Learn me up: Strava contents

Coach Rich

So...

I had lunch today with Rich Sawiris of Wheelbuilder.com and he was telling me about the success he's had with partnering with a mountain bike wheel company to run a contest on Strava. So we brainstormed quickly about how EN and WB could partner, through the vehicle of a contest on Strava, to extend our brands through the triathlon market through this coming race season while providing some fun motivation and accountability opportunities for our customers. 

The problem is that I've been check out of Strava for about 6mo and have only just now begun to upload my own stuff. I'd like you guys to get me up to speed and give me some ideas on how this platform could be used to add value to both you and EN. The sketch idea is that WB kicks in a PT race wheel and EN kicks in a couple training plans, maybe a training camp entry, etc and we use these run monthly contests through the summer. 

Q's for you:

• What is a Strava contest and what ideas do you have for making it tri specific. IOW, we can do a climbing challenging but that ignores the run.
• Ideas for pushing it out through social media? What are other companies doing?
• Ideas for getting your friends and training partners involved?
• Any other ideas, insights, comments or suggestions? 

 

tgarson

In terms of making it tri-specific, Strava can track your runs and is pretty full-featured in doing so. You can create run segments and it will maintain leader boards and KOMs based off of pace. I've seen people upload swims before but I'm not quite sure how that works, they may just dump them in there as slow 'wet' runs.



Now, I like Strava. I don't get too geeked out over it but it's a slick interface and I like the PR tracking and leader boards and all that jazz. But, I've never participated in a Strava 'race' and I don't quite get how this would work in a distributed environment like we have here in EN.

Basically, the whole key of Strava and competition is segments, which by their very definition imply that you are riding the same stretch of road. It'd be a super fun and cool way to do something for a group of local athletes, but how do you compete with people who can't ride the same course? Time and speed are very relative, as are absolute power numbers.

Now, all of this changes if you start talking about a trainer competition, something more controlled where the course variability is out of the mix. But trainers are lame.

Edit: Thinking about this for a few moments more, I suppose you could do as you said, a climbing challenge to see who can rack up the most vert gain in a given period for some people. Or a time trial challenge for the flatlanders, find your fastest 20 or 40k course and see who can throw down the highest top speed. 

You can also make it relative. Too bad the Strava Sufferscore requires a premium subscription, but it's their version of TSS. Otherwise you could make it sufferscore based so it would be relative to your FTP rather than based on absolute numbers.

John Withrow

btw, how do we join the Stava "endurance Nation" club/team? is there a passcode?

Coach Rich

You join and I approve. Will do that later today

John Withrow

I'll admit that my Strava Fu is weak and only 1 day old, but it doesn't let me join the EN Team because there's a space for "Passcode"... So If I try to click join, it gives me the warning in red font: "Please enter a passcode"

Coach Rich

Sorry, forgot about that detail. Here you go: #workworks

Joseph Lombardi

...could run something like our internal challenges...ie. total miles biked or runned () over a weekend or week.....if you wanted to do a bike focus...could do Feet Climbed in a month....yes course would be dissimilar...a metric which would make it even..would be Strava Suffer Points (which are calculated against each persons individual HR Zones)...so Total Suffer Points over a weekend (which could come from running and or biking)... only issue is Strava points require premium membership level.

Just some idears.