[GuyContinental]

@TwoWheelsDC 50542 wrote:

Word of warning, the PM car commute from Reston to Arlington is madness. Oddly enough, however, the AM commute is quite pleasant (in relative terms). The tolls add up fast though. If you don’t want to drive, the FFX Connector bus does a loop out there, and is fairly reliable from what I hear. It beats traffic since it gets to use the Dulles Access road and the shoulder along 267 to West Falls Church.

I can concur- if I’m not out of my (Sterling) office by 4:30, I might as well stay until 6:30- it honestly takes less time to ride home. Morning is a cinch up until about 8 and then blocks up in the typical areas along I-66. Of course in about a year you should have a metro option if you can figure out the last bit. Tolls are a bit&* (I’m up to $5.50/day; add gas and my RT is $15) of course I just use that number to calculate my bike justification budget- 100 days of commuting plus no $75 gym membership = $2400 that I can spend on bike stuff!.

[GuyContinental]

@hozn 50522 wrote:

A compact with a 32 in the back should give you incredible low end. I find 34/28 as easy as I ever need around here, but I don’t climb 41st daily with commute gear. A 32 may limit you to SRAM Apex right now, but nothing wrong with that IMO.

Pssst! Remember that Hozn is some sort of mutant climbing beast capable of taking wicked popular KOMs in the middle of Kill Bill. Regardless, he’s probably right in this case but no non-weight-wienie ever complained about having extra gears.

[GuyContinental]

@brendan 50527 wrote:

So, I finally have a new job, starting on Wednesday!

The main work location is in Reston about a block from the intersection of the W&OD and the Dulles Toll Road (on Robert Fulton Drive). I haven’t been to the office yet, but I’m told there are no showers. Boo.

But! There’s a Sport & Health about 1.5 miles west of there. So, I have hopes I can probably work something out.

For at least the first week or two I’ll be car commuting, until I can put together a workable biking plan. But I’m excited!

Also, about the job too, of course.

Brendan

Woo-hoo another Westbound commuter! Where do you start?

On the shower- bah, I’m three years in no-shower land and even muddy from CX make-do with a Shower Pill body wipe and a sink rinse.

[GuyContinental]

@TwoWheelsDC 50196 wrote:

This also highlights the need to connect the EB side’s “sidewalk to nowhere” to the MVT. The EB side would actually be my preferred route, since it would be a more direct shot to my office on the DC side of the river.

http://goo.gl/maps/KiXPa

Ha! I’d never noticed that:

http://goo.gl/maps/uMyBV

Wide, wonderful sidewalk to… nowhere

[GuyContinental]

Really pretty morning to get dirty with Hozn (that sounds bad…)

Playing with the Strava/Instagram connection yielded some photos of a stoic Hozn in the dark:

http://app.strava.com/activities/50773564

[GuyContinental]

Well the first flat of the day was actually in my office; the next about 3 miles into LFP tails and the third right past Maple in Vienna. Good thing that between Hozn and I we had 4 tubes and 3 CO2 cartridges. This is getting expensive between replacement tubes and a serious beer debt. Flats 18-21 of the last 12 months. Awesome.

Dirt, since you might be following this thread- I saw in one of your photos of your bikes a Michelin Mud2 CX tire (just on your rear)- what pressures do you run the Mud off-road? Running that tire (as a pair) I pinch flat like crazy with tubes under 80; do OK at 80 and roll them right off the wheels at 45 and tubeless. They also wear like mad- I’m 750 miles in and the rear is about half life (I ride a long way on the WOD to get to the trails)

[GuyContinental]

I’m sorry, genetics already got even with that guy… wowza

[GuyContinental]

@KLizotte 50165 wrote:

OK, I give up. What is VC?????

Annd for some of the least funny memes out there: http://vcmemes.tumblr.com/

VC = Venture Capitalist

[GuyContinental]

@Mark Blacknell 50159 wrote:

Right, because then we’re going to have to talk about VC-directed “improvements” to businesses

Strava is already owned by VCs- Madrone Partners and Sigma Partners. Raised ~$15MM ($3A, $12B) in 2011, must have enough rev to keep afloat since.

[GuyContinental]

@hozn 50155 wrote:

Yeah, I’ve talked w/ GuyC a lot about this, but the marketing potentials are HUGE here too. I appreciate the ad-free experience, but I think they could actually partner with companies and do things like send you a coupon to universalcycles when they notice that your chain has 3k miles on it. Or coupons to local bike-friendly businesses that you ride by … that are open when you ride by them. The potential is really endless given how much data they have about me.

Xnay on my iznessideabay!

[GuyContinental]

@Mark Blacknell 50105 wrote:

I think Strava works pretty well as a social medium already, no? It has frequently turned people that I’d only know by kits/bikes into real names, and those real names into conversations. It’s let me ask others about roads I know they’ve been on, and certainly found me a lot of interesting rides. It’s also been a great way to keep up with/encourage/heckle friends around the world on their riding.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve met several riders (including Hozn) specifically because of Strava’s formerly excellent “rode with” functionality (they raised the threshold too much and now folks don’t match) but they could do sooooo much more, especially since they really are becoming the dominant player (which is the problem with RWGPS- switching costs) Things it needs:

1. Fred awards (mayors, wattage, cold weather feats, etc)
2. Way better developed gear tracker (the fact that I can’t track mileage on my CX wheelset and road wheelset without creating a bike for each drives me crazy)
3. Better comment sections and easier access to segment discussions
4. “You should ride with this person” matching (Hozn and I have comparable paces, at least when he’s exhausted, and ride 65% of the same commute at essentially the same time- we should meet (and did))
5. Club functionality- BAFS was a great example of a “club feature”
6. Durable awards- I’ve lost a lot more KOMs than I have (damn you Tim…) but I’d love to have a collection of my ex-KOMs
7. Route suggestions- Rider does A-B all the time but most people do A-D instead so suggest a popular route
8. Find a ride (string together popular segments into a ride of x miles)
9. Group rides- identify periodic rides with high user density, allow clubs to “claim them”
10. Segment notes/descriptions (“Watch out for the dragons on under the bridge”)
11. Segment “owners” defined by the top x most frequent riders
12. Basic PM functionality…
and on…

