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Stuffing it for everyone Part 2
Hi all
An increasingly common question by a number of land managers is if they were to provide new single track how do they ban Strava racers from their tracks?
The ones that yell out Strava like its then a legitimate right to own the track. Not the riders just out for a ride. The problem is far greater than pre Strava days as there have always been fast riders.
This is a becoming a risk and liability concern as many trails have become race track.
Can the offenders be easily found or is there a degree of privacy possible that would prevent this?
Short of getting the genius middle eastern scientists that recently managed to broadcast a fake GPS signal to trick a US UAV drone to think it had entered US controlled airspace and then land the drone at one of their own runways to scramble everyone's Strava times and paths I'm not sure what solutions are available. Note the drone was also on its original flight path illegally entering their airspace.
What are people's thoughts on these Strava users and addressing land managers concerns?
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Strava is killing the sport, or at least ripping out its soul.
What happened to riding with your mates. Even a ride to the pub has turned into a race now just to claim the segment. Even a ride on a shared path like the Fernleigh loop is an adventure now due to idiots trying to do the pedestrian slalom to get from point a to B as quick as humanly possible. I don't see a problem with people riding quick, but Stava really encourages some to push the envelope in the name of moving up the leader board, and your right, some feel a sense of right of way over the trail if they are going for a segment.
Have to say, if you yell strava at me when riding around Glenrock, I won't be pulling over, speeding up or yielding in any way. I won't slow down, but I will only move over when I am ready. If your polite about it, you'll go past like I wasn't there.
I also hate seeing Strava segments advertising trails in the closed south area of Glenrock. Si the strava issue is two fold;
- promotion of riding as close to the limit as possible,
- promotion of non legal trails.
Is there a solution, not that I can see.
I'll admit to being a strava user, but I use it to track how far I have ridden and how infrequently I ride.
Im a Strava user and I have to say I have never nor heard anyone yell out strava. Most segments myself and friends go for are hill climbs. I can certainly see were problems arise with people chasing time on descents. There are benefits of using GPS websites for logging rides, but what to do with land owners is a tough one. With the popularity of Mountain Biking building we will encounter more of these problems.
Im a regular strava user and I can see where your comming from.
Segments can be flagged as dangerous or inappropriate with strava if they pose a risk to riders or the public. Not hard to do, just find the segment and flag, giving a reason. Yes new segments will keep cropping up but if you stay on top of this with strava then there will be nothing for the racers to chase.
But you can mark segments as dangerous. That way, times and KOMS are not recorded.
Unfortunately it requires users being proactive and enforcing this.
I really don't understand having segments on descents and I like Rob's policy of not permitting hot laps to be set up for them. I suspect (erm, hope) the fad will pass with time.
As far as their liability is concerned, I don't think Strava changes much for land managers. So long as the trails are adequately signed, constructed to comply with IMBA guidelines, and "code of the trails" are set out plainly their should be no issue. Mountain biking is after all a risk activity.
This is an imagined problem - bit like parents who think there are pedophiles everywhere.
I have never heard anyone yell out strava to overtake - BUT, i have heard someone say "strava run" who was standing still at the end of kenny's as I went past - not slowly i might add, and i did say g'day as i went too.
maybe there are more wankers in North Sydney yelling out strava, coz its certainly a scene I've never come across in glenrock (thats average 5 hours a week for the last year).
Of the strava KOms I've seen in glenrock, the great majority are mid week for the long segments, for obvious reasons
Maybe I ride slower than you pharmaboy, but this year on each of my rides through glenrock I have had multiple people scream strava. Each time has been on Kenny's.
It has happened on the odd occasion on the road as well.
LOL sammyboy - My mouth is ajar - the arrogance astounds me.
maybe i need to smell the roses more, give me a chance to experience these tossers - untill i think up something extremely witty and deflating to say to them.
Disagree its doin anything bad for the sport though - our group rides often degenerate into high speed efforts for periods - but they dont correspond with strava segments, just any bloody hill!
