Strava Release Notes- Sprint 6

For the past three months we have been working on a complete rebuild of our underlying data structure to support a series of new features and capabilities for which you’ve been asking. We implemented the new data model last night and reprocessed every ride in the Strava system on the new data model. You may not be able to notice the effects of our upgrade last night right away, but over the coming weeks you will, we are sure. These release notes describe some of the new capabilities included in this release.

Strava Segments

Until this release, Strava processed ride data in such a way that it could identify when you had ridden a categorized climb and match it with previous efforts on the same climb. That allowed us to show you the “KOM” standings for categorized climbs, for example. Many of you have suggested that we expand this concept to more than just categorized climbs. The new data model will allow just that. In the coming weeks you will be able to name and compare your effort on any section of trail or road with a previous effort in our database on the same section.

We call these identified road sections Segments. For example, a Strava Segment could be a section of road where you like to do intervals. With Strava Segments you will not have to manually time yourself over that section of road, Strava will automatically do it for you. Or perhaps you have a short climb that never gets categorized by Strava under the UCI standards, yet it is a well-established battleground among local riders. With Strava Segments, you will soon be able to compare efforts on that uncategorized climb.

Another feature that the new data model will enable is the adjustment of the start and stop positions of climbs. We receive several questions to support@strava.com each week about the start location of climbs. With Strava Segments, members will soon have the ability to control the precise start and stop locations for any Strava Segment—and categorized climbs are Segments too.

Sound cool? Then why can’t you see any of this when you log onto Strava today? Well, you might say that we have built the engine but still have some work to do on the steering wheel and dashboard controls. For now, control over segments is being handled internally at Strava. Over the next several weeks we will be testing the user interface to allow members to control Segments themselves. In the meantime, to test out our new tools, we’ll be cleaning up the current Segment data in the system the best we can. For example, for you Bay Area riders we will finally have one true Kings Mountain climb. If you know of a climb that you’d like us to edit, send us an email at support@strava.com.

As part of reprocessing all ride data in our system, we have also changed the smoothing algorithms we use for altitude and watts to make the numbers we show more accurate. These changes mean that some of you will notice a change in the stats of your past rides. In most cases, the feet of altitude gained is lower now with the new algorithm than what you saw in the past. We feel this new number is more accurate as the old number was an overestimate caused by the way your GPS device tracks very small altitude changes.

Laps

You can now use the lap button on your GPS device to time specific sections and have stats on these laps reported on Strava. In the future, these “laps” can be converted into Strava Segments.

Sharing button

On your ride detail pages, you will now see a “share your ride” button which will allow you to select from a list of social networking sites where you might have an account. Using this share button you can easily get the url for your ride onto your Facebook or Twitter (or one of over 60 other sites and services) pages.  This is implemented through a third-party tool built by addtoany.com. You cannot share the rides of others using this tool. For those of you not on FB/Twitter or any other social networking site or wanting to reach your friends who are not on these sites, emailing the url for your ride will still work.

Ride-type designation appended to ride name

Wherever you see the name of a ride you will now also see one of the following designations. This will help you when you are looking at lists of rides to quickly know their type.

• Road: a ride on a road bike
• MTB: a ride on a mountain bike
• Cross: a ride on a cross bike
• Commute: a commute on any bike

For those of you who have not entered all of your bikes into your profile page on Strava, go ahead and do that and then you can match up rides with the correct bikes. When you change the bike designation, the ride type changes dynamically.

Mile Markers

You will now see mile markers demarking every five miles on ride pages. If a mile marker falls on a climb, the marker also shows up on the climb detail page. Using the mile markers will help orient you as to the direction in which the ride was ridden.

That’s it! Have a look and let us know what you think. As always, we’re happy to get your feedback and suggestions at support@strava.com.

Strava Upgrade-site will be down from 5pm PDT to 9am PDT

We will be implementing an upgrade to Strava tonight. This will require us to bring down the site from 5pm PDT tonight until 9am PDT on Tuesday. You will not be able to access your data or upload rides during this time. Once we are live, we will send out more information on changes you should expect on the site.

Team Strava
Feedin’ the Addiction

Strava Competition for August 15-31

Our August 2009 competition will focus on categorized climbs. One of the unique features of Strava is that when you upload your rides, we automatically identify and categorize climbs using the UCI (International Cycling Union) standards. A climb’s rating is based on its distance in meters times its grade in percent. The magic number for a climb to receive the easiest categorization– Category 4– is 8,000. For example, an 800 meter climb at a 10% grade would just make the cut: 800 x 10=8,000. Longer climbs or steeper climbs receive higher scores.

