[J.B. Weld]

GPS based segments are estimates at best.
Have you ever done the same ride and had 1000 feet of vertical different from the same ride on another date?
Where did the hill go?

No. I do the same rides all the time and the distances and elevations are always really close, often within a few feet.

 

[trmn8er]

I would suggest looking at the totality of the ride not just segments even if you prefer downhill. Strava will show your Avg Moving Speed. This is a VERY telling data point that will not be skewed by stopping to take a break as long at your not in the middle of a Strava segment. We all like to get PR's, beat our peers and buddies, and many of us are HIGHLY competitive. If you really want to get that PR then attack the segment again. As for moving time, it's not uncommon for me to ride a couple hours with no stops at all so the move ratio is 1.0. Even on these rides you can still nab PR's if you try to be smooth and recover well.

I know a lot of guys who go PR hunting. They will take it easy, warm up, and may target a couple segments or just one to beat their own time and others they follow. When I ride I push myself really hard to improve, and constantly analyze all the data to see where I stack up. Probably the single data point I focus on most is Avg moving speed for a specific area, not individual segments as much. While I have several riding areas on my steady rotation, one venue in particular I may ride 50+ times a year. To get a PR is not easy when you have so much history there. You sound like you are competitive and are looking closely at your performance. Try to look at it more globally over the course of the entire ride. If your AVG Speed is improving over the same course and you want to beat your own performance this will tell you a lot about how you recover and how well you can sustain high speeds over a time frame. not just a little segment.

 

[s0ckeyeus]

it doesn't, exactly. somehow, I think you knew that already.

but what it does is muck up the stopped time/moving time displayed on the device, or on any system that automatically displays whatever the device recorded as stopped/moving/total time instead of recalculating those numbers itself.

Precisely because of over-excited auto pause systems, most software ignores the device's reported moving/stopped time and calculates it by itself. Which is one reason I advocate just disabling it.

I guess the real question is why auto-pause at all? It doesn't affect me a whole lot, since I usually don't stop much.

Is it OK to correct your data for only moving time on a segment? In other words if the segment is 5 minutes long for moving time, but let's say you stopped to get a drink of water, chain fell off, or some other issue, and the total time was 7 minutes instead of 5 minutes? But your real biking time was 5 minutes. Strava should correct that for you, for everyone.
[...]
It can make a huge difference in ranking. Last month I did a DH trail for the first time ever, felt great about it, and then I looked at the ranking and it was 701/705. I knew for sure I didn't do THAT bad lol. And then I saw that my total time was 2-3 minutes longer than my moving time. I stopped to prepare for the DH segment just a few feet inside of the segment, that's what got me. If I only put my moving time in there it magically turned into 287/705, or 41% on time. Is this OK to do, just to see how you really stack up, or is that just pretending that you are the only one that happened to out of the 704 other guys? You'd never know how many others had a different moving time vs. total time, could you? Just seems like it's an unfair glitch to always rank by total time instead of moving time.

Stops are stops. The real value in Strava is not any one result but the trend of data over time. PRs and leaderboards are nice, but they aren't the end all. I like to throw my phone in my pack and focus on nailing the ride. Don't mess with the data unless there's something obviously wrong, like driving home while still recording. I've had what would have been top 5 finishes end up being near the bottom of the results because I did an out and back and Strava started logging downhill segment while I was heading up the hill. C'est la vie.

 

[richj8990]

This is where care needs to be taken when creating segments. IE they shouldn't be too close to the start or end of the trail. I've had plenty of segments where I've gone flat out only to stop at where I think is the end, to regroup with the boys. Meanwhile the clock keeps ticking.
If you get bored you can try work out exactly where the trail ends and start. I can think of one silly example that was about a 3 minute downhill segment, but the actual finish was about 300m away from the natural finishing point (IE the flat). So you had to keep going and sprint along the flat return trail.

I agree 100% and I've made several segments that start at the natural top starting point and end at a natural point, not necessarily the bottom of the hill. Still new to this and we'll see how that goes.

As far as editing data, you can can clip a segment to your moving time but it will still show total time, a feature I assume to be built-in to avoid cheating. It is what it is. A couple of times I forgot to turn off the app, got in a car and suddenly I had a bunch of road bike KOM's on the street. OOPS!

One other twist: if you ride a segment multiple times, the leaderboard will only show your best performance (PR), and none of your longer times. So if you want to really see how you did on the last ride, you still have to manually look up your actual time on the leaderboard and see how many rank places you fell compared to your PR. So you may as well always manually look up your moving time on the leaderboard while you are at it. Unless you are really good, you are just competing against yourself anyway, so just write down or remember your leaderboard segment rankings and then think of why you were slower that day (mine is most often because of mud after a rain).

I'm logging this all on an Excel spreadsheet to see how I do on certain segments with different tire size/width combinations front and back. I won't tell you the differences now because there is simply not enough data, this will take months or years to figure out which tire combinations are optimal for each downhill segment. And then I'll have some general idea of "This plus tire did better on this A type of trail, this 2.6 voluminous did better this B type of trail, 26 x 2.4 was same as 27.5 on trail C but significantly worse on trail D", etc. Gives me a good excuse to ride as much as possible!

 

[sgltrak]

I am kind of a data geek, but it sounds a bit like you are overthinking it.

One other twist: if you ride a segment multiple times, the leaderboard will only show your best performance (PR), and none of your longer times. So if you want to really see how you did on the last ride, you still have to manually look up your actual time on the leaderboard and see how many rank places you fell compared to your PR. So you may as well always manually look up your moving time on the leaderboard while you are at it. Unless you are really good, you are just competing against yourself anyway, so just write down or remember your leaderboard segment rankings and then think of why you were slower that day (mine is most often because of mud after a rain).

On the desktop version of the site, you can find your history for a segment in the drop down menu for the leader boards. This one shows a segment I ride pretty regularly. You can see that my times are pretty consistent, but occasionally I stop to visit with a friend on the trail or maybe encounter a mechanical.

 

[Cleared2land]

Then that E-bike comes along for the climb...

 

[Harold]

I am kind of a data geek, but it sounds a bit like you are overthinking it.

On the desktop version of the site, you can find your history for a segment in the drop down menu for the leader boards. This one shows a segment I ride pretty regularly. You can see that my times are pretty consistent, but occasionally I stop to visit with a friend on the trail or maybe encounter a mechanical.

View attachment 1235997

lol, it looks WAY TOO consistent. but then I zoom in to check the scale, and I see what those outliers were and I lol because then the consistency looks more mortal.

 

[sgltrak]

lol, it looks WAY TOO consistent. but then I zoom in to check the scale, and I see what those outliers were and I lol because then the consistency looks more mortal.

The outliers included stopping and visiting with a trail crew and dealing with a torn sidewall as well as socializing with a group before the segment finish line or after the segment start.

Here is one with a little less consistency due to frequent two way bike traffic and heavy use by hikers:

Rich, not only can you access your entire history for a segment on the desktop, but you can also access it on your moble app:

 

[NordieBoy]

lol, it looks WAY TOO consistent. but then I zoom in to check the scale, and I see what those outliers were and I lol because then the consistency looks more mortal.

Nothing like videoing a segment for 2hrs to make your normal 2min times look weird from then on in Strava

 

[BmanInTheD]

I did an XC race once and finished 3 minutes behind the leader. I told the race officials that I stopped for 3 and a half minutes to take a break so I should be declared the winner. See why now?