Char, you have had someone call "Strava" on you. Steven and I called all kind of things to get past you on the Oaks single track while on the Bash ride last year.
Strava or not, there will always be riders out there trying to beat theirs or their mates times. Strava could spread this rivalry across the broader riding community and possibly amplify the problem.
To be honest, this reads like an article from the Tele. I actually find it very hard to believe land managers have mentioned Stava at all.
Cyclists have always challenged themselves and their mates. Strava just increases the size of the community. NobMob had hot laps before Strava existed. Did land managers complain about NobMob?
As for the descending argument, descending is a cycling skill. Downhill MTB is just descending. To say it is not legitimate to record times for descents rules out an entire discipline of cycling.
It's time to stop all the Strava bashing. If you don't like it, don't use it. But stop claiming it's ruining cycling, it's just not.
I tend to agree that it's not an issue in Glenrock, and I've only heard about a handful of strava related incidents elsewhere involving mtbs. The only time I've heard Strava mentioned by a land manager in a negative way has been in regards to roadies smashing out rediculous speeds on shared pathways such as the fernleigh track.
But here's the thing, before strava came into existence people still rode like dickheads. Out of interest, the highest number of incidents reported on the fernleigh track in one month pre-dates strava. 95% involved roadies either not stopping for cars across burwood road, or riding flat-out, two or three abreast. The rest were complaints about groups of parents walking side-by-side with prams ...
Thanks for your comments. They will be useful to report back to them with.
Yes hot laps has been a previous concern. Strava has just magnified the level of concern and as you say increased the size of the community. It may be that the concern and perceived risk is not justified and the actual risk is minimal and can be managed.
I have been asked by land managers how do they ban it? This is why I posted this topic for discussion to get thoughts on if the issue is a non issue and how a manager could address it if they wanted to.
We have had a hard time the last 5 years addressing perceived and actual risk between walkers and riders. Strava racing has fired things up again. But this time from other riders as well as walkers.
Note there is a clear difference between sanctioned race events and Strava. Comments on a public forum that appear to justify Strava racing by comparing it to race events without shared access by other users isn't going to help anyone.
If you have constructive comments for me to report back with please let me know.
Strava or not i have always raced my pb around Manly Dam. Sure it fun cruising around but i was always wanting to better myself, not stay where i was
I dont know why land owners are worried. If they want to be worried about anyone at all they should be worried about the numpties that go out for their first ride or those that are going to dumb down trails because they cant get over the obstacles
My comments re down hill segments were directed mainly to road segments and downhill sections of XC trails that are shared with other users, such as the fire road descent to Curl Curl Creek at Manly Dam, or the fire break section down from Cootamundra Drive where cleaning up a walker is a real risk if you're pinning it.
Of course, proper DH single-use trails are legitimate, and should not be excluded from Strava.
All Strava has done is give people somewhere to show their times online whereas previously it was kept to forums or the end of the ride.
We use to always use the Garmin website to compare times but it just wasnt as easy to break it all down
Italian word for "wanker"......oops me thinks that may upset some people!!!LOL
Another point - is there is nothing whatsoever to do about it.
Strava can be replaced by any other app quite easily - you cant police an app thats run by community and based in the US. Its like whinging about the weather tomorrow.
Besides for lots of us, cycling is sport not a hobby
but it is a non-issue. More a media beat-up than anything else.
The biggest issue with Strava is on the roads in any case. Is the provider of the road at any extra risk of litigation if someone tops themselves on a Strava run as opposed to riding for another purpose? No more than they would be normally.
I see no difference off-road.
The weather comment is on the money. The just need to do what they were going to do to manage risk if strava didn't exist.
The difference on the road is that chances are they come off worse for wear as they are the most exposed and riders already can ride there.
The perceived issue is increasing numbers of 'red mist' riders on shared use tracks and whether the tracks should be opened up to riders.
It's a perceived user conflict/risk issue not about the rider injuring themselves.
... or slow people, or short people, or thin or fat.
Simon I think this is one of those "wrong question" scenarios where you will never be able to give the land manager an answer.
