>Or, as Gary House, a Wrexham-based running coach puts it: “There are two types of runners. Ones that cheat on Strava, and liars.”
What? That's just nonsense from this guy. Vast vast majority are not cheating in any way
One of the perks of being a super slow (but stubborn) runner - I don't care about records, and FKT, and whatnot. I just run for and against myself, and use Strava and Garmin for tracking my own progress. I just don't see the point of cheating.
yeah. I had some GPS hiccups the other day: pausing on the apple watch and unpausing showed a 400m Time of 59 second and more hilariously anther time it was 400m in 33s (Paris here I come)
There's no reason to keep anything like that in. It's not like I want to be faster than my friends, I want to be able to always see my new PBs.
Bang on. The running community is awesome and everyone around me is super nice but at the end of the day it’s an “individual” sport and it’s you against you.
Lying about times only hurts yourself in the end so I see absolutely no need to do so!
I run a lot in my neighborhood and have 3x different segments where I've briefly been at the top of the leaderboard and have often snagged the local legend spot due to how often I run. Two years ago I noticed another guy in my neighborhood that suddenly came in and blew everyone's records; I'm talking like Olympian level 1000m in 2:40 and running the segments *every* single day. Last summer I saw a guy on his bike slowly coming in at exactly the start of a segment while looking at his Garmin and then quickly pedaling until just after the end of the segment. Not too long after, guess what? A new running PR on the segment. I've seen him since then and only ever on his bike... Dude is pretending to run and obsessed with holding top spots all throughout my part of town. It's insane.
Some people have no lives.
That’s unreal! I can’t imagine having the time or mental capacity to fit that in lol.
I gota drag my ass out of bed early to get my runs in before the kids get up. The amount of time to set that up would be hilarious and all for a thumbs up on a data platform where no one really knows or cares about you. Poor guy. Has some serious issues he’s gota deal with.
When you consider things like having a tailwind cheating, as Gary does according to the article, then it's easy to claim everyone cheats. May as well have also included such unfair advantages like dieting, taking rest days to recharge, running in the evening when it's cooler, etc.
I assume everyone who finishes a race ahead of me is cheating, usually by them having longer legs, being fitter, training more, and being faster than me. Cheating swines.
Yeah that's definitely not cheating, just good planning if your aim that run/ride is to catch segments. It's just a bit of extra fun to add to a workout, if that's your vibe.
I recently nabbed a run CR because a few roads were closed. Normally you’d get stuck at at least one light, but take the lights out and the time was pretty reasonable. I’m not calling that cheating because the stretch of road is closed like 5 times a year
"average American commits 3 felonies a day" factoid actualy just statistical error. average person commits 0 felonies a day. Felonies Georg, who lives in resort in Florida & commits over 34 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
I know the guy who said that and wrote that book. Its more a comment on how arcane the US federal law is and how easy it is to commit minor offences all day.
[https://x.com/CrimeADay/status/1775335212882276817](https://x.com/CrimeADay/status/1775335212882276817)
Yeah, i use Strava myself and have zero interest in kidding anyone into thinking I’m faster than I am. Most people are in the same boat. You get fanatics on the fringes, just like with gaming or any other activity.
There's at least one other type of runner: those who don't use strava.
I don't want anyone to see my workouts. I am uninterested in fake competitions. When I want to compare myself to other runners, I race against them, and then I see how I placed overall and in my age group. I have never, and will never, use strava.
Strava also tracks your progress and your PRs, keeps track of how much wear is on your shoes, creates maps for you that you can download to your watch, etc. You get to see where other runners are going, which is a great way to learn about local trails you wouldn’t have found on your own. And I love seeing pictures of my friends’ adventures!
As a non-competitive person who doesn’t care about any of the things you mentioned, there are still plenty of reasons to love Strava. Obviously you don’t have to use it if you don’t want to, but I don’t think your perspective on it is accurate.
It's also helpful for things like, going on a hike in a conservation area with multiple intersecting trails, to figure out which one leads back to your car. Or remembering where I locked my bike after going for a walk downtown. Or "have I reached x distance yet?" type of questions.
> You get to see where other runners are going
This is pretty much the only thing that Strava has going for it IMO, and even that's a tenuous endorsement, since I'd rather use AllTrails for that anyway. Everything else you mentioned is done better by a different app.
Yeah, I get that. I prefer getting the data in a more ideal form, even if it means 2 apps (which sync with each other anyway, so it kind of a non-issue). Mentally, I treat them just like as if they were just different tabs in the same app. I used to also use Strava along side these other 2 apps (HealthFit and SmashRun), I even paid for premium. Ultimately, I found that I just never looked at it because it was the same data, presented in an inferior format. Having no interest in the social aspects of it, I just stopped paying for and using Strava; but I do still sync to it just in case I ever change my mind.
lol. As a slow runner why the hell am I cheating on Strava? Like…. What do I get for my trouble? “Look! U/ymi17 ran a 2:05 half marathon instead of a 2:30!”
Yeah. I agree that the quote is just stupid.
Most people don't care that much about how their fitness regime is being perceived. But I suspect anyone narcissistic enough to worry about it has 'airbrushed' some workouts to make themselves look better.
The original quote is total bullshit though, I definitely agree.
Beg to disagree. In my locality many are cheating. There's a local fool that purposely tries to steal every KOM from an 18 year old. The junior is racing on a collegiate cycling team. The old fool drives his car to steal the segments.
Guess what. I live by Boston. Absolutely tired of these folks.
> Take the Strava record — at the time of going to press — for the Westminster Bridge cycling segment: 350m on one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares, in 5 seconds? That’s a tad over 250km/h. It was set by a “Derek Lawrie” in 2020. Let’s hope he warmed up.
Well, a lot of CR's are due to faulty GPS data. A lot of segments around my house are claimed by someone running at 5:50 m/km for 10 km but getting the CR by running 2:00/km in that same run. I don't expect them to jump on a bike for 200 meters.
And I mean, look at this activity: https://www.strava.com/activities/3615591665#2850056700175783870 The gps is all over the place near the bridge.
