Riders Climb Our Strava Club Leaderboard

Our Strava Club has very quietly grown to nearly 1000 members (4 more to reach that milestone!). This is a club for past and present participants of our tours of course, but it’s also open to anyone to join. Wanna compare your weekly rides with that of one of our world traveling cyclists? Well, our club is a good place to do that.

With the Golden Buddha Ride and the Ruta Maya both having wrapped up recently, we can see that some of the riders have tallied some impressive stats!

screenshot from our club leaderboard at the end of November

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But is it all about stats or are their other reasons our riders use Strava?

Peter Cox (Golden Buddha Ride) covered some serious miles as he and the other participants pedalled across northern Vietnam and into Laos a few weeks back – covering over 640 km. At the same time, Sjoerd van Berkel over on the other side of the world on the Ruta Maya may not have covered as many kilometres but he climbed an incredible 11,000m as he powered up climb after climb through Honduras and Guatemala a few weeks ago! Congrats to you both! Keep it going.

We reached out to the riders to find out why they use Strava. Peter shared that “Some people are really competitive using Strava, they’re addicted to looking at the data. The truth is, I don’t care about that. I started using Strava roughly 10 years ago when I was riding with a team, mostly to stay in touch and to share pictures.”

Sjoerd added “I am using Strava since 2013. What I like about it is that I can track my own progress, ride stats like speed, power, distance, heart rate etc, set week and annual goals, sometimes create routes and follow activities of friends. Setting my own goals and trying to make progress motivates me…it is a nice way to keep people back home updated. Not only about the rides but you can also add some photos. And yes, sometimes they comment!”

Merrill, another rider on the Ruta Maya also commented “I’ve been a Strava user since 2016 and use it primarily as a diary/training log and as a tool to analyze my physical performance (heart rate zones, watts, calories etc)…When on tour I make it part of my daily routine to post on Strava. Many of my cycling acquaintances are curious and interested in my cycling adventures. Most or all are not brave enough to try a TDA type adventure so they’re living vicariously thru my Strava posts. It’s a great way to maintain connections.”

So while many use Strava around the world in a competitive way to improve their personal bests, to get some KOM crowns and to race through segments, it seems one of the most important reason our riders use it is to keep in touch with their friends and followers back home.

We’d love to get to our 1000th club member and beyond. Click below to join us….