I'd like to add that swimming can also be competition/race.  As in what triathlons do.  Why not add "race" to swimming and eliminate the "commute".

Virtual biking can be races or workouts as well but Strava only allows “Commute” for them just like swimming. 

Yep. Same with Rock climbing. It can be a commute, but not a workout! That's absolutely bizarre.

But the devs seem to work on unnecessary bells and whistles, not what people need (I'm a software dev myself BTW, and we respond quickly to questions in our company forum)

I work with multiple teams of devs and they not always respond fast. I understand this in general. But this issue is so illogical and irritating + even in mediocre code/config it should be fixable in a day, I find it hard to believe that Strava Team tolerates it for so long.