Minimum Segment Length.... on Zwift (and other virtual cycling platforms)

[eschlange]

Strava recently increased their minimum segment length to 500 meters, from the 300 meter mark where it's been for several  years.

As the person maintaining the library of Strava segments for Zwift, I find this new requirement to be overly restrictive. 300 meters was already too long, in fact. 500 meters is just silly.

Most Zwift sprints are too short to be made into Strava segments, and certain sections of the Alpe du Zwift climb are also too short.

I understand that Strava engineers are concerned with the inconsistent recording of GPS coordinates on various devices, but this isn't an issue on virtual platforms where coordinates are consistently written to your fit file data. (Zwift records every 1s, for example.)

For that reason alone, shorter segments should be allowed on virtual platforms, since accuracy is ensured across all users.

There are quite a few other reasons why I believe the 500-meter requirement is silly, and I've detailed those in this post: https://zwiftinsider.com/strava-minimum-segment-length/

I do hope Strava will reconsider this new limit.

[StravaBlows]

Hi Eric,

One year later. Have you received any response from Strava?

[sockswithcrocs]

agreed, this new requirement makes a ton of great segments in my (hilly) area totally un-createable. We'll use a different app. 

[danosaur]

I agree that this is nuts. So many climbs are much shorter than 500m! I moved to a new area with a very steep fire road climb that is probably only 250 meters but 12% grade, and I can't make a segment out of it! What's the point!?

[Klinge]

Hi, yes this short segment is wierd.  what is the best alternative to Strava for MTB rideing ?

[StravaBlows]

Strava is becoming more unusable and irrelevant. I use Golden Cheetah for power analysis and ride logging.

300m was bad enough for sprinters creating segments. 500m is a time trial.

Add to Strava's stupid allowance of any moron declaring a segment hazardous thus eliminating KOMs. People who think things are hazardous should stay inside and play video games covered in bubble wrap.

[rppenner]

Couldn’t agree more with this post .

[TeeeTw0]

Couldn't agree more - there are also so many MTB trails that are 300m or shorter.

[Malcb]

I understand the increase for MTB although it is frustrating but there are so many GPS issues, 2 seconds for 200 metres… it would help is Strava had better (or some) AI on the system, for something that they market as key it is woeful compared to what it could be.

For virtual races the limitation makes no sense and they should be looking to exploit the feature.

Everything backwards as usual with Strava!

[Pete_Y]

I've managed to get one on that is 400 metres today, but it was longer than I wanted as was trying to record for hill reps and just wanted the ascent, but it is making me record the descent  as well as the ascent wasn't long enough, bit of a pain!!