The Zeros Do Count

When calculating average watts you have to make a decision if you should count those harmless 0 watts when you are not pedaling. With the zeros you get a lower average and it can feel like you are being robbed of a higher average watts number. You might have noticed that Strava’s average watts are consistently lower than the average watts reported by your Garmin unit getting data from a power meter. This is due to the fact that we count the zeros when calculating average watts.

We are considering making a preference setting for whether to include zeros or not in average watts, but in the meantime we count the zeros and here’s why:

One of the reasons we include zeros is to get a better gauge of energy put into a ride. Say you were riding up a mountain with an average watts of 100 watts for one hour, then you roll down the mountain for 1 hour with an average watts of 0 watts (remember this is hypothetical). If you don’t count the zeros you get a ride with an average watts of 100 watts and with a duration of 2 h, giving an energy of 0.2 kWh. If you count the zeros you get an average watts of 50 watts and a duration of 2 h, resulting in an energy of 0.1 kWh (which is the actual energy put into the ride). Again, this subjective and we understand that some want to see the higher “non-zeros” number as this gives an idea of the average output when they are actually working out.

We would love to surface this topic and hear what you have to say. To zero or not to zero? That is the question.

New Navigation for Strava

You will notice some big navigational changes on Strava today. Based on great feedback we received from our customer survey, we’ve started a redesign of Strava, and this is the first round of improvements. This post should help you get oriented to what’s new. If you have questions not answered here, just ask support@strava.com. Let us know what you think of this update and stay tuned for more improvements!

Summary — We’ve restructured the main site navigation into the following categories: Home, Rides and Athletes. Home is where you’ll find all the information and activity related to your account – friends, clubs and events you belong to and your profile. Rides is where you will find all your rides, and other Strava members’ rides, along with segments, efforts and other ride-related information. Athletes is the new location for leaderboards, and the place to search for other athletes on Strava.

Main Navigation — You will see two new main nav links: Rides and Athletes, which we will go into more detail on below. The Events and Leaderboard links have been removed from the main navigation. Events is now located in your Home section, and Leaderboard has been moved to the Athletes section. The Home and Upload main navigation links remain unchanged.

Secondary Navigation — The old secondary navigation bar has gone away. Each main page now has a unique set of secondary links. For example, under Home you now see the navigation links for Dashboard, Friends, Clubs, Events and Profile. Here is a summary of each of these under Home:

The Rides set of pages are new. Here is a summary of what you will find under Rides:

Athletes has the Leaderboard and a new page for Athlete Search where you can find people in Strava based on name and location.

The old secondary nav links not mentioned above can be found as follows:

Turning off Email Feed of Friends’ Activities

Many of you let us know how much you are enjoying following your friends on Strava via the new once-daily digest of your friends’ activities. A few of you want to turn this email off and now you can. Go to Home >> Profile where you can set your preference to receive or not receive the daily digest email on your friends’ achievements. Don’t forget to click “Update” to save your changes.

Strava Group Rides

When you ride with 1 or more other Strava riders, you’ll notice an additional feature on the ride page.  You will see “Also on the ride:”  including list of other riders who joined you for at least part of the ride, along with links to take you to their version of the same ride.  More functionality coming soon…

Top 5 Longest Fastest and Highest Rides And Who Found the Most New Climbs and Created the Most Segments – May 17 -May 23, 2010

Here are the week’s top-5 ride lists from May 17 to May 23, 2010.  The categories are longest ride, longest commute, fastest ride, and biggest climb, most found climbs, and most New Segments.

Longest Rides (Women)

1. May Woo on Monticello Solano Century, Vacaville, CA – 97.9 miles
2. Tina Reid on Cheese Factory Out & Back via Nicasio, San Francisco, CA – 78.9 miles
3. Ashley Drum on 05/22/10 Stanford, CA, Stanford, CA – 75.2 miles
4. Heather McDonald on MC Cheese, San Francisco, CA – 73.2 miles
5. Kathryn Aaker on Alpine Dam + Panoramic, San Francisco, CA – 71.7 miles

Longest Rides (Men)

1. Kley Cardona on SFR 600K 2010, Outbound (SFR Fort Bragg, Mimmick), San Francisco, CA – 214.3 miles
2. Michael Watts on 05/22/10 Novato, CA, Novato, CA – 148.8 miles
3. Stephen Lau on Jelly Belly Fairfield Century, Orinda, CA – 125.2 miles
4. Patrick Herlihy on 05/23/10 Big Basin-Jamison Ck-Zayante, Redwood City, CA – 120.3 miles
5. Dan Vigil on 2010 Tour of California Stage 3, San Francisco, CA – 120.2 miles

Longest Commutes (Women)

1. Sarah Hagstrom on Commute 05/19/10 San Francisco, CA, San Francisco, CA – 15.0 miles
2. Christine Fox on home to china basin and back, San Francisco, CA – 8.6 miles

Longest Commutes (Men)

1. Ammon Skidmore on hippster-esque commute, San Bruno, CA – 69.1 miles
2. Jason Thorpe on Graveyard Bayway to Apple, San Francisco, CA – 55.0 miles
3. Robert Jones on 05/18/10 Dawn of the Dead Bayway, San Francisco, CA – 53.8 miles
4. Christon DeWan on BayWay, San Francisco, CA – 52.7 miles
5. John Murphy on Bayway, San Francisco, CA – 52.2 miles

Fastest Rides (Women)

