Minimum Segment length ?

[Ian]

I noticed that someone recently asked that the minimum length of mountain bike Segments be decreased and the post was quickly archived by an admin on the basis that reverting Strava changes could not be discussed.

I have some sympathy for the poster - I was also somewhat frustrated by the recent increase in minimum length of bike Segments from 300m to 500m.  In my area there has been some good competition over Segments about 400 to 450m in length but such Segments can no longer be created or edited (the change happened as I was working on a new Segment of about 450m - it now finishes closer to a T junction than I would like but editing is no longer possible).

I don't remember seeing any requests from Strava users for such a change in the previous Strava Support forums so I wonder if someone at Strava could give some background to their reasons for making the change and their methodologies for determining minimum Segment lengths for each Activity type ?  Clearly measurement accuracy is a factor on shorter Segments, but even on a 300m bike Segment the accuracy should be within a couple of % which seems OK.

[MakeStravaGreat]

Make it only quality devices are allowed to be added to leaderboards? ive noticed that devices without the satellite option 'All + Multiband' offer average results at best. 

[dswest]

Presumably one could compare accuracy of place--does the GPS vary from the path within some tolerance, but it's very difficult to tell how accurate a particular GPS is without some kind of calibration. I suppose that if I had the time, and the data set, I could create a model that could detect with reasonable certainty if something was accurate (I'm a data scientist by trade) but, unfortunately, I have neither. What I do have is my own N of 1 data set which tells me mine is sometimes quite good and other times horrible (e.g. last week while riding the velodrome in LA when it put me in the LA river for a few laps...it also recorded my speed for my flying 200m at ~half of what it actually was!--there are official timings so the speed is known.

[MakeStravaGreat]

I own a Garmin Epix 2. It has the option of "All+Multiband". This option is extremely accurate. even when riding in places in the middle of nowhere and heaps of tree coverage. 
Mayb each activity should show the type of GPS setting too? 

[dswest]

I've come to the forum specifically to request shorter segments. I was just trying to create a 300m uphill sprint segment. I'm a sprinter and even super short 50m segments are important to track for me--as they are to most sprinters wanting to keep track of starts. Some of our races are only 200m long. We should be able to create short private segments, though public is also probably a desirable thing. As a short distance track sprinter, the 300 to 500 change might be a subscription deal breaker for me--500 is the longest sprint distance I train for...the shortening happened during a time when I was off the bike by Drs orders and I've just discovered the change as some segments I that were there in the past are missing--probably from the "cleanup". I'm very disappointed with Strava on discovering this change.

[Jax]

This discriminates against mountain bikers and shows that strava is definitely catering more to roadies which is super disappointing. MTBers deserve CR/KOM/QOMS too

[gnordli]

It doesn't really matter Strava is dead now.  E-bikes have ruined it.   They don't seem to really care about e-bikes either.    Just like they don't care about segment length for MTBers.    My wife and I won't be renewing our subscriptions this year. 

[TeeeTw0]

It looks like the minimum length for segments was changed which makes it impossible to add segments for a lot of popular mountain biking trails which are often between 300-500m.

I understand there's a challenge with short segments for downhill road cycling (where speed might make GPS tracks more inaccurate), but for mountain biking this really shouldn't be an issue. It looks like the minimum length was shorter at some point since there are a lot of existing segments that are shorter than 500m.

One possible solution would be to have different length limits based on the activity type - could allow shorter ones (ie. >=300 meters) for mountain biking and e-mountain biking. 

[MakeStravaGreat]

Good idea. they need to be minimum 100m tho. Theres soo many good short trails that id love to add. 

[RedGuy13]

I'm mountain bike trail builder, and from my experience in my area, it is hard to make 500+ long trail. Also, when i finish trail, i dont ride it and than create segment. Since GPS frequency is 1Hz, I walk it slowly to create more accurate and more precise trail GPS track.  
I understand Strava to create limit, but for MTB 300meters should be minimum. 

Thanks

[MakeStravaGreat]

100m i say...