_ForceD_

I've been using Strava for a couple of months now. One of the things I haven't been able to understand, or figure out, is the "Achievements" awarded for a workout. I (in New England) go for 20 mile bike ride and I earn +/- 20 achievements. Meanwhile, my brother (in Florida) goes for a 30 mile ride and will earn just 1 achievement. Best I can tell is that it must take into account the terrain. In that 20 miles I may have 1000 ft of elevation, while on his 30 mile ride he'll have less than 100 ft of elevation.

Secondly, when I enter a workout manually...a swim for example. Achievements never get awarded. Just wondering why?

Dan

SethAZ 

I can't speak to manually added activities, but it's likely that they won't give achievements for that because then anyone could enter whatever they wanted if they're more interested in getting achievements than actually earning them.

Strava made a change a couple of months ago that has really, really, really pissed a lot of people off. To whit: they now award a PR (personal record) for the first ride you do on a given segment. It's logical in the sense that your only attempt on that segment is by default your personal record on it. But it's terrible in the sense that every time you include any new routes on your ride and hit new segments for the first time you get flooded with essentially meaningless PR achievements. There's a thread on this in the Strava support forums that's now hit like 5 pages of people who hate this, and almost no response from Strava.

If you keep riding new routes you will keep getting achievements for every segment you ride for the first time. If your brother keeps hitting the same segments he usually rides he'll only get achievements when he actually does better than his previous attempts.

If you live in an area where users have defined lots of segments then your 30-mile ride might include, say, 30 or 50 different segments, while your brother's 30-mile ride might only cover a few defined segments. In a city you're typically flooded with segments. Group rides I go on in more urban areas near me will typically have segments between each and every intersection, for example, plus some segments that cover multiple stretches across intersections. The rides will have massive lists of segments ridden. Meanwhile for my more rural rides there may be only few segments. If I get on a long 10-mile rode with no major landmarks on it there may only be one segment (or no segment) defined for that whole stretch. Go ride in Phoenix, though, and you might see 15 or 20 segments for a 10-mile route.

Segments are often defined by people for things that have some sort of natural meaning. For instance, you might get a segment that starts at the bottom of a hill, and ends at the top. Or you have a 4-way stop on a rural road, and the next 4-way stop is 5 miles away, so someone will define a segment for that 5-mile stretch of road between those. There's typically some rhyme or reason for why people are interested in measuring some given stretch of road as a segment.

smarkinson

An achievement is awarded each time you set a 1st, 2nd or 3rd personal best time on a segment. You also get an achievement for getting a KOM/QOM or top 10 overall placing.

A crown indicates a KOM/QOM for the fastest overall time on the segment.

A trophy indicates a top 10 overall placing

A medal indicates a new personal record, personal 2nd best time or personal 3rd best time

https://support.strava.com/hc/en-us/...t-s-a-segment-

If your brother only gets 1 achievement then it means he either doesn't have many segments where he rides or he isn't improving much as a rider. If you are getting 20 achievements for each ride then you might have a lot of segments where you live, keep riding new routes or you are getting faster each time you ride.

You will find that as you ride Strava longer the number of achievements you will get each ride will get less and less. For example, if you ride a particular route that has 20 segments then you will always get 20 achievements the first 3 times you ride that route. You will get PRs for each segment the first time you ride it, the second time you will either set PR's or 2nd bests and the third time you will set PR's, 2nd bests or 3rd bests. After the first three times if you want to keep getting achievements then you need to ride faster.

You will never get any achievements for manual entries because these are not counted for segments.

99Klein 

Tell your brother to HTFU and ride harder

Doge

Achievements are somewhat normalized to ride history so everyone gets a trophy.

Edit Add: If two riders go riding and upload their results, the one with the most Strava thingys is the least accomplished rider.

Post here: https://www.bikeforums.net/19924110-post1.html

joejack951

Least accomplished on that particular series of roads. If cycling out of town with someone from/near that town, you can get a lot of Strava thingies and still be the more accomplished rider overall (taking one's own town/cycling area into account).

Flip Flop Rider

Skinner and Watson would be pleased

Doge

That explains it.

Does it also have to do with how many segments there are on a route?

So if one ride is 20 miles and covers 10 segments, wile another ride is 20 miles and covers 5 segments, are there more achievements to be "won" in the first?

