Strava is a strange thing. It started as a training log and became a social network, a competition platform, and a source of mild anxiety all at the same time. I love it. I also think it makes people do stupid things on public roads. So I wanted to talk about the unwritten rules — the stuff nobody puts in the app's terms of service but everyone quietly judges you for.
Let us start with KOMs because that is where most of the drama lives. Hunting segments is fun. I do it. You probably do it. But there is an etiquette to it. If you sit in a group of eight riders for forty kilometres, drafting at three hundred watts while they are doing three fifty into a headwind, and then you sprint the last segment and take the KOM — that is not a KOM. That is theft with extra steps. Solo efforts on solo segments. That is the standard.
Then there is the tailwind KOM. Everyone knows when a segment was taken on a day with a thirty-kilometre-per-hour tailwind. Strava does not adjust for wind, but the community does. You will get the crown and you will also get the quiet knowledge that everyone who looks at it knows exactly how you got it.
On the other end, there are the kudos people and the non-kudos people. I fall into the first camp. Kudos cost nothing. They take half a second. And for the rider who dragged themselves out of bed at six in the morning to do an hour on the turbo before work, seeing a few kudos roll in lifts the mood more than you would expect. Be a kudos person. It is free and it matters.
Privacy is the serious one. I know riders who have had bikes stolen because their Strava profile was public and their rides started and ended at the same address every day. The privacy zone feature hides your start and end location within a radius you set. Turn it on. It takes sixty seconds and it could save you a four-thousand-pound bike.
The last thing I want to mention is the over-logging problem. Not every activity needs to go on Strava. Your walk to the shops is not a training session. Your ten-minute spin to the coffee shop does not need a title and a description. Keep the feed for actual riding and your followers will actually pay attention when you post something worth looking at.
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