New segment type Top speed based on GPS data

[Jeffersoooooon]

Hello everyone

To end our club ride every week, we finish/sprint in a 300m segment. Known problem is that the average speed is sometimes higher than the max speed for some rides due to GPS accurancy, so that not the fastest rider that day gets the fastest time on the segment (or even the KOM).

So i was thinking that Strava could introduce different types of segments. All current segments are in fact average speed (= best time on segment) segments. But for sprint segements, all what matters is the topspeed. So the leaderboard on sprint segments would be based on the GPS Top speed somewhere during the distance of the segment. 

That would end many discussions about KOM's and faulty average speeds on straightforward 300m segments

[Jane · Accepted solution]

Hi @Jeffersoooooon 

Thanks for your post. As @Jan_Mantau has mentioned, very short fast segments on Strava aren't recommended, because they can give erroneous results, such as average speed being greater than max speed. Max speed is calculated from the maximum speed between two GPS coordinates. If GPS inaccuracies occur with some of your data (which, to a certain extent, is always the case), max speed can be inflated accordingly, and wouldn't be a reliable point of comparison. 

The best solution is to look for longer segments that are going to give more reliable results for average speed. I suggest taking a look at this article for information on which types of segments give the best results on Strava.

[Jan_Mantau]

Usually the top speeds based on GPS are more faulty then the average speed because of the very short measuring time so we wouldn't win anything with this approach. When a 300 m segment (a distance that isn't supported anymore for new segments) gives too often faulty average speeds maybe that is because the segment creator had some GPS abbreviations in his activity and the start or end of the segment aren't really on the road.