I'd think t would be best to communicate some of the feedback from the thread; i.e. you can mark a Strava segment as dangerous but people can and do use different Strava type apps. You could then look to educate the land manager in the general use of Strava; i.e. people will generally go out to post times in quiet times or will abort a Strava run if they come across other trail users. For me the Strava challenge isn't just man against trail but also finding that perfect time when you are on form, the trail is in perfect condition and you get a dream, clear run.
Sure there's always wankers... but as an advocate for our community please don't allow others to judge the entire community on the actions of a few.
I'm a small sample for sure but I ride Manly Dam on average 5 times a week. Time and day varies depending. I have been doing this for nearly 15 years. Well before it was popular, and right through the rise of MTB.
And in all those rides around The Dam I have only twice encountered somebody whose overriding interest was their lap time. Once, maybe 4 or 5 years ago, the bloke yelled "hot lap" and was all over my back wheel for quite a while (I might have moved out of his way if he'd asked politely) and the other time the idiot actually barged past me on the lead up to the top steps at Wakehurst Parkway (where an elbow took out his lap time) on a Saturday morning!
In every other of the thousands of "other bike" interactions I have had at Manly Dam - the most popular track in Australia and one where everybody and his dog does hot laps - I have had thousands of positive and almost always friendly experiences.
This, for me, is one of the distinguishing features of mountain biking.
Personally, I think your land managers are uninformed and probably are reacting to propaganda
Strava has never been something I have had any interest in and none of my regular riding mates use it.
If we are to gain access to more trails we need to take land manager concerns seriously. At times these are valid and others non issues. As advocates we can inform and make recommendations.
We have already talked to them about sanctioned Strava events with riders setting off at timed intervals like a DH race. This could provide KoM under a controlled environment and provide 'race' events on tracks that couldn't hold a normal race due to site constraints.
The aim would be to use this to get everyone to chill out when trails are shared use.
Sorry for being a bit harsh on some comments. I am a bit sensitive to comments that can be used against us. There are many non riders who follow these forums.
I'd agree with cambo. Only had one guy act like a wanker in six years. Unfortunately, he wasn't within elbow range.
I don't ride teh Dam as often as cambo, but I'm not real quick and have only ever had positive interactions. Sounds like armchair greenie propaganda... what's that silly ex-WMC woman's name again? The usual Fear Uncertainty and Doubt campaign in action again.
The only time I've used "hot lap" as an excuse on a ride was when a walker wanted me to stop and give him directions, which I politely declined. "Sorry I'm on a hot lap, there'll be someone along soon"
Never heard someone yell Strava to overtake for thier hot lap except for a joke on social rides.
Personally i think its a load of crap. Regardless of strava there will always be riders pushing their limits and I call BS on anyone who claims they havent atleast once.
Unless you ride a place regularily or done your research you wouldnt even have a clue where the start and finish is. You get home, upload and think wow, i didnt even know that segment was there. I didnt do to bad considering.
It is not possible to ban strava segments and you cant blame strava.
"Guns don't kill people. It's the person who holds the gun."
Good on you Tim. Chuck I forgot about that Strava call, from memory we were doing less than 30km in a social setting. Maybe on the next bash we should see how many times we can call Strava instead of track?
In organised events what are people calling these days to pass, Track or Strava?
Track? why bother when a simple “move” seems to work well enough, of course this is followed by the optional “f%$# yah”
A friendly race is a slow race, an angry race is much faster… so why be nice about passing as your just wasting a perfect opportunity to lift the average lap times a bit…
Yes indeed, he may get mad, but he will thank you for it later when looking at his awesome segment times on Strava!
Most commonly the call is "rider" and race or not I have no problem with this. It is the courteous way of letting the rider in front know there is a faster rider wishing to pass at the next safest moment.
Yes Strava has made things different but I hardly think it's the scourge of society. I use it a lot and find myself attacking hills that I would have cruised up in the past but that's about it. It doesn't turn me or anyone I know into a raging sociopath although it does motivate people to push themselves a bit more.
