Are you a Stravasshole? Check the criteria

Strava has come a long way since we wrote this article in 2013 but many of the points still hold true 🙂

Cycling in Vietnam and Strava segments
Cycling in Ha Giang in northern Vietnam in 2014 – the first road bike tour in the region. Rich pickings on the Strava front, particularly since you can create your own segments!

“For a lot of us, cycling and running used to be fairly independent things. We’d train, enjoy the pedalling or running, and if we were serious maybe keep time. But Strava is making our individual efforts very public.

Strava is essentially a social media extension. It provides a platform for runners and cyclists to compete online. With a GPS unit or smartphone, you can upload all your GPS information to Strava and instantly it compares your ride to everyone else who has ridden the same route.

It seems that nowadays, with society’s obsession with social networking, it is impossible to mention cycling or running without KOMs, QOMs (King or Queen of the Mountain), and PR (personal record) being mentioned.

This can be quite uplifting when you ride a ‘segment’ which has only been ridden by old grannies, but it can also be fairly demoralizing after feeling like you were really pushing to come home, obsessively rush to the computer and upload your data to find you placed 193 out of 197!

Every ride segment has a KOM and QOM for the person that has done it fastest. So it seems Strava can bring the best and worst out of riders.

The term ‘Stravasshole’ was coined, as you can imagine, in the US and I am yet to come across it in Australia – please let me know if you’ve met any or even better if you have been called one!

Here are some ways you are a Stravasshole:

• Driving your car along segments with your bike GPS turned on and uploading these super-fast speeds ‘accidently’ (This causes much anger on Strava!)
• Riding a Strava segment because you know there is a very strong tailwind to drive you along.
• Create your own segment which you ‘know’ you will KOM of – most likely your reign will be brief, as another Strava user will ‘spot’ the easy KOM ‘kill’!
• Stravaing in a pace line – Strava is most definitely not a team sport!
• Descending yelling “Strava” to get people out of your way. This is the original action which supposedly created the term – the reaction must be awful, I don’t know if you would get away with that here in Australia!

You never know, if you are riding segments in Texas sometime soon you may come across Lance Armstrong on Strava. He is obviously keen on continuing to compete and it could be the only place left for him to ‘win’.

We all know what sort of a Strava user he would be!”

Strava has gone from strength to strength since we wrote this article and the Ride and Seek Strava Club has become a great way for Rideandseekers around the world to ride together.