Confessions of a Strava cycling addict

My wife accuses me of being in a state of denial about my addiction to Strava, the website and app that lets you analyse your cycling (and running) performance.

She might have a point.

At first I thought I could handle it. Uploading the data from my GPS device to the website after each ride was straightforward enough. Soon I had pages of information about my mileage, average speeds, elevation gained and even calories burned. I took innocent delight in beating my previous best times on certain routes.

And then I discovered the “segment” feature, where you can earn the King of the Mountain title by being the fastest on certain stretches of road. Disgraced pro Lance Armstrong controversially accumulated 150 KOM titles, prompting calls for him to be banned from Strava. There are relatively few segments to be bagged where I live – rural Scotland - but even after becoming KOM on War Memorial Hill in a blistering time of 2min 30sec – thanks, it has to be said, to a freakishly strong tailwind – I remained rational and reasonable. Strava? Yeah, I could quit tomorrow if I wanted to, no problem.

But it all changed two months before Christmas when I discovered one of Strava’s many clubs. I could join and compare my performance against other members. I should have just ignored it, and continued as before. Stupidly, I didn’t, and too late I realised that my regular, innocent fix of data about my day’s bike ride had actually been a gateway drug to something far more addictive – a big, shiny league table in which the position of your name is determined by how many miles you’ve logged. Usually as competitive as a cabbage, I suddenly wanted to be top of the league.

Now, instead of merely uploading my data, comparing it with the previous day’s and then logging off until my next ride, I have become obsessed not just with my own performance, but those of the other 60-plus members of the club.

This means I am constantly checking the league table throughout the day. My 50-mile ride in the morning may have lifted me to 2nd place overall, but other members may not yet have uploaded their own data, so I am checking and re-checking the league table throughout the day. (In the course of writing this blog I have already slipped from second to third).

That’s every day. Seven days a week. Right up until late on Sunday evening when the top three in each category – total distance, longest ride and total climbing – will have their names enshrined on the weekly leader board. I’ve been there or thereabouts fairly regularly, but I’m repeatedly refreshing the webpage on my laptop in a nervous, twitching frenzy right up until midnight every Sunday, because there are some devious characters out there who won’t upload their final weekend’s worth of data until the last minute. In the case of regular top three finisher Leapfrog Craig Battersby, the clue is in his name. (Why I go through this ritual defies explanation – it’s not as if I’m going to jump back on my bike at 11.30 at night in a bid to upload another dozen miles.)

I’m also ashamed to admit that I spend hours scrutinising every nuance of the data uploaded by my rivals. I wouldn’t accuse any of them of cheating, but there was a case of one rider whose statistics just didn’t add up. By cross referencing his accumulated weekly elevation gain of 15,000 metres with the routes and profiles of his rides – none of them longer than 40 miles, and all around the pan-flat countryside of west Lancashire – I was able to helpfully suggest to him his GPS device might need re-calibrating. He left the club shortly afterwards.

My nemesis is a rider called Bob Pugh. We now “follow” each other and regularly give each other “kudos” – Strava’s equivalent of Facebook’s “Like” button – for our respective efforts, but I’m secretly looking for clues as to whether he will be going out riding the next day or not. Bob only goes out two or three times a week, but each ride is at least 100 miles long, so he regularly overtakes me in the standings, despite the fact I may have been out five or six times already that week.

He’s definitely not averse to a bit of gamesmanship, once stating he would be “doing some painting and decorating for the next few days”. I jumped at the chance to gain some ground on him, only for him to sneak in another couple of epic rides and nudge me out of the top three yet again.

So I’ve taken to trying to second-guess him and my other rivals by checking the weather forecast for where they live to see if they’re likely to be out on their bikes the following day. Most of them live in the north west of England - the great thing about a Strava club is your location is irrelevant, it’s the miles you put in that count – so my Met Office app is now set for St. Helen’s, Bolton and Liverpool as well as my own location in Scotland.

The next step will be to learn a bit more about Bob, Leapfrog, et al. It would be useful to know if we are in the same age/weight range. Their photographs are inconclusive, and it will probably mark me down as a deranged stalker if I ask them directly how old and heavy they are. I might have to consider signing up to Strava’s premium service for £40 a year so that I can access this personal information.

Or maybe, as my wife keeps telling me, I should just get a life instead.