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.

[johndct]

Come on Strava for mountain biking there is no reason why we shouldn't be able to create segments for the main trails at our local spots. I get there needs to be some minimum, but 500m is not it get real. 

[Daz1925]

I sympathise with you as a mountain biker myself many of the trails I ride are shorter than 500mtrs and it's very frustrating that we can't create shorter segments. Quite a few of us like to have a breather or just a chat between named/graded trails (or segments as strava calls them). I can also see where they are coming from with the amount of duplicated segments which have been created on my local trail. Each one of them require processing for times, local legends etc. Ideally Strava would create official segments for these trail centres. Maybe even impose limits on how many segments a person can create per week or month instead of increasing the minimum segment lenght.

[paul_83uk]

Really sad to see no response from Strava on this. With the switch over to eMTB and trying to recreate our local downhill segments is just impossible. So we are forced to record the ride as a normal MTB ride or lose the timed segments. 

Please please revert this Strava! 

[MakeStravaGreat]

Strava this is ridiculous. We used to have shorter segments in the past and they worked fine. Bring them back!!

Here are some new trails near me that would be more than long enough for segments yet due to the 500m limit they cant be made. Why are you making Strava worse? Shouldn't u be making it better?

[DerekJ]

These Community Hub threads seem a total waste of time...  there never seems any proper involvement or discussion from Strava... just a discussion amongst ourselves.  Whilst I'm here (wasting my time) I'll say once again....  make it possible to create shorter segments on off-road rides (including those on emtbs). Otherwise there will be more and more somewhat valueless segments created that have been artificially lengthened to get around the artificial limit. 

[Artyom]

500 m limit sucks. All the trails in my city are under 500 m 🤷‍♂️

[JW2]

On zwift, there is the acropolis sprint (around 450m in length) but it doesnt show up as a segment...

[Norden]

Why can't I create segments shorter than 500 meters for cycling and shorter than 300 meters for running, even though I have a subscription, when I've seen shorter segments on Strava?

For example running segment only 280 meters long: https://www.strava.com/segments/19339033

[Ian]

The minimum length of a cycling Segment was 300m but it was (unfortunately) increased to 500m in about May 2022.  Thankfully Strava did not remove earlier shorter Segments (with numbers below about 31.7 million) and these are still in use.  You may also see Segments shorter than 300m (with numbers below about 14 million) which were created before the 300m limit was applied.  FYI, the shortest cycling Segment I have completed was 45m, with a KOM of 6 seconds !