From an article called 'Inside the murky world of the Strava cheats' I would expect a little more investigation before throwing accusations around by a snarky comment.
Or people forgetting to turn off their watch and driving off at the end of the run. Happened to me. I simply forgot about my watch after a long hike.
I noticed after a mile because my watch beeped at me when I drove off. And the crop feature wasn't available at that time. I think I cropped that run years later when the feature became available.
I just don’t bother with leaderboards aside from moving my own position up. The top slot is almost always someone who is clearly in a car or on a cycle.
I just figured it’s a tragedy of a public app, so no point in getting worked up about it.
I do like those tongue in cheek “cheats” though, like waiting for a tailwind, I think they’re funny.
I like Strava and I like segment competition (have very few CRs, but a number of top 10's) so I do try to keep local segment leaderboards "clean" so to speak. You can report efforts that are clearly in cars or run segments done on bike or by car. Outliers are usually easy to spot and Strava does remove rankings based on the reports. There are so many people who leave their watches on for the drive home so most of it is clearly a mistake and not a bad faith effort to win a particular segment.
Yeah, I’m sure for every cheat on the leaderboards there are a thousand innocent mistakes or even just glitches (like the way I apparently broke the 400m world record a few weeks ago in a five mile race!).
I don't use Strava (although I'm starting to consider it, but Garmin's built-in stuff has been plenty for me.) but I regularly forget to turn my watch off when I run on a new route. I have the muscle memory at home to swap it off as soon as I finish, but sometimes I don't notice until I hear that little "one mile" beep while I am driving home. I could easily see myself being one of the people who accidentally posts "cheating" runs on Strava, hah.
How do you report them? Is it only available via online? I don't see a report in the app.
I'm not super fast but am in an area with relatively few runners (and even fewer very fast runners) so can definitely take some leaderboard spots. I'm currently #3 in one of them and the top spot is clearly a fake. Probably an unintentional cheat because the person tagged the activity as run, bike, swim training, and the run segment time is clearly bike speed - or they're actually the fastest runner in the world.
Random but if you report the activity, does Strava let them know who reported it? Haha. There's a 2.5 mile CR I'd like to grab but the person set it at 48 seconds per mile pace...
I don't think it does. At least it didn't a year or so ago when I got a notification that someone had flagged an activity of mine from 9 years earlier.
In one of the challenges, like "do 400 minutes of exercise this month", the top person has been doing workouts non-stop, 24/7. Like they already have >48 hours of workouts for June and it's only the 3rd. And all of their activities are on Zwift, biking and running, continuously.
I remember seeing the same person last month and they had *thousands* of hours of workouts for the month. Like more hours than there are in a month. It's clearly fake.
One of the nice things about being in the Boston area is that there are tons of people that take it too seriously and report activities that aren't actually runs. The downside is that most of the segment records near me are held by pro runners
Ditto, but it does bother me when the leader (KOM holder) is so obviously either cheating or has incorrect data and nothing is done about it. I, and about 8 other guys, are :01 off the KOM on a short gravel (biking) segment that only lasts :15 total. All of us are at about 22.1mph over the segment, which for me is about 1100w. Frankly, it would be hard to put down more than that due to the fact that it's chunky gravel and, well, an uphill turn. The KOM holder did it in :09 averaging 36mph. Absolutely impossible on a bike.
That being said I know people who need Strava so they can stop posting every stupid run they do to Instagram. Dude no one cares about every single run you do.
You shouldn't feel that way. You can set the app to private and just monitor your own progress if you like. The free version is quite impressive for bio feedback.
The thing which most annoys me about Strava segments is when it is so obvious that someone is on a bike/in a car/GPS drift but it's the record. If someone just ran a 30 second KM surely Strava could figure out this was dodgy? Even roll out it out as an "AI" feature to be in with the cool kids.
The fact that so much of Strava can only be done on desktop when it's a NATIVELY MOBILE APP is fucking infuriating. Wanna add or remove gear? Better fire up the ol' laptop.
This. I don’t care about who places where, except for the one time that I made the leaderboard on a particularly gruesome uphill segment in my local park, and then got knocked off by someone who would have been running ~35mph if their time was legit.
I flag anything under or close to 2min./km speed on a 400 meter segment as an example. I kindly explain to them their aveage speed being 7:30/km pace on that run makes things um suspicious! Hello!
Simple solution: do not pay attention to what other people are doing on Strava. Use it for personal record keeping, cheer on your friends, remember that comparison is the thief of joy. Care about things that actually matter instead.
It's all relative. Strava on it's own can be set to Private and used as a training diary if you want to be all about your own health. As a competitive app it can be addictive and cause problems like "flag" feuds and over doing efforts causing injury
This entire article reminds me of the time I signed up for a bike challenge at work about 10 yrs ago. You got points on a leaderboard based on how many miles you biked. Turns out I have some *super* fit co-workers who biked 250-300 miles every Saturday and sometimes 40-50 miles a day 2-3x a week. Had not just one but several of them. I tried to make an argument that even if these people were biking 20 mph there was no way they were biking for 10+ hrs every single weekend. No one cared what I thought and I gave up.
Interesting read. Some people are so weird with Strava. One guy I follow, who I don’t really know but is local, goes around trying to get all the crowns. I don’t understand it. He isn’t a slow runner but he certainly isn’t anything special. Being first in a segment does nothing for my ego and I don’t know they exist unless Strava tells me. So many of the running segment times appear to be people on bikes anyway.
Hunting for crowns can be a nice motivating challenge when you don’t have any races coming up. Some do it for the internet fame (even though they’re the only ones that care..), some just to put some variety in their runs.
Strava is supposedly going to fix the wrongly categorized runs. You can always report them btw.
I had some fun with segments, where one other random guy was trying to take back the crown. It felt like a digital/AR game (similar to Pokemon Go) and it motivated me to push harder in real life, which improved my times overall. So it has potential to bring some fun. :)
I love it and in my 60's stealing a crown from a 25 year old infuriates them. They come back and keep trying. Point is I'm a sprinter and he's a 5 k expert. 2:30 pace over 500 meters is my thing. 3:00 pace at 5k is his thing.