[GuyContinental]

@Tim Kelley 50056 wrote:

And there are even worse offenders out there too! http://app.strava.com/segments/1396954

Hypocrisy alert- I created a few of the long WOD segments (Lee to Church) because I ride the same dang thing nearly every day. It never occurred to me that people would “gun” for a 22 mile segment given the 5 major intersections and 28+ stop signs. Of course give a guy a 2nd or 3rd result because all the lights went in their favor they might just run them the next time…

[GuyContinental]

@GuyContinental 5004 wrote:

Sure, but it was obscure and a target of the expert, now it’s some sort of “ya’ll come watch this” moment to watch on a GoPro and push through social media. I bet that pre-Strava it had been ridden maybe 200 times total.

I’ve never quoted myself before but I struggle a bit with expanding my rationale and defending the nature of “elite”- there is a definite trend in extreme sports towards greater access and “spectacle” and I’ve seen its impacts distinctly in two activities- rock climbing and whitewater kayaking. Back in the day (pre 1990’s) both sports were pretty obscure- gear was tough to get and frankly, dangerous, route/river guidance was spotty and practitioners held their info close to their chests- in part because they were crazy iconoclasts but also because they didn’t want to get others killed. Now both sports are really accessible with great user-friendly gear and insanely detailed guide books and online resources. Participation has increased dramatically as the “apprenticeship” period has been virtually done away with but bad things are starting to happen as a result. Thing is, gear and guidance increase the margin of error but particularly in these sports, a serious mistake is as likely to end in death as injury. Just go out to the VA side of Great Falls some warm Saturday when the river is at about 3′ and you’ll see what I mean. Really low-level people blithely “hucking” themselves off the falls and running lines with terminal consequences- having been involved in multiple serious rescues and a body extraction (not on the Potomac) I truly know things as an “expert” that they do not, things I learned through hard experience and in part because there were barriers to entry that extended that experience.

If there is a hypothesis in here it is that I think that social media (including Strava), by making it about the public competition lowers the perceived “barrier to trial.” now instead of feeling out a descent, learning your limits and becoming an expert, the threshold is set by others- now you know that it can be done at 42.2 mph, (or that the route is climbable or waterfall survivable) not because you’ve done it but simply because it’s been done. On the one side, this really encourages the expansion of what’s humanly possible (which is cool) on the other it can set artificial expectations for warriors way out of their depth- that’s where people get killed.

I agree that everyone has a right to be an idiot and the rest of our fun shouldn’t be limited by those outliers but still, there seems to be a spectacle effect going on in lots of sports and I’m a bit concerned about it. The least I can say for cycling is at least the idiot you kill is (usually) yourself, what happens in climbing is that your partner/team is screwed; in whitewater others end up in trouble coming to your rescue.

/ramble off

[GuyContinental]

@creadinger 50022 wrote:

So just because idiots do stupid things you think all downhill segments should be banned?… I’m no daredevil and I would never risk a crash and do something stupid just for strava cred… It’s a wide road, mostly straight, no intersections = very low risk. What is the harm?

Yes, but others absolutely will, endangering others, the Strava platform and cycling access. As a guy in the VC community and from a purely business perspective I wouldn’t touch Strava with a 10-foot pole until they can figure out a way to separate your cool little hill from something like this:

http://app.strava.com/segments/799384

I happen to be intimate with this one from my college days and 40+mph (dropping ~1900 in 6 miles with 30+ blind hairpins and loose cinders) is “safe” only under super controlled circumstances (i.e the road is totally closed to oncoming traffic). 160 Weekend university student warriors going out there 440 times in downhill gear explicitly to challenge a KOM will get someone dead. Have people been riding it for years? Sure, but it was obscure and a target of the expert, now it’s some sort of “ya’ll come watch this” moment to watch on a GoPro and push through social media. I bet that pre-Strava it had been ridden maybe 200 times total.

So, I totally admit that that last bit sounds super-elite (lowercase) but I absolutely believe (and the numerous civil-cases against Strava concur) that the platform actively encourages this sort of reckless behavior. Is there a line somewhere? Sure, but I doubt that it’s as bright as my own “no net decline”. I also doubt that it’s as fuzzy as the temporary “hazardous flag.” Also, cycling is traditionally measured in feats of endurance (e.g. climbing, distance, sprinting) and only specialized events are based on descents. Helpfully, those “traditional” metrics are also *generally* safer from a user and bystander perspective.

[GuyContinental]

@Tim Kelley 49976 wrote:

What about major descents? Like coming off of a mountain ridge or doing downhill mountain biking?

MTB is notorious for bad segments (mountains & trees = bad signals) and Freds are getting dead doing KOM descents (exhibit A- Kim Flint). I can’t think of a single local descent where what’s *possible* on a bike and nears KOM territory isn’t way outside of the posted speed limit. So yeah, “KOM” in my book has always been about climbing, maybe sprinting.

Respectfully, you as a local (and legit) KOM killer have a very different user experience/objective than many of us. For me, I wish that Strava would pivot a bit from the 1%er KOM obsession and more towards community building (ride matching, grassroots competition tracking- e.g. BAFS) and information sharing/building (segment owners/”mayors”) and credibility (durable, non KOM accomplishments). The KOM plays a great aspirational role but is becoming less and less what it’s about for me.

[Author]

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