August Competition Winners

We sent this information out in an email newsletter over the Labor Day Weekend. If you didn’t get the newsletter and you have agreed to our Terms and Conditions it may be that our newsletter has ended up in your spam folder.

Hi Team Strava,

But, we have more members to recognize. Below are the 66 members with 10 categorized climbs or more during the competition. Winners– you will each get a Strava t-shirt. Just email your color and size choice (see below) along with your mailing address to support@strava.com.

East meets West and East looks strong!

Happy Labor Day Weekend! There is something exciting going on out on the roads right now. One of Strava’s East Coast members is on a tear on the West Coast doing such things as taking multiple KOM’s on a single ride (see http://www.strava.com/rides/32509 for example). For those of you familiar with the climb on Old La Honda, you will see that yesterday this Strava member took close to 3 minutes (that’s right, minutes) off the previous Strava KOM climb record. Will the West Coast members rise to the challenge? Tune into strava.com to find out.

Release Notes – Sprint 7

We pushed new code early on Wednesday 9/2/09. Here is a summary of new features. If you have any questions or want to drop us some feedback (we love feedback) just email us: support@strava.com

Self Registration

If you have logged into Strava since our push you will see an all-new landing page. Gone is that black screen where you could leave an email address if you were not a beta member already. In its place is a fresh page describing a bit of what Strava is all about and a form for self-registration to join the Strava beta. That’s right, folks! No longer do you have to email support@strava requesting beta accounts for your riding buddies. Now you can just tell them to go to www.strava.com and they can sign up right there. We are still in beta, just a more public one now. Go ahead; tell all 800 of your Facebook Friends and Twitter Followers about Strava. We’re ready to welcome them to Strava.

You can skip the login step each time you go to Strava if, at login, you check the box to have Strava keep you logged in the next time you return. This works through a cookie we drop on the computer you are using. If you later go to strava.com on a different computer, or if you click on the ‘Log Out’ link, you will have to log in again.

Sharing

We tweaked the sharing capabilities for any ride page, yours as well as other members’ ride pages. You will find buttons to put your ride up on Twitter or Facebook or send an email with a message including the url for the ride on the top right of the ride page, above the RideDetails section. This sends a link that anyone can click on, member or non-member, to see the ride page you want to share.

New Athlete Rides Page and Search

On any member’s athlete page (‘home’ is your athlete page, for example) you have always seen totals for miles, hours and number of rides in the AthleteStats section. With this new push, these totals are active links. Clicking on any of the totals brings you to the new athlete rides page. There you will see all rides of that athlete, 20 on a screen. Though it is a first-pass and is still a bit rough, this is a new quick way to see all the rides you or someone else has logged on Strava. The default ordering is based on ride name from A to Z but you can use the pull-down tab on the right side to order all of an athlete’s rides based on distance or calendar date. There are also filters on the left to help you narrow your search based on type of ride (road, MTB, commute, etc.). Choose one or more filters, or remove filters previously chosen, and then click on the magnifying glass icon to apply the filter settings and re-run the search. You can also do text searches on the names of rides by entering the text in the box next to the ‘Name’ filter and then clicking on the ‘Name’ link to make it a ‘Current Filter.’

Naming Climb Segment Start & End Points

Owners of climbs can now add a description of where the climb starts and ends by clicking the ‘edit’ link to the right of the ClimbDetails header on the right of the screen. By annotating climbs you find with specific start and end points (e.g. “climb starts at stop sign after Cliff St”), others will know where to start their effort. Naming start and end points of a climb can be done on either the ride segment page containing the climb (e.g. http://www.strava.com/rides/xxx/segments/yyy) or the segments page itself (e.g. http://www.strava.com/segments/xxx).

That’s it for now. More new features are on their way soon, now that the infrastructure is in place to support them. In the meantime…Get out and ride! Then live it again on Strava.

Tackling 'The Race Across the Sky'

Happy September All!

Strava was well represented at the Leadville Trail 100 MTB on August 15, 2009 with five members completing the race. What follows is the account of Craig Dalton’s ‘race across the sky.’ Leadville Trail is something of a legend for both runners (yes, a 100 mile running race two weeks after the bike race) and mountain bikers. The course of 100 miles is within the beautiful, high altitude mountains and valleys of Leadville, Colorado. The race is an out-and-back course– 50 miles out to the highest point on the course, the Columbine Mine Aid Station at 12,600 feet on a 6 mile HC climb. The majority is on back-country dirt roads with some short sections of paved road. What makes the race especially challenging is that the entire course is above 9,000 ft. Thanks, Craig, for the post and congratulations to all Strava members who completed the Leadville Trail 100 MTB this year.

Late last year I decided to throw my hat in the lottery for the Leadville Trail 100 MTB race. By no means am I a natural born climber, but I had a few friends who were entering and I was looking for a new challenge after having completed TransRockies last year with Mark Manning. When it turned out I won a lottery slot, I was filled with many emotions (excitement and terror both being high on the list). With a 100 mile MTB race with 14,000 ft of climbing (starting at 10,200 ft) in front of me, I knew I was going to have to pour on the miles and vert!

My strategy was simply. Progressively add more and more distance and climbing each week (with some rest in between). Back in the day rockin’ the Avocet Vertex, I used to say Altimeters and Mileage were the only way to really calculate and compare MTB rides. Now, thanks to my trusty Garmin 305 and Strava, I’ve been able to take that to the next level.  By tracking my stats week after week, not only was I able to monitor my training mileage/vert, I was able to specifically monitor my performance. I gained confidence as both the sensations in my body and the stats on the screen were showing improvement.

As my Strava log will attest, I think I road virtually every trail between SF and Tamarancho.   With great support from my riding partners (shout out to Mark Manning and David Belden), I was able to log massive Saturday rides.    I really enjoyed racking up the miles and seeing so many of the great trails Marin has to offer. I wanted to make sure to do the Bay Area proud when I hit Leadville!

I won’t go into too much detail about the race. It was made very difficult by a few hours of cold early morning rain, but it was one hell of an experience. The Leadville course truly earns its ‘Race Across the Sky’ name on the way up to 12,500 feet on Columbine. It was a trip to see Lance Armstrong and Dave Weins (I’ve been a fan since his Diamond Back days) hauling butt down Columbine as I was climbing up.   With some great support from my wife, Mary, I knocked out the course in 10:39 and received the coveted Leadville 100 Belt Buckle!

Big thanks to the Strava team for all the support. I would never have been comfortable tackling Leadville or TR had it not been for all the stats telling me I ‘should be’ ready to race!  Keep up the great work.

A happy Craig at the finish

Craig Dalton

(www.changeyourshorts.com)

Here is Craig’s ride: http://www.strava.com/rides/10709