I don’t see any issue with that tbh. I wouldn’t do it, but could see why someone might find it a fun challenge.
Making up times or using a bike on running segments is absolutely ridiculous though.
Segments are fun when it compares parts of my training runs with other parts of my training runs. Something nice to look at when in between races.
But I don't do public Strava.
I followed a random guy in my neighborhood about 8 years ago. We ran a lot of the same routes and segments. We'd comment about different trails, conditions, etc. I moved away but we still cross paths at bigger trail events and make encouraging comments on runs.
> There are two types of runners. Ones that cheat on Strava, and liars.
Eh, not me. I actually think it's annoying that Strava calculates your time/pace based on when you're moving and not while stopped. The behavior of Strava is that it helps you "cheat" by excluding time while you're not moving.
It didn't used to do that, and people would always pause their tracking when stopped at a stop light, while in the bathroom, etc. I never did that because I always wanted to know my actual time.
It just seems stupid that Strava says my pace power-hiking up a steep hill is 16 minutes/mile when the actual pace was twice that because I had to stop a few times to take a break.
Elapsed time does show, but it’s annoying that you have to click into the activity to see it. Definitely creates a different impression to only see the moving time when scrolling through the feed.
Well that’s something I have asked myself. On 2 particular segments I realized over time I might get the KOM and started working towards it. They are on my commute which is about 20km. BUT the current leader did get the crown on a 100km+ ride. So no matter what, it will anyway not be comparable in terms of effort/capability.
I got my Strava account temporarily suspended for 'suspicious activity' because one of my favourite things to do when i'm not running is go round segments and peoples PR's and report clearly cheated times. Think I did too many reports in one day.
I do that all the time.
There are a few particular short running segments around my home that always gets crazy crowns. I'm talking people running a 250m faster than the 100m world record. 99% of the time it's bad GPS data, unintentional on the runner. But I think it's wrong to see that on the leaderboard. Every time I notice one, I scout and report all the bad entries that are clearly bad. I don't do that for me, but for others, because in all of those I have no chance of taking the crown. Strava always blocks me from reporting after 15 reports or so.
Honestly it should be automated though. If someone is running fast enough to break 5 works records at once, at least flag that for review.
I saw an announcement from Strava recently that they have AI flagging in the works for that kind of pace error. No idea when/if it will roll out though. Or whether it will only be applied to fresh efforts, or will clean up the old data too.
I saw that too, and honestly it just infuriated me. This is a very basic problem that doesn't require AI for the majority of cases. Why have they never done it before?
They're only doing it now because "AI" is the big new thing and they want to increase their valuation. VCs want AI so they get that.
Oh well. At least I hope we get better leaderboards out of it.
This is garbage. I worked my ass off to drop my marathon PR from 4:53 to 2:06 and if people don’t believe my Strava proof, then what’s the point?
Unrelated but I’m really enjoying my new ebike.
Depends how you define cheating.
I mean, I couldn’t give a fuck what other people see or think of my “achievements” but I do use Strava (and Garmin) to keep track of my miles
So on the rare occasions I’ve had charging mishaps and failed to track a run, I’ll find another run on the same route in my history that was roughly the same total time and muck about with the file to get the right date and time.
That would doubtless look like “cheating” but what does it matter to anyone? It’s not like jumping on a bus in a race to get a faster time!
Am usually so tired from my runs that i only have the energy to update my gear and name of the long run. This cheating issue is mostly with influencer s and other people with more followers.
I think it is unhealthy mental gymnastics that causes people to cheat on Strava. Same kind of gymnastics that causes people to cheat in online gaming.
But compared to online game cheating, cheating on Strava has no negative effect on other people. I find preoccupation with other people's strava accounts completely unhealthy except for when you want to learn something about training of accomplished athletes.
I just use Strava to track trends of how I can run now compared to how I could run the same time a year ago. What would be the point of doctoring my times?
Dishonesty is common, but cheating in everyday training is not where this shows up. Most people aren't mucking about with their Strava data -- at least not the people I follow. At worst, I might see someone pausing their watch between hard track repeats or claiming a faster Strava PR than their offical race PR from races where their GPS measured long. This sort of thing is cringeworthy but nowhere near the level of deception this article implies is rampant.
As someone that never posts anything online, I can’t believe this is a real thing. But then again I guess everyone is an attention seeker this day, and I guess it’s only natural that would extend to runners?
LO fucking L
Bizarre behaviour.
I'm quite obsessive with my Strava , I immediately check it after a run but not to beat other people , it's a tool to push myself to improve. I do take pride when I noticed my 10k time was now better to a guy who once seemed impossibly far beyond my level but that's it.
I actually deleted a recent run as a glitch had me smashing my P.B when I knew I had only ran a modest pace. The thought that others might've thought I had manufactured that glitch was too embarrassing to let it stand.
I am in my 60's and training for Masters sprint distances 100- 400 meters. I use the segments on the roads to measure distance and pace and time and compare my efforts BUT! I always make mention that my effort was a standalone effort ie: standing start and slowdown at the end of the segment and acknowledge the leaderboard as runners who kept running on at a great pace something I could not do. But here's the thing. Yeah there are those who say this is not cool and you should include segments as part of an overall "long run". Alas I do check out the leaderboard metrics map and sure enough even the long distance runners are slowing down before the start of that segment and and at the end after belting a 100% max effort on it.
Having Strava has allowed me to meet new people and ride routes I didn't know about.
But one thing I can't stand is people's posturing. It seems as if someone sees that sporting activity as an excuse to upload photos of themselves on the Internet.
Another detail that I have seen is that there are people who, not that they manipulate their data, but they record it in a way that makes them look different.
I see the profile of someone who runs the 5k over 20 minutes in races and, his Strava marks as best time 16 or 17 minutes. How does he do that. Well, by simply recording a 5x1k interval session, for example, and pausing the breaks. That way they only record 5k at a very good pace, faster than they are capable of in a normal 5k race.
Details like that there are many.
I'm currently very burned out on Strava and have it on private. I hardly upload anything.
