Strava Live Segments - tracking issue and suggestions
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Hey, I am not sure how many people care about Strava Live Segments but that is one of the most important features to me because I find it very useful for assessing my trail running performance. I like to periodically push the same segments and see how I am doing against my previous runs and against others.
First of all, I wanted to report what seems to be a bug. On my last run Strava Live Segments S+ app stopped tracking a long segment in the middle for no apparent reason. Here is a screenshot that compares my GPX track (blue) against the segment track (red):
This is a 6 mile segment and it dropped off it somewhere around mile 4 or 5. As you can see the tracking was spot on and Strava has matched that segment successfully. Previously, I’ve successfully tracked the same segment with my Race S. If whoever wants to further look into this, I can share the tracks.
While I am happy to have Live Segments on my Race S, the implementation is quite limited compared to both Garmin and Coros. Here is what would be really nice to improve:
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When not tracking any segment, the watch shows distance to the nearest segment, but it doesn’t show the name of the segment. It would be great to choose what segment I want to track in case there are multiple segments nearby. On Garmin, I can cancel the nearest segment and then it switches to another nearest segment.
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It would be great to use color to emphasize whether my current effort is behind or ahead of my previous best attempt, for example green for being ahead and red for being behind. It is hard understand whether I am ahead or behind looking at just the +/- sign, especially that it is different on Suunto vs. Garmin. Garmin shows being ahead with the plus sign, while Suunto shows being ahead with the minus sign. Arguably, plus has a positive connotation and minus has a negative connotation - that’s probably where the confusion comes from.
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Showing the time ahead or behind up to the 0.1 precision is distracting and unnecessary - it makes it harder to quickly glance at the data. That is especially unnecessary considering the overall very low accuracy of estimation of the time ahead or behind when running on trails with steep terrain. I am not sure how the algorithm calculates that, but the time ahead/behind often jumps sharply by 30-60 seconds when the terrain changes
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BUG: Once I run into an issue where it showed me “_ooooooooo h” as the time ahead/behind. That got stuck and didn’t change until the end of the segment.
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Showing the live pace is unnecessary. It would be more useful to see the elapsed time on the segment.
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Would be great to be able to compete against the segment CR in addition to competing against my PR. Garmin can do that. Coros also allows to choose a target - which time you want to compete against.
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Tracking only 20 live segments isn’t sufficient. I’ll explain that further below.
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Garmin is able to sync and track downhill live running segments, while Suunto isn’t. It is true that according to Strava documentation it doesn’t sync downhill segment, but in fact that applies only to cycling segments. Downhill running segments sync just fine to Garmin devices. If we consider trail running, not having downhill segments doesn’t make much sense.
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Any chance to show the currently tracked segment on the map? Garmin devices can do that. Similarly, would it be possible to show the segment progress on the elevation profile? That would be a killer feature.
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It is annoying that enabling Live Segments S+ app doesn’t “stick” in the sport settings and I have to enable it every single time before every run. Because of that I don’t get live segments on most of my runs.
Now, let’s discuss the very small number of segments being synced to my device - Race S. I am not sure if that is device specific or limited by Strava, but here is the main reason why that isn’t good. Normally I’d like to keep a larger number of favorite segments starred on Strava and periodically return to them. Those are usually popular climbs or iconic loops. Many of them are longer and difficult to locate on Strava. So I like to keep them starred on Strava. But if I have more then 20 segments starred on Strava, that means I am no longer in control of which exact segments are synced to the watch, which basically forces me to unstar most segments on Strava and star specific segments before each run when I am going to a specific area. But sadly, that isn’t easy because segment discovery on Strava is bad and many segments that I consider the most interesting aren’t easy to find. So this limitation of 20 segments makes the live segments feature overall much less usable to me. For comparison, Garmin Fenix devices can sync 100 segments. Also, as I mentioned above, Garmin Fenix devices can sync downhill running segments, which makes the feature even more useful for trail runners.
Finally, I’d like to mention one important advantage of Suunto’s implementation of Strava Live Segments over other brands! Suunto implementation is the only one that can combine live segments with navigation. That is important because some segments can be remote and hard to reach without navigation. My typical use case is to target a few segments along a route of a long weekend run and try to run them a bit harder. I can do that with my Race S, but other brands like Garmin and Coros disable live segments when navigation is present.
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@sky-runner thank, I was wondering exactly the same.
I used the Polar Vantage V2 and you can also choose or reject the named segment near by.I was really disappointed when I saw how bad was the Strava guide
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@vincentA Yes, it is absolutely minimal.
I think between Garmin, Suunto, Coros, and Polar, the worst Live segments implementation is on Suunto.Unfortunately not many people seem to care even though, I think, for trail running this is a really under-appreciated feature. This is the best way to compare efforts on variable terrain in real time.
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Also, I wanted to add that when considering Strava live segments people mostly think about very short sprint like segments. But I think the real value in medium to long segments that are complete logical routes, for example an entire push from a trailhead to a mountain summit or an entire popular route such as an FKT route - see https://fastestknowntime.com/.
This is where live segments have a lot of value. Using a segment becomes more like a virtual race where you try to improve your previous result or chase the record, or perhaps even chase a person ahead of you on the leaderboard. By the way, Coros allows to choose which time you want to compete against - see https://support.coros.com/hc/en-us/articles/32280188180372-Using-Strava-Live-Segments-on-COROS-Watches
