Smartphones are amazing pieces of technology, who would have thought that one day we would have the knowledge of humans in our pocket…oh..and cats…lots and lots of cats! When I got my smartphone I was excited to start tracking my riding, mapping and sharing my rides with my friends and family. I saw a few of my friends using this app called Strava and after using it a few times I was hooked! I could show off my rides and compare times with friends, but for me I wanted to just keep track of my rides.

Now a few years later I have decided to uninstall Strava, Not because I don’t like it or even think it’s not useful under the right circumstances, because it is, but I do no think that it adds anything worthwhile to my riding experience.

The novelty has worn off, I don’t actually care about the stats it spits out. I am not training for anything, I just want to go ride and not worry if I am slower than last week or that I am not even in the top half of KOM board (I rarely am!). All it does it distract from what really matters, going out into the forest, having fun and pushing myself and having fun with friends.

 

Here I am being anti-social while making sure Strava is turned on

The biggest annoyance with Strava has to be the social sharing that people feel the need to post all over the place. I have to admit that in my early Strava days I too plagued my friends and family with my useless Strava updates and tweets. It’s not that we don’t all love sharing our rides, it’s just thats all there is, is some stats and a map of your route. None of that actually says much about the ride, or your experience.

If you are going to share your ride, take some photos, or tell a story about it, not some cold stats that really in the big scheme of things means about as much as taking photos of your food and sharing that for all to see. Good job…you ate, woooo.

All these little things we keep adding to our rides takes away from the actual experience, the heart of why we started riding and can make it seem more like work than fun. Let’s not take all the distractions of our lives and start bringing them to the trails, we head out to the trails to get away from all that. At least I do, and that’s why I uninstalled Strava and I challenge you to do the same.