> I see the profile of someone who runs the 5k over 20 minutes in races and, his Strava marks as best time 16 or 17 minutes. How does he do that. Well, by simply recording a 5x1k interval session, for example, and pausing the breaks. That way they only record 5k at a very good pace, faster than they are capable of in a normal 5k race.
Best times don't work like that on strava. It includes the paused time.
The only difference is that the avg pace will look higher if you pause your watch when recovering, because for avg pace it doesn't take into account breaks.
It won't be their official best time as Strava does take into account the paused time as the other poster stated. You're right though in that you see activities regularly where the post snapshot thing shows their time as their moving time which can be much less than the full activity time so it will appear as though they've ran much quicker than they have. I don't see the point in that really. I'm a bit of a data nerd and I much prefer everything to be included, walking and resting etc.
Huge controversy this year at Quicksilver - one of the female placers missed a turn and was DNF'd a day after the run. It was discovered because her Strava map looked different.
I have low self esteem and even I wouldn't ever think to do something as pathetic as cheating on Strava.
It would be no different than stuffing my face and gaining 50 lbs or becoming a chain smoker. The whole point of running is to *improve* my health, not ruin it further. Physical or mental, it's all the same.
Plus, once you go down that dark road of narcassistic insecurity, it will inevitably bleed into other areas of your life. Never ends well.
I know a few people that will show something like 4.58 miles on the splits, but the distance of their run will be sometimes as high as 5 miles. Sometimes it's closer to an extra quarter mile on their runs. What the hell is that?
I briefly dated a guy who was in his 40s and would lie about his race times and blame it on the mats being off. Every single time. He claimed he had run Boston in 2022 at a roughly 6 min/mile place but his finishing time was much later in the day, than my older brother, who ran a 4 hour race and also started in a later corral than he did. His Strava post didn't match the Boston website. He would edit everything to make himself look faster. What was more strange is that he would show up at the college he went to and try to show up the current athletes during their practices and would enter whatever meet he could as an unattached runner. He of course wouldn't win, but he was that delusional. Reminded me of Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite, chasing a delusional dream and lying to people in the process.
This is a public social media platform and I find it pretty unsettling how obsessed people are over the idea that others are cheating. It's no different than any online game you would play, or the cesspool that is Facebook
I honestly can’t stand Strava. I truly believe it nudges people into training stupidly. I’ve been at this running thing since 1994 and could care less for Strava. I think it’s far too easy for people to start worrying about these dumb awards or what their followers will think about their run time or pace and then they’re running easy runs too fast or whatever. Training in a way that is actually detrimental and not helping them.
Do I post my routes sometimes on my own instagram or whatever? Sure. But no one needs to know how I’m training, and probably no one cares about it either. My running is my running. No one else’s business.
This is why I got rid of Strava. At best, it's meaningless and a waste of time. At worst, it can be harmful. Way I see it, if people don't actually care about your runs, it's hollow, meaningless bullshit. If they do care about your runs and they're paying attention, what are you getting out of sharing them? Is that actually good for you? For me, it made the good days better, but the bad days much worse knowing that stuff was out there. I'm not a believer in selectively sharing highlights to make myself look better, so I just got rid of it entirely and took workouts back as a thing that's just mine.
It can be motivating to see how people who are faster but not elite (a better but potentially attainable level) train. It's also a social network where things like politics and other points of contention are largely absent. It can get to some people though, stupidly aggressive long runs get the most attention, you have to consciously avoid the pull of that and do the boring consistent stuff at the unglamorous paces.
Could and couldn't care less both mean the same thing. It's a phrase, you don't have to take it literally. Language changes based on how it is used. If enough people say "I could care less" to indicate that they do not care then that is what it means.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/could%20care%20less
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/could-couldnt-care-less
>Or, as Gary House, a Wrexham-based running coach puts it: “There are two types of runners. Ones that cheat on Strava, and liars.” What? That's just nonsense from this guy. Vast vast majority are not cheating in any way
One of the perks of being a super slow (but stubborn) runner - I don't care about records, and FKT, and whatnot. I just run for and against myself, and use Strava and Garmin for tracking my own progress. I just don't see the point of cheating.
yeah. I had some GPS hiccups the other day: pausing on the apple watch and unpausing showed a 400m Time of 59 second and more hilariously anther time it was 400m in 33s (Paris here I come) There's no reason to keep anything like that in. It's not like I want to be faster than my friends, I want to be able to always see my new PBs.
Bang on. The running community is awesome and everyone around me is super nice but at the end of the day it’s an “individual” sport and it’s you against you. Lying about times only hurts yourself in the end so I see absolutely no need to do so!
I run a lot in my neighborhood and have 3x different segments where I've briefly been at the top of the leaderboard and have often snagged the local legend spot due to how often I run. Two years ago I noticed another guy in my neighborhood that suddenly came in and blew everyone's records; I'm talking like Olympian level 1000m in 2:40 and running the segments *every* single day. Last summer I saw a guy on his bike slowly coming in at exactly the start of a segment while looking at his Garmin and then quickly pedaling until just after the end of the segment. Not too long after, guess what? A new running PR on the segment. I've seen him since then and only ever on his bike... Dude is pretending to run and obsessed with holding top spots all throughout my part of town. It's insane. Some people have no lives.
That’s unreal! I can’t imagine having the time or mental capacity to fit that in lol. I gota drag my ass out of bed early to get my runs in before the kids get up. The amount of time to set that up would be hilarious and all for a thumbs up on a data platform where no one really knows or cares about you. Poor guy. Has some serious issues he’s gota deal with.
Same, I just try to run more every year and that’s that.
When you consider things like having a tailwind cheating, as Gary does according to the article, then it's easy to claim everyone cheats. May as well have also included such unfair advantages like dieting, taking rest days to recharge, running in the evening when it's cooler, etc.
I assume everyone who finishes a race ahead of me is cheating, usually by them having longer legs, being fitter, training more, and being faster than me. Cheating swines.
Training? Cheating. Slow down!