Here are the specifics on our competition. Rides you do between August 15-31 will count towards the competition but you have until September 3 to log them to Strava. If you log 10 or more climbs of any category you will receive a Strava t-shirt. The member who logs the most climbs will receive a t-shirt and a $50 gift certificate to a local bike shop. Good riding and good luck everybody!

Team Strava
Feedin’ the Addiction

Strava Member Wins Mt Ascutney Hill Climb

We have been seeing some incredible riding logged on strava.com and all that training is translating into strong race results for Strava members. What follows is the account of Brent Mellen’s victory in the Mt. Ascutney Hill Climb on July 18, 2009. For those of you who have not experienced Mt. Ascutney, it is an intense 3.7 mile climb on the mountain road with an average 12% grade. For more information on the Mt Ascutney Hill Climb click here.

It’s Mike and Paul’s fault. They are the ones that had the idea to ride Mt. Ascutney a couple of weeks before the race. Mike, Paul, Ben and I rode down there from Mike’s house and tackled the climb, which I had previously never ridden. It was hard, and I remember laboring in my 39/27, wishing I could spin a lower gear. In the end, I clocked somewhere just over 28 minutes but new I could go much faster if I had lower gearing. Ben came in with just under 28 minutes with similar gearing.

I didn’t really plan on doing the Mt Ascutney Hill Climb on July 18, 2009, but a few things came together the week before it. I wasn’t racing the mountain bike that weekend but was looking for a good intense workout. Jamie Wert let me borrow his his 13.2 lb climbing bike with a 24 tooth single front chainring and 12-27 rear cassette, thumb shifter, and one brake. Now I couldn’t say no – I had the low gearing I wanted and a super light bike.

The morning of the race the weather cooperated. For once this summer it wasn’t raining, though it was still really humid. I was in the second starting wave with the other 30 somethings. My plan was just to ride my own race, focusing on keeping my heart rate around my lactate threshold level, and slowly ramp up as I neared the top.

The gun went off and immediately three of us separated from the group. I found the pace good to start, but eventually it became too easy as I settled in. I turned up the effort a notch and separated from the rest.

The gearing was perfect and allowed me to keep the 90-100 RPM cadence I like. By the second mile marker I realized that my time splits were putting me close to the 26 minute marker, which I thought was the record. I upped the effort and pressed on with the hint of a thought that I might break the record. The flat stretch a few hundred meters before the finish caused me to spin out my gears, but I immediately increased the effort to try and make up a little time once it got steep again. All of a sudden I was at the finish line, I stopped my clock and it read around 26:02. It looked like I had broken the record.

I felt good and wasn’t blown, but I certainly felt like I had just put in a good effort. This is good, because it turns out that the record is really sub 25 minutes, so there is still work to do! Taking another minute plus out of the time will be really hard, but I do think there is room for improvement. At the end of the day I was very satisfied with the 1st place overall and more important to me was that I got to ride the climb at the cadence I wanted and put my best effort in.

Thanks to Jamie for letting me borrow his bike, and to Mike, Paul, and Ben for the initial ride down there that lit the fire for me to do the race.

Hopefully I’ll be writing another one of these next year…

Brent Mellen

http://www.strava.com/rides/7543/segments/15167

Strava rides onto podium at Breck Epic

A huge congratulations to one of our Colorado members, Hank Pool. He and Nick Howell recently placed third in the Men’s Duo division at the Breck Epic, a 6-day ultra-endurance mountain bike stage race held in the backcountry surrounding Breckenridge, Colorado. It looked to be a fabulous event with some tough international competition. Approximately 200 miles of racing… 40,000 feet of vertical… And all at altitude (almost all riding was done above 10,000 feet!)

Here’s Hank’s blog of the adventure: http://team303racing.blogspot.com/ In particular, check out some of the photos. How about those snow fields in July?

And here’s the Strava link to the various stages: http://www.strava.com/athletes/39 Take a look at the HC climb in Stage 5. Ouch!

Hank has some more great racing coming up – He is currently winning the Winter Park MTB series with several races to go. And in September he will be doing the 12hrs of Snowmass with another Strava member, Jordan Kobert.

Lastly, a call out to the Strava Nation – Hank has been trying to get into Leadville for a few years now with no success. Does anyone have a Leadville connection? If so, please email Strava and we will connect you with Hank.

Congratulations once again to Hank – Nice riding!

Team Strava

Feedin’ the Addiction