1. Nicole Marcoe on 05/22/10 Newbury, NH, Newbury, NH – 43.3 miles – 17.6 mph
2. Elle Anderson on Intervals around Thetford, Norwich, VT – 33.0 miles – 15.8 mph
3. Marlene McDonald on commute, Norwich, Unknown State – 7.5 miles – 15.0 mph
4. Bobbi Jo Price on 05/20/10 Pinehurst loop + Skyline to Redwood, Oakland, CA – 26.9 miles – 14.6 mph
5. Julie Deroche on 05/21/10 San Francisco, CA, San Francisco, CA – 39.7 miles – 14.2 mph

Fastest Rides (Men)

1. Angelo DiGiovine on Golden State Circuit Race – P/1/2/3, Rancho Cordova, CA – 31.8 miles – 26.6mph
2. Mark VandenBerghe on 05/19/10 Harvest Moon Crit 30+ Modesto, CA, Modesto, CA – 13.5 miles – 26.4mph
3. carl barkow on 05/22/10 Chiro Crit, Hartland, WI – 20.4 miles – 25.8mph
4. Paul Krebsbach on Enumclaw Crit, Enumclaw, WA – 12.8 miles – 24.8mph
5. Brent Mellen on Sunapee Road Race, Newbury, NH – 44.3 miles – 23.9mph

Most Elevation Gain (Women)

1. Kathryn Aaker on Alpine Dam + Panoramic, San Francisco, CA – 71.7 miles – 5,675.2 feet
2. May Woo on Monticello Solano Century, Vacaville, CA – 97.9 miles – 5,465.2 feet
3. Heather McDonald on MC Cheese, San Francisco, CA – 73.2 miles – 5,306.5 feet
4. Tina Reid on Cheese Factory Out & Back via Nicasio, San Francisco, CA – 78.9 miles – 4,626.6 feet
5. Roxy Canent on 05/22/10 Demo, Los Gatos, CA – 14.3 miles – 4,327.2 feet

Most Elevation Gain (Men)

1. Bo Hebenstreit on 05/22/10 Hamilton Campbell, CA, Campbell, CA – 113.7 miles – 15,655.0 feet
2. Patrick Herlihy on 05/23/10 Big Basin-Jamison Ck-Zayante, Redwood City, CA – 120.3 miles – 12,623.9 feet
3. Jake Bridge on Rapha 2010 East Coast Gentlemen’s Ride, West Cornwall, CT – 118.1 miles – 12,025.6 feet
4. Michael Watts on 05/22/10 Novato, CA, Novato, CA – 148.8 miles – 11,908.1 feet
5. Michael Whitfield on Rapha G’mans Race, East Coast Edition, West Cornwall, CT – 117.2 miles – 10,710.8 feet

Most Found Climbs – Must be named! (Men and women)

1. Eran Mahrer of Scottsdale, AZ, United States – 8 climbs
2. Jared Hudson of San Francisco, CA, United States – 6 climbs
3. Mark Ross of Sydney, NSW, Australia – 5 climbs
4. Bo Hebenstreit of Campbell, CA, United States – 4 climbs
5. matthew willis of Hawkesbury Heights, NSW, Australia – 3 climbs

Most New Segments – (Men and women)

1. Marc Durdin of Hobart, TAS, Australia – 10 segments
2. Christopher Williams of Mission Viejo, CA, United States – 5 segments
3. Bill Stockton of Milford, NJ, United States – 4 segments
4. SCOTTIE WEISS of Radford, VA, United States – 4 segments
5. Kim Flint of Oakland, CA, United States – 4 segments

Strava’s Tour of the Upper Valley

We created an event in the Upper Valley region of New Hampshire and Vermont  named The Tour of the Upper Valley that spanned from April 30th through May 11th.  We had a strong turnout with 12 people completing all 6 stages and another 5 completing at least one stage.  Results are here.

Riders were clearly motivated as most of the all time top 10 ascents of the climbs and efforts over the time trial course were set during the event.

“Events like this open up a new window of racing for me”, Mike Barton, the overall winner, said.  ”It has all of the fun parts of racing without any of the bad.  It’s real racing on the roads I like to ride, when I want to ride.  There is no driving to crowded races, standing in line to register and dealing with the full day commitment to race my bike.  ”It really motivates me.”  Chris Milliman put it succinctly – “It was super fun.”

Along with praise for the event, we also got some great feedback about what we can do to make events like this even better.  We’re already hard at work incorporating many of the ideas.

Thank all who participated and provided feedback.  Strava events will continue to evolve and provide more fun and motivation for all who take part.  We’ll continue to put together events in several areas across the US and Around the world in the coming weeks and months.

If you are in California – make sure to sign up for the Strava Tour of California!  It’s free to join and we have over $3,000 in prizes.  There are prizes for each stage, so you only need to complete as much of the TOC as you care to.  The Strava TOC ends on May 31 – there’s still time…

If you’d like to have Strava put on an event in your area or have questions or suggestions, please email support@strava.com.

Following Riders on Strava Just Got More Fun

Following/follower has quickly become a hit on Strava. It allows members to keep up with other riders’ activities on Strava. In our release today we added email notification: when you follow riders on Strava you will now receive a single, daily email digest of interesting activities uploaded to Strava by the riders you follow. Interesting activities are defined as:

You can click through to activities you are interested in viewing on Strava directly from the email. This is a simple way to stay on top of the highlights of what your friends (and rivals) are doing each day. For now, receiving emails is automatic. We’ll be enhancing the following/follower feature set further in coming releases, including allowing users to control frequency and scope of notifications regarding the riders they follow. You can read more about following/follower on our support site: http://bit.ly/b2sxDh

Inviting your friends to Strava also got easier today. When you click on Invite your Friends, we now give you the option of accessing your Gmail contacts. If there is a match between an email address in your contacts and someone already on Strava we’ll first ask you if you want to follow that rider. In a second screen you can check the email address of your contacts that you want to invite, customize a message and hit “invite”. Coming soon… invite your Facebook contacts.