I’ve been a loyal user of strava for years. But I’ve been thinking recently of dumping my premium subscription. Why?
Well, in all honesty, it just no longer fits my use requirements. I’ve never really used the segments, other than beating my own times. I’m not interested in bragging rights or KOMS. One of strava’s issues is that there will always people out there who will game the system to get the bragging rights. The leaderboard is knackered due to this.
Garmin recently brought segments to many GPS units. I used to use it, but due to a bug with the garmin firmware and the inability to set a default target it fell out of favour.
So what else is out there? Well, there are a few logging sites. None of them have the same pull as strava, but my current usage is Training Peaks and Ridewithgps.com.
Training peaks is arguably the grand father of them all. With no limits to the way you can view data, and the sheer amount you can do, it is the greatest at seeing your performance improve. But it can be a massive data overload.
Ridewithgps is simple, but powerful. With support for ride tagging, gear management and maintenance logs. It’s recently started to gear itself more toward clubs, but it’s still a great choice for lone riders who arnt looking for a social aspect, although it does offer that, but so far has failed to pick up the type of following strava enjoys.
And that’s what strava has going, the social aspect. It’s simply unmatched in that regard. And that’s why I’ll continue to keep a strava account, but not a premium. It just has no benefit for me.
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