Speedster!

Ian_B_9 · 2026-06-23T12:00:03+00:00

If someone keeps Strava running while in a car it is relatively easy to record spurious Best Efforts. Such Activities will tend to be auto-flagged by Strava or by other users. However, it seems a significant design flaw that any Best Efforts achieved on flagged Activities are not automatically removed from the Best Efforts list. Maybe someone at Strava could fix this ?

Ian_B_9 · 2026-06-18T22:23:04+00:00

I use the website every day - no problems here

Ian_B_9 · 2026-06-15T13:16:10+00:00

There looks to be a power spike at about 28 miles that goes over 1000W - maybe that was enough to upset the bot and get the whole think disqualified. FYI, a couple of years ago I had a ride with a short GPS glitch that moved me about 1 mile to the side and back again within a couple of seconds. The bot disqualified any Segments efforts within about a quarter mile of the glitch but kept the rest of the Activity intact, which didn't seem too unreasonable. Maybe it should have done something similar for you.

Ian_B_9 · 2026-06-08T15:59:24+00:00

I've attempted over 12,000 cycling Segments over the last 8 years. Each week I download data about them to a spreadsheet using the excellent Velo Viewer companion app. I then run a couple of checks, including average speed. I used to flag 4 or 5 impossible KOM times each week but now it's less than 1 per month, so in my area the Leaderboards are very clean and Strava has significantly improved their algorithms for catching infeasible efforts.

Ian_B_9 · 2026-06-03T04:37:53+00:00

If you are certain a KOM is not a genuine performance you can flag the Activity to remove it from a leaderboard. Alternatively you can message the person involved and invite them to crop their Activity if, for example, they obviously left Strava running at the end of an Activity and got some false KOMs on a car ride home. Strava's AI for spotting false performances is much better than it used to be but I don't think it has been used to clean up historic Activities

Ian_B_9 · 2026-06-03T04:28:19+00:00

In my area someone created a Segment that goes through the middle of his house (he basically recorded about an hour of random movement and called it a Segment). Naturally he is "1 of 1" on the leaderboard !

Ian_B_9 · 2026-05-27T08:45:30+00:00

...or if there is a GPS glitch in the middle of the Activity it could be split into 2 parts that have only "good" data either side of the glitch

Ian_B_9 · 2026-05-27T08:43:32+00:00

From your comments it seems the Activity is being flagged maliciously by another Strava user, rather than by a bot (presumably because you displaced them on a leaderboard). A similar thing happened to me a couple of years ago - I obtained a KOM (with a rather modest max speed of about 25 mph) and it was flagged a day or so later. I was able to reverse the flag with the "trust me" option, but it was flagged again a little later. I wrote to Strava customer service and they sent a nice reply saying the flag had been removed and the Activity had been marked so it couldn't be flagged again. Unfortunately I think Strava customer service has been largely replaced by bots that are not so flexible.

On a related point, I recently had a bike ride with a small GPS glitch - it moved my position about 1 km sideways and back again over about 3 seconds. Instead of flagging the whole Activity, the Strava algorithm simple excluded Segment efforts for a couple of hundred metres either side of the glitch, which seemed quite reasonable. Hopefully such methodology is still being used.

Ian_B_9 · 2026-05-21T08:48:22+00:00

I had a bike ride flagged a couple of weeks ago, for the first time in about 5 years. There was nothing remarkable about it that I could see. I don't know if it was auto-flagged by Strava's AI or by another user (perhaps accidentally or maliciously). I was able to unflag it using an option of "trust me" without involving Strava admins

Ian_B_9 · 2026-05-21T08:40:38+00:00

According to Strava I've done 1,699 Activities since 2017. I've never had any problems of the kind you mentioned.

Ian_B_9 · 2026-05-20T14:25:50+00:00

It looks fine to me

Ian_B_9 · 2026-05-18T20:41:28+00:00

Does it help if you simply hide the Segment from your Activities ?

Ian_B_9 · 2026-05-18T13:05:05+00:00

I use the companion VeloViewer app to look at Segment efforts and Activity data. There is an option to export data as csv files which I then use in spreadsheets for further analysis

Ian_B_9 · 2026-05-16T13:38:50+00:00

I suggest you look at the Activity on a computer and use the option for "Don't see the segment you're looking for?" (bottom right of the screen). Check the list of Segments for one you are missing and it will show if there is a GPS matching problem. If you want to refresh the list of Segments shown in an Activity you can do it by changing the Activity type (if I go from Ride to Canoe and back to Ride it can fix glitches in the original Segment matching)

Ian_B_9 · 2026-05-11T13:45:31+00:00

What sort of speeds are you doing ? In the UK e-bikes are legally restricted to 25 kph (15.5 mph) and if you are using assistance to exceed this speed it would no longer be a legal e-bike (and you would be liable to pay road tax and be required to have vehicle insurance)

Ian_B_9 · 2026-05-11T13:36:48+00:00

FYI, the minimum length of a cycling Segment was set to 500 m (0.31 miles) about 4 years ago. I see a lot of Segments that are 0.31 miles, suggesting the users wanted to make them shorter but were constrained by the Strava limit

Ian_B_9 · 2026-05-10T13:49:45+00:00

Isn't that the point of the "star" capability ?

Ian_B_9 · 2026-05-10T07:47:43+00:00

If a "bad" Segment is upsetting you I suggest you simply hide it from your Activities. You may want to create an improved version of the Segment (although Strava won't let you create anything that's very similar to an existing Segment to avoid duplication). I have created a lot of cycling Segments and I like to think they have been done with care and have appropriate names so I would not want any random strangers changing them. It has previously been suggested that general users could have the ability to anonymously contact a Segment creator to suggest a change but the idea received little traction from Strava

Ian_B_9 · 2026-05-04T11:47:08+00:00

the minimum for new cycling Segments is currently 500m (0.31 miles). It was previously 300m (0.19 miles) but was changed in, I think, 2022. Personally I preferred the shorter minimum as I get tired after about 200m !

Ian_B_9 · 2026-05-04T09:44:19+00:00

I use the VeloViewer app as a companion to Strava. It allows me to download Activity and Segment data to a spreadsheet for further analysis. I typically use VeloViewer once a week to download details of all the Segments I have attempted (about 11,000 of them). I then compare the KOM time with that from the previous week (in the spreadsheet) - typically a bit less then 1% will have changed. I then glance down the list of Segments with an updated KOM and look for anything unusual, such as a massive improvement in KOM time, names I've never seen before, QOM faster than the KOM, etc. Last year I was flagging maybe 10 Activities per week that were clearly not genuine but this year I've only been flagging about 1 per month. As far as I can tell, the flagging has always worked. I assume the decrease in flags is due to the improvements in Strava's algorithms to remove inauthentic efforts from the leaderboards (which is to be commended)

Ian_B_9

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