How accurate is strava?

[sheffgirl]

Just downloaded Strava and used it on my way to and from work. I used to use Map My Ride. The distance is what I expected but it tells me my top speed on my way home was 36mph. Its possible I suppose on the downhill bits, but I am slightly suspicious. It would be good if it was true though

 

[Stonechat]

The distances are OK, but the speeds are not accurate unless you get GPS computer with speed sensor

 

[Kbrook]

It told me my top speed was 78.9 mph the other day, so I think its fair to say it has its odd moments. 36 mph is perfectly doable though, I am no racing snake but I regularly go above that so its probably right.

 

[Stonechat]

I am a wimp descending and it gave me 38 and over 40 so deffo over the top

 

[sheffgirl]

I'm the same haha, I go for the brakes when it starts to pick up some speed. I think in truth it was wrong. It told me I hit 25.7mph this morning, which is realistic. My journey home is more uphill so I did not expect to get as higha reading as 36mph really.

 

[Julia9054]

It told me this week that I had had my QOM taken from me! Which, apparently, I earned last October on a segment which turns out to be a 300m stretch of Boroughbridge High Street and is a 24% hill!
Whilst I do regularly cycle through Boroughbridge, it is as flat as a flat thing!
Also, being as slow as a slow thing, I think I'd remember if I'd ever had a QOM! Generally, I give myself a little pat on the back if on any segment, I make it into the top half of the women only leader board!

 

[Chris Norton]

I find Strava jumps a bit so you get massive speed anomalies. It also seems to start from some peculiar places too, Try Ipbike which can upload to strava and just use the app post ride.

 

[cyberknight]

It depends a lot on the sampling accuracy of your device .

 

[Hacienda71]

Not very accurate. I rode down a straight mile with a mate about a year ago. We were pushing it and taking turns to draught eachother. We were both using identical Garmins when we uploaded the rides he was 9 seconds quicker. Another time a mate went for a shortish segment and Kom'd it. He was not travelling that fast and the speed shown through the segment was higher than his max speed.

 

[Lanzecki]

Strave can be very accurate when I get a KOM. It's really bad when someone else gets one of mine.

 

[RussellZero]

It told me this week that I had had my QOM taken from me! Which, apparently, I earned last October on a segment which turns out to be a 300m stretch of Boroughbridge High Street and is a 24% hill!
Whilst I do regularly cycle through Boroughbridge, it is as flat as a flat thing!
Also, being as slow as a slow thing, I think I'd remember if I'd ever had a QOM! Generally, I give myself a little pat on the back if on any segment, I make it into the top half of the women only leader board!

The segment might not have existed at the time you rode it, so you wouldn't have seen the QOM. If the segment was created some time later, I don't think strava let's you know.

 

[NormanD]

I've used many apps Strava / mapmyride and a few others but I've always gone back to Endomondo which IMHO seems to be the best so far

 

[Easytigers]

When I used my phone, I didn't rate the accuracy. Now I use a garmin it seems pretty sound (annoyingly my average speed is a little lower than when using the phone so I guess it must be accurate!!!)

 

[the_mikey]

It depends a lot on the sampling accuracy of your device .

Exactly, it doesn't matter if you use strava, garmin connect or any other activity logging software, it relies on data from your GPS device, if that data is erroneous then you will see this reproduced on strava, garmin connect etc..

 

[Stonechat]

But the different sites like Strava, Endomondo, Ride with GPS, Map my ride etc, can do different things, and don't even start with altitude, they all seem to lose different amounts of altitude from the ride