Originally Posted by mschwett

i find they’re way more useful than comparing overall rides. too many variables there, including traffic, road conditions, effort level, differential effects of wind etc.

for any of my favorite 10-20 segments, i’ll generally know what the constraints were. if it was potentially an all out effort with neutral or advantageous winds, then comparing it to other top efforts is really useful. no way to do that for a whole ride.

Originally Posted by msu2001la

Same. Segments are great for this and I like how Strava makes it easy to see performance over time on them. I also find the "matched rides" feature to be similarly useful, where it compares total rides. This seems especially useful on Zwift, where I'm more likely to ride the exact same route over and over.