bodies they are quite similar.