Not exactly sure where to post re: strava

Hi all,
Does anyone else use strava to record their physical activities such as running, cycling, hiking, snowshoeing, cross country skiing, skating …?

Anyway, what would it take to get strava to put in a “unicycling” category? I use cycling and then I select that I am using a unicycle, and I always title my rides as uni rides because I feel like cycling and unicycling are two very different sports.

Cheers,
Dawson

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There’s been email campaigns and all for years to try to have Unicycle as a new category. So far, it hasn’t happened. Most riders I know do as you do, or put “unicycle” in their account name.

I’m a Strava Premium user, so I thought I would take another tilt at this windmill. I left some feedback in the support app, roughly “There is a strong, active unicyclist community on Strava, we need to distinguish unicycle from bike, you have handcycle and roller ski, why not unicycle?”

There was an attempt to get unicycle as an activity type via the Community feature request thing a few years ago, which got nowhere.

[Added in edit]
I’ve just seen this in Strava Support:

Please be aware that most of Strava’s features are currently only available for our three core activity types, riding, running, and swimming.

So the unicycling activity type should be a straight clone of cycling, but that might not be feasible.

I was also in favor of having a separate category, but now I think it is fine like it is. I have actually come to enjoy competing against bikers on some climbing segments. If unicycling would be separate from cycling, segments (great way to find new trails) and leaderboards would be pretty useless since there are so few riders.

5 Likes

I too have submitted this support ticket, and have been doing so regularly for several years, nothing has come of it yet.

Same for me, just simply love to try to beat bicyclists in uphill riding and get some well earned Queen of the mountain titles and I also like to be able to share my rides with for example my universitys bicycle community on Strava. If this would be still possible when Strava would have Unicycling I would use this function and would be very happy about it if not I would probably stick to declaring it as bicycling.

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Also a Strava user. I seem to favour recording activities with unsupported forms of cycling. For most of my uploads I am doing one of the following:

  • Unicycle
  • Penny farthing
  • (non-electric) Kick scooter

The lack of separate categories does make a complete mess of my personal records, e.g. the unicycle and kick scooter are worlds apart. Up a steep hill kick scooting is slower than unicycling but downhill that freewheel really helps. Thus all my uphill segment records are on a unicycle, all flat segments are on the penny and all downhill are on the scooter.

More categories of activities would certainly help.

That said, I agree with the others it can be fun to compete with the normal bicyclists for certain segments. There is a road segment near me that is 1.82km long with 122m elevation (avg. 6.7%). I am reasonably competitive with some cyclists I meet around there, including some I know personally (but still way off the top end, hardcore obviously). Last time I did this segment, I completed it in 7 minutes and 18 seconds on a 26" unicycle (that is about 15km/h) and as I went up there I overtook two guys in lycra. I was wearing a t-shirt, brown shorts and … sandals. :wink:

What that tells me is you can still have fun competing in real life and for the most part a unicycle category would be better.

P.S. I am surprised there is not even a fixie category. They are more of them than us and it would be somewhat more comparable for certain types of unicycling. I would use that if I could.

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I’ll also add that I do not hold out much hope of there every being a unicycle category but I will continue to use Strava anyway.

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I don’t think I’ll ever be competing with bikes! I’m just very careful to never ride my bike on one of my uni routes, or it would blow my uni progress out of the water. It’s not hard to do since my uni routes are so much shorter.

I don’t know. Unicycles are great uphill. With the right hill the gearing is often appropriate and they are really light compared to a bike. I like to annoy a friend who lives nearby with the segments I beat him on. He is stronger and fitter than me yet does not seem to have yet clicked that I can do this because my unicycle weighs far less than his (much more expensive) bike.

An example of this (relating to the same segment I mentioned earlier). He has yet to reply :stuck_out_tongue:

P.S. I do know this guy very well or I would not be such a dick! :rofl:

If you ever have a massive personality change and go all in on lycra and carbon road bikes, I reckon you’d be very good at it, you’re very fit and you have the right build. (Apologies for saying such a thing on this forum).

The only possible explanation is that a senior person at Strava was once frightened by a clown. I hope that eventually nagging will pay off.

Absolutely. Never say never, but my rate of improvement in terms of speed is very slow.

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The major thing that my preferred cycles have in common is that they are mechanically simple (I do not even have brakes on any of my current unicycles). I guess part of the appeal is that they are low maintenance, which is great because I am both too lazy to look after my stuff, and a terrible mechanic.

(I am also a QA engineer for some overly complex software, so in my personal life simple stuff appeals to me).

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@ruari I can identify with a desire for simplicity in life also. I have a technical job in management. Product Owner and tester for software, manager, and liaison for translation projects.

However, I also like to tinker, so even in the realm of unicycles I build the wheels, I have built - along with my son - a unicycle out of an old 20" uni and the front fork of a bike that I killed winter riding … stem quill snap . . . then I welded the frame later when I was able to borrow a welder.

Today, as I write I await a new hub, my first ISIS hub, yay! along with crank arms, and some bearing shims so I can still use the odd axle or so until they completely ruin, at which point I won’t buy cotterless again.

Sorry about the ramble. sigh. A weakness of mine.

Dawson

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I use a GPS, Forerunner Garmin, watch. It works quite well. The convenient thing is, I only need to carry thát and my house key as a minimum. No bulky phone or anything, if I don’t want to.
I have made a Unicycle log on the watch and it’s just easy to record my trips. And you can share and compare with friends on the Garmin profil.
Ex. since last year to the date I have ridden a total of +1.320,22 km. Not really useful information, but it’s nice to see the trip via gps, the time, distance, speed and calories spent on the same day. Though I don’t find it interesting to look back on.

Wow, that is a lot of distance in one year. I too have a Garmin watch, but mine is not that fancy. I do the Strava thing mainly in a small community of friends. I see it as a way to log my progress, and my friends cheer me on. There is some accountability there. And yes, I only look back on recent achievements. But I also journal in my life (or take sermon notes during a Sunday worship service) and I have volumes of notes I have taken. I rarely go back and look, but I think there is something about making and keeping records that appeals to me.

Cheers,
Dawson