strava: modern miracle or evil incarnate?

Okay, I know it’s a little passé to talk about the Stravas. But if you’re like me, and you just got into Strava this season, then for good or ill, it is transforming the way you ride.

Actually, make that for good and ill. Maybe mostly ill.

Like today. Me n Ricky are sitting in staff meeting, trying to decide what time to meet at the Draper pool for some Corner Canyon. Meantime Kim pings me about something I need to do at home. So Ricky goes to the pool, I go home, and ride from Suncrest. He’s coming up Ann’s, I’m heading down Ann’s, and when we meet, we’ll turn around and head back up Ann’s and up to Jacobs.

Soon after I pass through the brand spanking newly opened tunnel at Potato Hill, I hear/see Ricky coming the other way. As he flies by me he says “turn around, ride fast, I’m on Strava-fire!”

In other words, “can’t talk now, if I slow down, my PR will be in jeopardy, and my Strava followers will think I’m slow.”

So I flipped around and chased him up Ann’s through the tunnel, and up to the Peak View trailhead, where we both promptly got off our bikes and laid down to die. But screw it, cuz we both got PRs on Ann’s, and Ricky got a podium on the Full Ann’s. And I don’t think we’d spoken to each other since he passed me going the other way.

And then we climbed Jacob’s and did a no-stop downhill of Jacob’s and Ghost, where I was hoping to beat my PRs on both, and maybe break into the top 20, which I haven’t been able to even sniff since one of my first few Strava attempts established my high mark for those runs that I keep missing by a minute, even though I simply could not go any faster with a motor and 10 inches of travel, a situation, by the way, which has caused a Matrix level of distrust for Strava that makes me think there’s an Oracle or Source somewhere at Strava headquarters that I need to hunt down and kill.

After we split up, I had one more Strava moment in me, so I passed the switchback from Canyon to Brock’s so I could get a running start at the Brock’s segment and go for another PR. As I lay dying (ha!) in the Peak View parking lot, at least two people came over to ask if I was okay.

Damn straight I was okay–I knocked 24 seconds off my old PR. I was so happy I could have died right there.

Until I got to my computer to see all my segments, and noticed that once again, Strava had foiled me on my Jacob’s and Ghost downhills.

KAAAHHHNNNNNN!