Will Data Eat Cycling?

[Dogtrousers]

@DP Posted a strange storyrecently about a recently retired pro who was on the warpath taking Strava KOMs from a guy who had doped to get them. This struck me as bizarre, it showed my lack of appreciation of the importance of Strava to some, and also got me to thinking about the future of cycling (and other sports) and how they may be changed by similar public data services.

I don’t have any strong opinions on this. I just thought it an interesting topic for discussion. None of what follows is firmly held belief, just idle speculation.

Note, I’m not just thinking about Strava as it is right now, but what may be to come too. After all, Strava is just the start … what’s next? Future services could feature ways to measure the trustworthiness of data: enhanced security and validation, identity authentication, biometric data, giving people the power to down-vote or filter out data they don’t trust, the inclusion of video feeds with GPS tracks, the application of algorithms to spot fraudulent data, and other things that I haven’t really thought about – if I knew how, I’d be clairvoyant.

My main question is: Do public sourced data services (like Strava and whatever succeeds it) pose any kind of threat to the old order of a pyramid of sports governance with international bodies at the top, going down to clubs at the bottom? And if it does what might the future look like?

A few thoughts:

Is it possible that young athletes who would otherwise be club racing (because there was no alternative) might be finding their competitive outlet through Strava? Certainly there must be some, even if only a few. But could this grow to the detriment of the traditional club structure? Especially for timed-only events - multi participation racing would be harder, but not beyond the bounds of possibility.

Could the role of long distance sanctioning bodies like the UMCA or Guinness be undermined by data services? At the start of this year Bruce Berkeley publicly fell out with the UMCA and announced that he was attempting the year record just by logging Strava data. As it turned out he got injured. But had he completed the year, his distance by would still be discussed by those interested in such things. Some people would dismiss it, others wouldn’t. With improved data services in future would the sanctioning bodies still have a role?

If Audax or the Sportive scene didn’t exist now, would it be necessary to invent them? And will the same be true in a few years’ time? And if you did invent them now or in the future, in a world where the vast majority of riders are GPS enabled, how different would it look? I’m guessing that the “new invention” in both cases would be heavily founded upon end user supplied data hosted by a third party, with the organising body just doing some scheduling and support stuff round the fringes. I mean, what the hell is the point of a timing chip, or a brevet card when everyone has – or could easily have - a GPS? Who cares if your ride has been validated by some third party? I know that some people don’t bother with validation on Audaxes. They use AUK supplied scheduling and tea and buns services but aren’t interested in the proof-of-passage validation services.

Thoughts?


Just a technical flash in the pan for gadget obsessed MAMILs with more money than sense, or a fundamental game-changer?

 

[nickyboy]

An interesting topic.

If we fast forward a few years to a time when everyone has a GPS device (and we are getting close to that time now) the issue becomes not one of recording information but validating it. I'm sure it would be relatively straightforward to have some validation algorithms and use these to pronounce whether rider A had done what he claimed to have done. Certainly the validation would be no more open to manipulation than other current analogue methods

So I can see a time in the future when Audax validation will fall by the wayside and auto-validation of a gpx file will suffice

But I think the bigger impact will be the gradual usurping of the traditional club structure and traditional racing. Already Strava is providing the environment for groups that either actually ride together or virtually do. And of course the leadeboards provide a competitive element. I'm your typical GPS cyclist. Not a member of a "club" but a member of a group of acquaintances that have a common platform in Strava and rides are organised on that basis. I expect that this type of loose organisation will continue to grow. After all it didn't even exist a few years ago

 

[Shortandcrisp]

My 'comeback' from injury is scheduled for April of 2017 ( riding indoors atm).

Plan to ditch Strava and any gps devices and just ride with a watch, so I'll know if I'm gonna be late for tea!

Obviously this means that my rides won't have actually happened, but that's fine by me.

 

[srw]

cycling (and other sports)

Cycling's not (just) a sport.

But focussing on sport(ish) cycling, I suspect that Audax and sportives and TTs and clubs are as much about social contact as about competition. And technology will never obviate the need for social contact. Yes, new forms of club will be invented (heck, have been invented) - but the core activity will still be social.

 

[Tin Pot]

What you need to bear in mind with technology is that very little is actually new, even though it appears to be.

Usually it is 'merely' the volume of information, not the type of information.

So in the old days a man with a clipboard would note who was doing what, where and when. It's always been impractical for everyone to have a guy with a clipboard so technology has not achieved something new, but it has made it more readily available.

The reason I point this out is because we are talking about the validity of data, not the volume.

So; why did we trust the clipboard data and do not trust Strava data?

If clipboard data was just as open to abuse as Strava, do we really need to improve the trustworthiness of data?

Or - and this is the potential paradigm shift - can we accept that people cheat in all walks of life and at everything they feasibly can, and just get on with our lives?