DrIsotope

I feel like I'm the only person who likes that they changed it to "PR on the first attempt." Because I know that scattered across California are 2,000+ PRs on segments that I crossed a single time before they made the change. Sometimes I travel to ride, and don't think, "Hey, I should do this whole route twice so it counts."

You know you've been at it awhile when you can do a 70-80% effort for 100km and get no PR/2/3s at all.

joejack951

I think the answer to that is an obvious 'yes.'

If someone feels under-accomplished, it is pretty simple to find some roads one rides without any segments and create segments on those roads. Then go ride those roads again. New PRs all around! Not getting any PRs recently? Create more segments! I swear some people must do this because some roads I ride (which may only be 2 miles long) have 3-4 segments on them. If I ride that road hard enough, I might get 2-3 medals for that 'one' effort.

WhyFi

You no longer need to ride a segment twice to log accomplishments - the first ride on a segment will now give you a PR, so you just need to find some segments that are new to you.

RPK79

If you want a lot of trophies create tons of very short segments on a previously unridden road. BAM! Instant e-bling. You'll be so proud!

Doge

Might be simpler if not on SoCal near the beach.

One segment on my account was created 2017. The KOM on it is from 2015.

Have you used this?
Capture.JPG

FlashBazbo

One additional factor is the "maturity" of a segment. You can find a segment with little traffic and no riders with competitive tendencies and find yourself with an easy good placing. I would attribute that to the "immaturity" of the segment. Most anyone can gain a top-10.


On the other hand, if you find a segment that's been hammered by a bunch of highly competitive cyclists, top-10's can be very hard to come by. It's a "mature" segment. One segment about 4 miles from my home was hotly contested for a couple years. It seemed that every other week somebody would knock 1 or 2 seconds off the KOM time. Lots of highly competitive cyclists made runs to try to get the KOM and it went back and forth among 3 of us. But then, one of the guys set a KOM that nobody's been able to touch for over 18 months. Since a lot of people gave their very best to beat that time, the pecking order was established. Nobody's moved up on that segment in a long time. Mature. No trophies for you.

Doge

How do you permanently filter out certain ride types of those you follow?
Specifically Zwift. But also things like running. I don't care about where Lance is running.

RPK79

Don't follow me. My Strava activities are nothing but Zwift and running.

Doge

Then you are easy. It is the mixed ones that are tough.

Take a guy like Lance.
He rides bikes and segments that are of interest to me.
He runs segments that are not of interest to me.

joejack951

I wasn't suggesting new segments to get KOMs specifically. It was more for getting medals/achievements. Because we all deserve medals for riding our bikes every time we go out.

RPK79

My bikes are made of metal and that's enough for me.

SethAZ 

Personally I hate the new changes because when I add some new road to an existing route on a very hard effort, and want to see how I did overall throughout the ride, I have to wade through all of these meaningless "first time" PRs to see which PRs actually reflect my best repeated effort on a given segment.

I do have some routes that I ride a lot where I hardly ever get any achievements, and that's fine. I put out a fairly hard effort a couple of days ago on a 32.5-mile route that I've ridden probably 60 times in the past, and that day's effort was in the top 10 in terms of overall average speed. I got exactly two achievements due to having gotten into the top 3 efforts for those two segments out of the 60+ prior rides. Totally cool with that. Getting 20-30 PRs because the group I rode with chose a parallel road to the one usually taken on a group ride that we've otherwise done before? Not cool at all. It really just floods the user with essentially meaningless junk that tells them nothing other than "congrats for riding this new segment."

caloso

Similarly, you might have segments that are part of a long-established group ride route that existed long before Strava. The local River Ride route has tons of smaller Strava segments. All the top tens are owned by the local strong guys but no one (as far as I can tell) is gunning for the KOM of any particular segment. How you place on those segments is largely determined by the wind, and how many and how strong the riders are who turn up on that Saturday.

And we have a number of segments that are part of the Amgen route. Those are pretty much out of reach.

RPK79

With an attitude like that they are!

Seattle Forrest

Strava should have the concept of a first ascent. Then my e-penis would be as big as my real life one.

Sy Reene

:- ?

joejack951

My bikes are made from medal metal.