As has been mentioned enough times in this thread;
- there have always been and will always be dickheads in this world
- riders have always pushed themselves against some target or another, it used to be the NoBMob hotlaps and now it's strava
- I've never heard 'strava' called in the wild
Strata hasn't changed what people do. Mountain biking is a sport and part of that is competing with other riders either formally or informally. Strava just let's land manager see what us already going on. People riding for fitness or fun with their mates also happen to get faster, stronger and better at riding. When they ride with their mates they will also 'race' up or down a hill. It's called having fun (or unstructured recreation in council speak). Admittedly strava seems to appeal to certain types of personalities (but so did purple anodised components in the mid nineties)
The problem isn't unique to mountain biking. In fact it's probably more of an issue for runners, field sports participants, swimmers and roadies. for swimmers training/comp interactions with the public are managed through providing training times in the early morning, for field sports they are simply granted dedicated access at peak times and the public work around them (you don't expect to play frisbee at your local sporting ground on a saturday morning), for roadies, the authorities seem to take a Darwinian management approach, hoping that playing with traffic will eventually take its course. That leaves runners. They do what they like when they like when they like and the public survives. Given that trail runners often go faster than me round the dam, and have unrestricted access to all walking trails, it seems that a 10-15 km/h speed differential to kids and old people isn't that big of an issue in practice and the similar 'dangers' of MTB are perceived rather than real.
The only place where this might be different are faster downhill sections. Although these tend to be wider and/or single use anyway. And if there are more trails open then riders are spread more thinly so interactions are less likely anyway.
So what's the solution. Options include.
A) ban the wearing of Lycra, spandex, elasticised and mesh based sporting apparel on all public land.
B) ban all competitive or apparently competitive recreational pursuits on public land.
c) designate the 'strava hours' for people to train. Say 6-8 am in the morning (or any other time that suits) during this time you can expect the xc race heros to be out in force. So probably not a great time for nan to take the baby trail running.
D) approve more trails to spread the impacts, usage and likely interaction out over a greater trail distance. (Most of the percieved problem is that there is about 8 km of legal singletrack in northern Sydney for 20,000 + riders and that has to be shared with walkers and runners. Fast guys will do a few laps while mum and the kids are walking the same loop meaning 3+ interactions. Everyone would be better served by 30 km of trails to link up because there would maybe be one interaction before the xc hero disappears off down the trail never to be seen again)
E) designate sections of single use parallel trails
F) turn off the Internet and the problem will also appear to go away.
G) sack the 'risk' guy who just makes up problems to justify his job and employ a proper risk manager who is able to actually manage risks in a reasonable non discriminatory and consistent manner across all users.
F) employing someone to poke a stick through the spokes of anyone who yells 'strava' or 'track' or anything more aggressive than 'passing on your right thanks - when you're ready' when out on the trail.
Of course most of the serious suggestions have already been explained in nobmobs excellent reports on how to best manage mountain biking - they are available at www.nobmob.com/reports. If they started with those suggestions then they might have a better basis for understanding and managing trails for all users. It only took npws two or three years to write a report that said basically what was suggested. They still haven't built or designated anything new. We've given them the answers in the past that they have agreed with but haven't acted on. They seem to now be getting distracted with emerging tangential issues before they've dealt with the principal ones.
Finally I'll disclose that I've never strava, don't race xc and ride dh, dj, am and xc for fun. It would be nice if mountain bikers didn't simply demonise other disciples to dismiss problems because it doesn't get us anywhere with land managers. (Eg. Xc saying dh is the problem. Once land managers decide dh is a no-go and xc is still a problem then it's the xc racers that are the problem. Once land managers act to manage racing saying its strava douchebags that are the problem....)
people like Simon have put a lot of effort into getting results for everyone. It would help if we can be more constructive than simply blaming someone else. It seems that the BTOG's (blame the other guy) on the MTB side of the table are at least as big a problem for trailcare than the NIMBY's that the conservation groups roll out.
Did the land owners even know about Strava? Or bring it up?
I would have thought that trail sharing would be more of an interest.
I have never had anyone yell Strava ever.