 

[Dogtrousers]

Cycling's not (just) a sport.

Yeah, I know but I wanted a snappy title

 

[JD42]

A friend of mine, whilst on this year's Dragon ride, had a large mechanical issue whilst climbing Rhigos mountain. He was shipped to the top to get help by one of the assistance vehicles. Patched up he continued riding. He uploaded his strava but received an email next day saying it wouldn't be permitted due to inaccuracies on one section, the Rhigos mountain. His speed going up was causing concern. He hadn't stopped strava and he was recording the vans speed.... so there is an element of monitoring. He wasn't trying to cheat, just didn't give it a thought in the middle of his mishap.

 

[dan_bo]

Try this:

Go KOM grabbing on strava.

Then

Go for a decent club ride, do a cx race or a TT.


There's no comparison.

 

[fossyant]

We had someone local that was obsessed with getting KOM's - most were just short stretches of road. He'd go round challenging all the ones in his area and even took to 'following' a few riders to get theirs. If he got beat, he'd report the rides. Very odd behaviour indeed.

 

[classic33]

Question for those who use strava.

What would be your limiting factor, when it came to chosing a road to ride?

Don't use it myself, but there's some 25 yard routes(KOM's) near me. Whilst I've seen some odd ones ones on roads that a tank would have trouble on.

 

[fossyant]

I got an off road KOM a few years back - it's been beat since as the whole lot was re-surfaced. I hit it fast on my MTB and did a good time, but I haven't bothered since. I'm using it at the minute to try and track fitness improvements on some small climbs (off road) that I've been doing since my accident.

It has it's place for personal fitness tracking. There are KOM's on Zwift, but that's pointless as there are cheats on that, but again, it's good for tracking your own fitness on the climbs - its the same resistance each time you do a climb, so is quite accurate.

For me, I'd occasionally go for a KOM on the commute - just breaks up the ride, providing it was somewhere safe to hit speed. Some were impossible to ever attempt safely. One good KOM was on a really poorly surfaced side road, about half a mile. It was like Paris Roubaix. I'd managed to get it, but the road was then re-surfaced silky smooth, KOM gone.

 

[Drago]

I don't know about cycling, but I can relate to it with my own experiences recently of running. I used to assiduously record every run, try and beat my mates times etc, but about a month ago I mislaid my Garmin watch - still not found it - and feel strangely liberated.

 

[Johnno260]

I use Strava as it's free, but to be honest I use it to compete vs myself mainly I will check where I am in the split sections but I don't really beat myself up over those as they're probably far fitter than myself, more experienced running better gear etc.

I just like it for self improvement, I am planning on entering my first sportive in the spring and maybe the London to Brighton those I would want to do better in.

 

[Dogtrousers]

What you need to bear in mind with technology is that very little is actually new, even though it appears to be.

Usually it is 'merely' the volume of information, not the type of information.

So in the old days a man with a clipboard would note who was doing what, where and when. It's always been impractical for everyone to have a guy with a clipboard so technology has not achieved something new, but it has made it more readily available.

The reason I point this out is because we are talking about the validity of data, not the volume.

So; why did we trust the clipboard data and do not trust Strava data?

If clipboard data was just as open to abuse as Strava, do we really need to improve the trustworthiness of data?

Or - and this is the potential paradigm shift - can we accept that people cheat in all walks of life and at everything they feasibly can, and just get on with our lives?

I'm not sure it's just about validity. The ability for anyone publish data for all to see is new. Before, recording and publication were in the hands of the governing body. That was their reason for existence.

Take TT's: Strava segments as they stand are a kind of informal TT competition. It wouldn't take much in the way of tweaking to make it into a less informal competition (eg provide a means for data to be witnessed). And over not many years you could possibly see informal TTs run along recognised segments having a similar weight to "officially" recognised TTs, and at least becoming a significant alternative to them.

By the way I'm not a Strava fan. I do log some of my rides on Strava in order to enter a particular challenge that is run only on Strava. (A fact which was part of my thinking when starting this thread) I'm a relatively slow rider, so obviously segments are of no interest to me whatsoever.

 

[Dan B]

I stopped using Strava after I'd been commuting on my fast bike for a few weeks and had tail winds on most of the segments along my regular commute, because it felt like the only way to carry on getting gongs (especially after I finished fixing my commuter bike) was to take more risks or hope for more luck. If it had some better sense of how to aggregate data along a track and give awards for "you're getting consistently better at the whole trip" or "you went faster up all your inclines today than ever before, even though you didn't kill yourself on any specific one" I might have a stuck at it for longer. (This was a couple of years ago, it may have added those features since)

Of course, the other reason I stopped using it is that I was getting tired of standing outside in the cold waiting for my phone gps to get a fix before I could move off.