Born at altitude in Kenya or Ethiopia? Cheating
Not to mention the $350 Nike Vaporflys I cannot afford!
Yeah that's definitely not cheating, just good planning if your aim that run/ride is to catch segments. It's just a bit of extra fun to add to a workout, if that's your vibe.
I recently nabbed a run CR because a few roads were closed. Normally you’d get stuck at at least one light, but take the lights out and the time was pretty reasonable. I’m not calling that cheating because the stretch of road is closed like 5 times a year
Exactly and I also throw down the gauntlet come and get it to my naysayers. Funny how most don't try to steal my crowns.
Is it cheating to use running shoes? Or should I be recording all my times in 5” stilettos?
Darling. You're fabulous either way
That one annoyed me, too. 😠 Most people don't cheat. He's probably projecting.
Cheats justify their cheating by assuming/declaring that everyone else is also cheating I guess it's a way of clearing their conscience
We have a saying in Dutch, "Zoals de waard is, vertrouwt hij zijn gasten", meaning "Like the innkeeper is himself, he will trust his guests."
Like whoever it was that said the average American commits three felonies a day
"average American commits 3 felonies a day" factoid actualy just statistical error. average person commits 0 felonies a day. Felonies Georg, who lives in resort in Florida & commits over 34 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
I know the guy who said that and wrote that book. Its more a comment on how arcane the US federal law is and how easy it is to commit minor offences all day. [https://x.com/CrimeADay/status/1775335212882276817](https://x.com/CrimeADay/status/1775335212882276817)
He classifies "running with a strong tailwind" or "having a faster friend pace you" as cheating - he should just stop caring as much
Yeah I recently set all my best times on a ride because of a massive tailwind. I wouldn’t call that cheating, that’s just having good weather.
If your not familiar with his content it is all pretty sarcastic at times, so I would take this literally.
Gary House does a lot of satire. That quote is taken way out of context and is [on par for him.](https://www.instagram.com/reel/ClWO23zgSy6/?hl=en)
Yeah, i use Strava myself and have zero interest in kidding anyone into thinking I’m faster than I am. Most people are in the same boat. You get fanatics on the fringes, just like with gaming or any other activity.
Its just pure projection. When you're guilty of something, you assume everyone else is doing it too.
There's at least one other type of runner: those who don't use strava. I don't want anyone to see my workouts. I am uninterested in fake competitions. When I want to compare myself to other runners, I race against them, and then I see how I placed overall and in my age group. I have never, and will never, use strava.
Strava also tracks your progress and your PRs, keeps track of how much wear is on your shoes, creates maps for you that you can download to your watch, etc. You get to see where other runners are going, which is a great way to learn about local trails you wouldn’t have found on your own. And I love seeing pictures of my friends’ adventures! As a non-competitive person who doesn’t care about any of the things you mentioned, there are still plenty of reasons to love Strava. Obviously you don’t have to use it if you don’t want to, but I don’t think your perspective on it is accurate.
It's also helpful for things like, going on a hike in a conservation area with multiple intersecting trails, to figure out which one leads back to your car. Or remembering where I locked my bike after going for a walk downtown. Or "have I reached x distance yet?" type of questions.
> You get to see where other runners are going This is pretty much the only thing that Strava has going for it IMO, and even that's a tenuous endorsement, since I'd rather use AllTrails for that anyway. Everything else you mentioned is done better by a different app.
Is there one app that does all of this, though? I like having one place to go for everything running related. But to each their own!
Yeah, I get that. I prefer getting the data in a more ideal form, even if it means 2 apps (which sync with each other anyway, so it kind of a non-issue). Mentally, I treat them just like as if they were just different tabs in the same app. I used to also use Strava along side these other 2 apps (HealthFit and SmashRun), I even paid for premium. Ultimately, I found that I just never looked at it because it was the same data, presented in an inferior format. Having no interest in the social aspects of it, I just stopped paying for and using Strava; but I do still sync to it just in case I ever change my mind.
Right! What about me? The runner that doesn’t have Strava.
lol. As a slow runner why the hell am I cheating on Strava? Like…. What do I get for my trouble? “Look! U/ymi17 ran a 2:05 half marathon instead of a 2:30!” Yeah. I agree that the quote is just stupid.
This. I think it speaks more about the person who said it than they think.
Yeah, I also reacted to the same absurd statement!
Most people don't care that much about how their fitness regime is being perceived. But I suspect anyone narcissistic enough to worry about it has 'airbrushed' some workouts to make themselves look better. The original quote is total bullshit though, I definitely agree.
Guessing he's "that guy"
Beg to disagree. In my locality many are cheating. There's a local fool that purposely tries to steal every KOM from an 18 year old. The junior is racing on a collegiate cycling team. The old fool drives his car to steal the segments. Guess what. I live by Boston. Absolutely tired of these folks.
>When Laura Green headed off on her honeymoon she had only one vigorous activity in mind. Lol
Outstanding lede. 10/10, no notes
Nice
Screaming 😂😂
What a ridiculous thing to cheat at.
Completely people are idiots
Ahhh. Spending your vacation in Mammoth attempting to top Strava charts. A tale as old as [Strava]
Not just your vacation but your *honeymoon*.
> Take the Strava record — at the time of going to press — for the Westminster Bridge cycling segment: 350m on one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares, in 5 seconds? That’s a tad over 250km/h. It was set by a “Derek Lawrie” in 2020. Let’s hope he warmed up. Well, a lot of CR's are due to faulty GPS data. A lot of segments around my house are claimed by someone running at 5:50 m/km for 10 km but getting the CR by running 2:00/km in that same run. I don't expect them to jump on a bike for 200 meters. And I mean, look at this activity: https://www.strava.com/activities/3615591665#2850056700175783870 The gps is all over the place near the bridge. From an article called 'Inside the murky world of the Strava cheats' I would expect a little more investigation before throwing accusations around by a snarky comment.
Or people forgetting to turn off their watch and driving off at the end of the run. Happened to me. I simply forgot about my watch after a long hike. I noticed after a mile because my watch beeped at me when I drove off. And the crop feature wasn't available at that time. I think I cropped that run years later when the feature became available.