I find the most Heros riding are around Narrabeen Lakes - is there a Strava segment there does anyone know?
Most managers I meet are aware of what is going on even of they don't fully understand it.
There are also mountain bikers and cyclists working on the staff for every land manager I have worked with. This is at times a plus and at others a night mare due to some of the finger pointing at other disciplines that others have also mentioned.
It's also all about breaking things down to the key issues. There were many issues where DH was demonized and most DH riders were going WTF did we do? Turned out the issues were:
-Green groups didn't like ratty unapproved structures and jumps ruining the aesthetics of the bush. This was their definition of DH
-Managers were pressured by green groups so tried to get rid of descending trail segments even if part of a wider loop - Their definition of DH, long descending track.
-Managers didn't like fall line trails - Their further definition of DH
-A vocal collection of XC riders pointing fingers at DH to get an easy win since managers and green groups didn't like DH
-People find body armour and full face helmets intimidating
After a number of meetings and stakeholder workshops coordinated and run by TrailCare what we showed is that people don't like unsightly messes and erosion which has nothing to do with what DH should be.
We also showed that most of the 'DH' tracks were advanced XC/AM which is why AM is included as appropriate for NP's in their new policy and strategy. We pushed hard for all natural feature DH with some approved structure for sustainability too.
Also that two pictures of riders on the same bit of track get drastically different responses from the uninformed depending on what safety equipment they are wearing.
The solution as with any riding is sustainable well built tracks and taking off your helmet and saying hello to people.
I have been riding occasionally at a place called Bruce Ridge down in the Canberra suburbs just next to the institute of sport. Anyway for the first few rides I kept stopping and asking everyone I saw if it was a directional track as its all single track and is native bush that varies from light to heavy undergrowth.
Anyway it turns out that you can ride any direction you like. There are strava segments in both directions and its possible to average over 20k on what is pretty twisty singletrack with mainly loose gravel over hardpack surface. Surprisingly I haven't had any head-on accidents although have needed to head straight into the bush on occasions when someone doing 15kph is coming the other way round a corner. There are also Kangaroos (the big ones, not the West Head wallabies), bushwalkers, trail runners and walkers and trail runners with unleashed dogs. None of these obstacles have resulted in an accident.
Suffice to say that my perception of the risk associated with bi-directional single track is worse than the reality. Its true there has been the odd "oh shit" moment but I haven't hit any bikes and I haven't even got close to any walkers or runners. I would suggest you get the Sydney land managers with concerns around Strava to talk to their Canberra counterparts as I doubt there has been any statistical increase in accidents or complaints. I expect they will find that Strava hasn't made a medium use bi-directional multi use trail network any more of a risk than it already was.
And no, I haven't heard anyone call out strava run during a ride.
Yelling anything at me will not help you.A simple on your right or on your left followed by mate and me knoding your call will make it much easyier.
I recall NPWS and AMB Mag both having a go at this site for HotLaps some years ago (long before Strava) as they felt it's racing, even if its just racing the clock. I've noticed on a local trail since Strava came popular, people take the fastest line now, cutting switchbacks, ignoring berms etc. It's quite obvious in the trail wear when you walk it to check out drainage issues. It's inevitable and not much can be done really, it's just a part of life. However, I don't think that if you're having a casual cruisey ride (and it's not race day at Orurimbah) you should have to move over in any great haste cause somebody is basically street racing on a pushbike bike track. Yeah I'll move over, when I'm good and ready, if you don't like it.... well go race at a real race event. I have a Garmin and all that, but there is just no need for me to spout to the universe what time I did on this lap or that track. I certainly see a few more these days who are really pushing themselves trying to get a fast lap in. Good for them... bad for the other local trail users (dog walkers, and runners, and nay kids walking along with them etc) who complain to me about the aholes who appears to be racing, and don't slow down at all when approaching pedestrians. User conflict people, it increases with this sort of stuff. What if the horse riders on Terry Hills started to race each other on Strava? I'm sure a few riders would have a fit almost being galloped on.
That was spot on!