WHO THIS IS FOR
IS THIS YOU?
The rider whose confidence rises and falls with the leaderboard
You finish a good ride feeling strong, open Strava, see someone faster, and the whole session suddenly feels like a failure.
The comeback athlete measuring themselves against their old numbers
You're rebuilding after time off and every segment comparison with your former self is quietly demoralising you.
THE ROADMAN VIEW
The Roadman view
This is one of the most common things landing in the Roadman inbox: riders who train well, ride well, and then have their day wrecked by a screen. Anthony's framing is blunt — when you compare your ride to someone else's on Strava, you're comparing your full reality to their highlight. You don't see that they were two weeks into a taper, on a closed road, with a tailwind, after fifteen years of training. You just see a number that's bigger than yours, and you let it tell you a story about yourself that isn't true.
Benji Naesen's openness about imposter syndrome resonated so hard with the community precisely because Strava feeds it. The comparison error is the same one underneath imposter syndrome — measuring your private effort and doubt against everyone else's public performance. The rider who looks effortlessly fast on the leaderboard had their own grim morning getting out the door. You're just not seeing it.
The fix isn't to delete the app and pretend the data doesn't matter — the training information on Strava is genuinely useful. It's to change who you're competing with. The only honest comparison is you against your own past self: your trend over the last 90 days, your own time on a segment a year ago. That comparison tells you whether you're improving. Someone else's leaderboard position tells you nothing about your training except how to feel bad about it.
EXPERT EVIDENCE
WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY
- Erin AyalaSport psychologist specialising in endurance athlete motivation
External validation — kudos, leaderboard position, ranking against strangers — provides a short-term motivational hit but tends to undermine durable motivation over time by tying self-worth to comparisons the athlete can't control. Motivation built on self-referenced progress and process goals is far more stable.
Hear it: How To increase Your Motivation | Erin Ayala - Shannon MalseedFormer professional cyclist, now coach specialising in emotional blocks and self-limiting thought patterns
The damage from comparison comes from the story you tell yourself when you see the other rider's number, not from the number itself. Most riders reach for the same self-limiting narrative every time — naming it is what lets you set it down and judge your riding on your own terms.
Hear it: Emotional Blocks & Cycling Performance | Roadman Cycling Podcast
PRACTICAL APPLICATION
DO THIS WEEK
Compare only against your own 90-day trend
Once a month, look at your fitness trend and your own segment history versus three months ago. That's the comparison that tells you whether the training is working. Other riders' times are noise — you can't see their context, their rest, or their years in the sport.
Curate the feed and mute the leaderboards
You don't have to follow everyone. Mute the accounts whose rides reliably make you feel worse, and stop opening segment leaderboards after every ride. Keep the app for the training data; remove the parts that exist to make you compare.
Name the comparison trigger and pre-write a response
Most riders have one specific trigger — a particular rival, a flagged leaderboard, a fast local segment. Name it, then write the line you'll use when it fires: 'I'm comparing my full ride to their highlight. The only number that matters is mine versus mine.'
COMMON MISTAKES
WHAT CYCLISTS GET WRONG
MISTAKEComparing your fatigued, real-life rides to others' best efforts.
FIXYou're seeing their highlight reel, not their context. Compare yourself only to your own previous performances — the one comparison that's actually fair.
MISTAKELetting kudos and leaderboard position drive how you feel about a session.
FIXJudge a session against its purpose — did you hit the target power, complete the intervals? — not against a stranger's ranking.
MISTAKEQuitting Strava entirely to escape the comparison.
FIXYou lose genuinely useful training data. Curate the feed and mute leaderboards instead, so you keep the value and lose the comparison trap.
FAQ
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Why does Strava make me feel worse about my riding?
Should I just delete Strava?
Is it bad to be competitive on Strava?
How do I stop caring about kudos?
Is comparing myself to my own old data unhealthy too?
What numbers on Strava are actually worth tracking?
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