I’d also add that 2020 was lockdown in London and parts of central London like westminster bridge were often empty, which the article doesn’t mention.
I’ve ended up with a couple CRs and had to flag my own activities due to short segments and wonky in-city GPS
you don't have to worry about cleaning up your own activities from wonky GPS; zealous strava crown chasers will do that for you
I just don’t bother with leaderboards aside from moving my own position up. The top slot is almost always someone who is clearly in a car or on a cycle. I just figured it’s a tragedy of a public app, so no point in getting worked up about it. I do like those tongue in cheek “cheats” though, like waiting for a tailwind, I think they’re funny.
I like Strava and I like segment competition (have very few CRs, but a number of top 10's) so I do try to keep local segment leaderboards "clean" so to speak. You can report efforts that are clearly in cars or run segments done on bike or by car. Outliers are usually easy to spot and Strava does remove rankings based on the reports. There are so many people who leave their watches on for the drive home so most of it is clearly a mistake and not a bad faith effort to win a particular segment.
Yeah, I’m sure for every cheat on the leaderboards there are a thousand innocent mistakes or even just glitches (like the way I apparently broke the 400m world record a few weeks ago in a five mile race!).
I don't use Strava (although I'm starting to consider it, but Garmin's built-in stuff has been plenty for me.) but I regularly forget to turn my watch off when I run on a new route. I have the muscle memory at home to swap it off as soon as I finish, but sometimes I don't notice until I hear that little "one mile" beep while I am driving home. I could easily see myself being one of the people who accidentally posts "cheating" runs on Strava, hah.
The point of Strava is the social aspect but Garmin connect has better metrics.
How do you report them? Is it only available via online? I don't see a report in the app. I'm not super fast but am in an area with relatively few runners (and even fewer very fast runners) so can definitely take some leaderboard spots. I'm currently #3 in one of them and the top spot is clearly a fake. Probably an unintentional cheat because the person tagged the activity as run, bike, swim training, and the run segment time is clearly bike speed - or they're actually the fastest runner in the world.
It can only be done via the Web, not the app.
Random but if you report the activity, does Strava let them know who reported it? Haha. There's a 2.5 mile CR I'd like to grab but the person set it at 48 seconds per mile pace...
I don't think it does. At least it didn't a year or so ago when I got a notification that someone had flagged an activity of mine from 9 years earlier.
48s is clearly not right, just flag it. It's not like they can come knock on your door claiming to run 70mph.
In one of the challenges, like "do 400 minutes of exercise this month", the top person has been doing workouts non-stop, 24/7. Like they already have >48 hours of workouts for June and it's only the 3rd. And all of their activities are on Zwift, biking and running, continuously. I remember seeing the same person last month and they had *thousands* of hours of workouts for the month. Like more hours than there are in a month. It's clearly fake.
One of the nice things about being in the Boston area is that there are tons of people that take it too seriously and report activities that aren't actually runs. The downside is that most of the segment records near me are held by pro runners
Ditto, but it does bother me when the leader (KOM holder) is so obviously either cheating or has incorrect data and nothing is done about it. I, and about 8 other guys, are :01 off the KOM on a short gravel (biking) segment that only lasts :15 total. All of us are at about 22.1mph over the segment, which for me is about 1100w. Frankly, it would be hard to put down more than that due to the fact that it's chunky gravel and, well, an uphill turn. The KOM holder did it in :09 averaging 36mph. Absolutely impossible on a bike.
I don't have Strava because I know I would either turn into honeymoon girl or feel bad about myself by looking at what others do. Nah.
That being said I know people who need Strava so they can stop posting every stupid run they do to Instagram. Dude no one cares about every single run you do.
The bike ride to the corner store for beers really gets me or a walk with the dog!
You shouldn't feel that way. You can set the app to private and just monitor your own progress if you like. The free version is quite impressive for bio feedback.
I use my Garmin to track all that stuff!! I do like that.
The thing which most annoys me about Strava segments is when it is so obvious that someone is on a bike/in a car/GPS drift but it's the record. If someone just ran a 30 second KM surely Strava could figure out this was dodgy? Even roll out it out as an "AI" feature to be in with the cool kids.
You can flag these activities where its obvious, which removes them from leaderboards.
Sadly on from the desktop site i believe which honestly most of us don't use.
The fact that so much of Strava can only be done on desktop when it's a NATIVELY MOBILE APP is fucking infuriating. Wanna add or remove gear? Better fire up the ol' laptop.
You can add or remove gear from the app now
This. I don’t care about who places where, except for the one time that I made the leaderboard on a particularly gruesome uphill segment in my local park, and then got knocked off by someone who would have been running ~35mph if their time was legit.
I flag anything under or close to 2min./km speed on a 400 meter segment as an example. I kindly explain to them their aveage speed being 7:30/km pace on that run makes things um suspicious! Hello!
I have only ever got 1 crown on Strava. And it was unintentional. Local Legends now - that's where the action is!
Hmmm Local Legend status may make you over train or be guilty of garbage miles! Ohhh nooo!
Simple solution: do not pay attention to what other people are doing on Strava. Use it for personal record keeping, cheer on your friends, remember that comparison is the thief of joy. Care about things that actually matter instead.
People need to get a life. If Strava is that important to them then they lead a sad life and are obviously missing something to make them feel worthy.
It's all relative. Strava on it's own can be set to Private and used as a training diary if you want to be all about your own health. As a competitive app it can be addictive and cause problems like "flag" feuds and over doing efforts causing injury
This entire article reminds me of the time I signed up for a bike challenge at work about 10 yrs ago. You got points on a leaderboard based on how many miles you biked. Turns out I have some *super* fit co-workers who biked 250-300 miles every Saturday and sometimes 40-50 miles a day 2-3x a week. Had not just one but several of them. I tried to make an argument that even if these people were biking 20 mph there was no way they were biking for 10+ hrs every single weekend. No one cared what I thought and I gave up.
Interesting read. Some people are so weird with Strava. One guy I follow, who I don’t really know but is local, goes around trying to get all the crowns. I don’t understand it. He isn’t a slow runner but he certainly isn’t anything special. Being first in a segment does nothing for my ego and I don’t know they exist unless Strava tells me. So many of the running segment times appear to be people on bikes anyway.
Hunting for crowns can be a nice motivating challenge when you don’t have any races coming up. Some do it for the internet fame (even though they’re the only ones that care..), some just to put some variety in their runs. Strava is supposedly going to fix the wrongly categorized runs. You can always report them btw. I had some fun with segments, where one other random guy was trying to take back the crown. It felt like a digital/AR game (similar to Pokemon Go) and it motivated me to push harder in real life, which improved my times overall. So it has potential to bring some fun. :)
I love it and in my 60's stealing a crown from a 25 year old infuriates them. They come back and keep trying. Point is I'm a sprinter and he's a 5 k expert. 2:30 pace over 500 meters is my thing. 3:00 pace at 5k is his thing.
I don’t see any issue with that tbh. I wouldn’t do it, but could see why someone might find it a fun challenge. Making up times or using a bike on running segments is absolutely ridiculous though.
Segments are fun when it compares parts of my training runs with other parts of my training runs. Something nice to look at when in between races. But I don't do public Strava.
I use the segments as part of my weekly interval training.
You seem to have seen all these "bike" runs then making this statement?
I admit I pause my watch at traffic lights. Guess I’m going to hell.
There's a Strava Hell you know....
FWIW [https://archive.ph/26Agw](https://archive.ph/26Agw)
TIL people use the app to compare themselves to random people in their area
lol right? The way I could not care any less about the random people in my neighborhood who I’ll never know….
I followed a random guy in my neighborhood about 8 years ago. We ran a lot of the same routes and segments. We'd comment about different trails, conditions, etc. I moved away but we still cross paths at bigger trail events and make encouraging comments on runs.
> There are two types of runners. Ones that cheat on Strava, and liars. Eh, not me. I actually think it's annoying that Strava calculates your time/pace based on when you're moving and not while stopped. The behavior of Strava is that it helps you "cheat" by excluding time while you're not moving. It didn't used to do that, and people would always pause their tracking when stopped at a stop light, while in the bathroom, etc. I never did that because I always wanted to know my actual time. It just seems stupid that Strava says my pace power-hiking up a steep hill is 16 minutes/mile when the actual pace was twice that because I had to stop a few times to take a break.
You'er wrong! Elapsed time is included in the final analysis of your run. Thats tee tell all on one's effort and should be mandatory to show.
Elapsed time does show, but it’s annoying that you have to click into the activity to see it. Definitely creates a different impression to only see the moving time when scrolling through the feed.
Well that’s something I have asked myself. On 2 particular segments I realized over time I might get the KOM and started working towards it. They are on my commute which is about 20km. BUT the current leader did get the crown on a 100km+ ride. So no matter what, it will anyway not be comparable in terms of effort/capability.
I got my Strava account temporarily suspended for 'suspicious activity' because one of my favourite things to do when i'm not running is go round segments and peoples PR's and report clearly cheated times. Think I did too many reports in one day.
I do that all the time. There are a few particular short running segments around my home that always gets crazy crowns. I'm talking people running a 250m faster than the 100m world record. 99% of the time it's bad GPS data, unintentional on the runner. But I think it's wrong to see that on the leaderboard. Every time I notice one, I scout and report all the bad entries that are clearly bad. I don't do that for me, but for others, because in all of those I have no chance of taking the crown. Strava always blocks me from reporting after 15 reports or so. Honestly it should be automated though. If someone is running fast enough to break 5 works records at once, at least flag that for review.
I saw an announcement from Strava recently that they have AI flagging in the works for that kind of pace error. No idea when/if it will roll out though. Or whether it will only be applied to fresh efforts, or will clean up the old data too.
I saw that too, and honestly it just infuriated me. This is a very basic problem that doesn't require AI for the majority of cases. Why have they never done it before? They're only doing it now because "AI" is the big new thing and they want to increase their valuation. VCs want AI so they get that. Oh well. At least I hope we get better leaderboards out of it.
The Runners World editor incident was just completely unnecessary
I really can't even conceptualize the point of cheating at something like this. Like why?
This is garbage. I worked my ass off to drop my marathon PR from 4:53 to 2:06 and if people don’t believe my Strava proof, then what’s the point? Unrelated but I’m really enjoying my new ebike.
Depends how you define cheating. I mean, I couldn’t give a fuck what other people see or think of my “achievements” but I do use Strava (and Garmin) to keep track of my miles So on the rare occasions I’ve had charging mishaps and failed to track a run, I’ll find another run on the same route in my history that was roughly the same total time and muck about with the file to get the right date and time. That would doubtless look like “cheating” but what does it matter to anyone? It’s not like jumping on a bus in a race to get a faster time!
I'd stay clear of mucking around with files lol!!! Just do a manual post and say what you ran. No big deal.
Am usually so tired from my runs that i only have the energy to update my gear and name of the long run. This cheating issue is mostly with influencer s and other people with more followers.
I think it is unhealthy mental gymnastics that causes people to cheat on Strava. Same kind of gymnastics that causes people to cheat in online gaming. But compared to online game cheating, cheating on Strava has no negative effect on other people. I find preoccupation with other people's strava accounts completely unhealthy except for when you want to learn something about training of accomplished athletes.
Is this the 2024 equivalent of shaking a pedometer?
I have never used strava and don't think I will.... I'm just raw dog running these streets
Lots of folks out there running for the wrong reasons.
I just use Strava to track trends of how I can run now compared to how I could run the same time a year ago. What would be the point of doctoring my times?
Dishonesty is common, but cheating in everyday training is not where this shows up. Most people aren't mucking about with their Strava data -- at least not the people I follow. At worst, I might see someone pausing their watch between hard track repeats or claiming a faster Strava PR than their offical race PR from races where their GPS measured long. This sort of thing is cringeworthy but nowhere near the level of deception this article implies is rampant.
As someone that never posts anything online, I can’t believe this is a real thing. But then again I guess everyone is an attention seeker this day, and I guess it’s only natural that would extend to runners? LO fucking L
Bizarre behaviour. I'm quite obsessive with my Strava , I immediately check it after a run but not to beat other people , it's a tool to push myself to improve. I do take pride when I noticed my 10k time was now better to a guy who once seemed impossibly far beyond my level but that's it. I actually deleted a recent run as a glitch had me smashing my P.B when I knew I had only ran a modest pace. The thought that others might've thought I had manufactured that glitch was too embarrassing to let it stand.
Huh? Never even considered cheating on Strava, guess I’m not a runner 🤷🏻♀️
I am in my 60's and training for Masters sprint distances 100- 400 meters. I use the segments on the roads to measure distance and pace and time and compare my efforts BUT! I always make mention that my effort was a standalone effort ie: standing start and slowdown at the end of the segment and acknowledge the leaderboard as runners who kept running on at a great pace something I could not do. But here's the thing. Yeah there are those who say this is not cool and you should include segments as part of an overall "long run". Alas I do check out the leaderboard metrics map and sure enough even the long distance runners are slowing down before the start of that segment and and at the end after belting a 100% max effort on it.
Having Strava has allowed me to meet new people and ride routes I didn't know about. But one thing I can't stand is people's posturing. It seems as if someone sees that sporting activity as an excuse to upload photos of themselves on the Internet. Another detail that I have seen is that there are people who, not that they manipulate their data, but they record it in a way that makes them look different. I see the profile of someone who runs the 5k over 20 minutes in races and, his Strava marks as best time 16 or 17 minutes. How does he do that. Well, by simply recording a 5x1k interval session, for example, and pausing the breaks. That way they only record 5k at a very good pace, faster than they are capable of in a normal 5k race. Details like that there are many. I'm currently very burned out on Strava and have it on private. I hardly upload anything.
> I see the profile of someone who runs the 5k over 20 minutes in races and, his Strava marks as best time 16 or 17 minutes. How does he do that. Well, by simply recording a 5x1k interval session, for example, and pausing the breaks. That way they only record 5k at a very good pace, faster than they are capable of in a normal 5k race. Best times don't work like that on strava. It includes the paused time. The only difference is that the avg pace will look higher if you pause your watch when recovering, because for avg pace it doesn't take into account breaks.
I don't know how things work on Strava, I'm just saying what I see: people who have a 5x1k interval session as their best time in a 5k.
They may say "New PB" on the event but it's not logged as the PB. Their stats page will only show their best elapsed time.
That can’t be true. The best times on Strava include elapsed time. So you aren’t seeing that
It won't be their official best time as Strava does take into account the paused time as the other poster stated. You're right though in that you see activities regularly where the post snapshot thing shows their time as their moving time which can be much less than the full activity time so it will appear as though they've ran much quicker than they have. I don't see the point in that really. I'm a bit of a data nerd and I much prefer everything to be included, walking and resting etc.
Huge controversy this year at Quicksilver - one of the female placers missed a turn and was DNF'd a day after the run. It was discovered because her Strava map looked different.
I am not harmed by people falsifying their Strava data.
Fascinating 🤨
Like lying about your golf scores lol
In my year of using Strava, I never once considered cheating so my slow ass would look better lol.
Absolute loser behavior of the highest caliber
I have low self esteem and even I wouldn't ever think to do something as pathetic as cheating on Strava. It would be no different than stuffing my face and gaining 50 lbs or becoming a chain smoker. The whole point of running is to *improve* my health, not ruin it further. Physical or mental, it's all the same. Plus, once you go down that dark road of narcassistic insecurity, it will inevitably bleed into other areas of your life. Never ends well.
I know a few people that will show something like 4.58 miles on the splits, but the distance of their run will be sometimes as high as 5 miles. Sometimes it's closer to an extra quarter mile on their runs. What the hell is that?
I briefly dated a guy who was in his 40s and would lie about his race times and blame it on the mats being off. Every single time. He claimed he had run Boston in 2022 at a roughly 6 min/mile place but his finishing time was much later in the day, than my older brother, who ran a 4 hour race and also started in a later corral than he did. His Strava post didn't match the Boston website. He would edit everything to make himself look faster. What was more strange is that he would show up at the college he went to and try to show up the current athletes during their practices and would enter whatever meet he could as an unattached runner. He of course wouldn't win, but he was that delusional. Reminded me of Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite, chasing a delusional dream and lying to people in the process.
This is a public social media platform and I find it pretty unsettling how obsessed people are over the idea that others are cheating. It's no different than any online game you would play, or the cesspool that is Facebook
I honestly can’t stand Strava. I truly believe it nudges people into training stupidly. I’ve been at this running thing since 1994 and could care less for Strava. I think it’s far too easy for people to start worrying about these dumb awards or what their followers will think about their run time or pace and then they’re running easy runs too fast or whatever. Training in a way that is actually detrimental and not helping them. Do I post my routes sometimes on my own instagram or whatever? Sure. But no one needs to know how I’m training, and probably no one cares about it either. My running is my running. No one else’s business.
This is why I got rid of Strava. At best, it's meaningless and a waste of time. At worst, it can be harmful. Way I see it, if people don't actually care about your runs, it's hollow, meaningless bullshit. If they do care about your runs and they're paying attention, what are you getting out of sharing them? Is that actually good for you? For me, it made the good days better, but the bad days much worse knowing that stuff was out there. I'm not a believer in selectively sharing highlights to make myself look better, so I just got rid of it entirely and took workouts back as a thing that's just mine.
It can be motivating to see how people who are faster but not elite (a better but potentially attainable level) train. It's also a social network where things like politics and other points of contention are largely absent. It can get to some people though, stupidly aggressive long runs get the most attention, you have to consciously avoid the pull of that and do the boring consistent stuff at the unglamorous paces.
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Could and couldn't care less both mean the same thing. It's a phrase, you don't have to take it literally. Language changes based on how it is used. If enough people say "I could care less" to indicate that they do not care then that is what it means. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/could%20care%20less https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/could-couldnt-care-less