Two weeks after I downloaded the app onto my mobile phone, my married life went downhill. It was one of those evenings that are all too rare for a full-time working couple. Children looked after. Candlelight on. A CD by a sensitive guitarist-poet on the stereo. "Well, how's it looking?" asked my enchanting wife, waving the bottle of massage oil, scented with almond. The human body is bursting with erogenous zones. Even a man supposedly has two dozen. But I replied: "Oh yes, a little calf massage would be great!" Mausebärchen seemed to want to stab me with her gaze. She looked like Uma Thurman on the film poster for Kill Bill. There was no denying it: I had a problem.
But let's start from the beginning: I don't like apps.
These programmes that you download onto your smartphone so that you can be terrorised by them from now on. Smarty-pants programmes that tell you what to wear, eat and buy. And they are constantly annoying because they always want to be "updated". In a fit of curiosity, I once downloaded an app on my phone that simulates the sounds embryos hear in the womb. It's supposed to provide a deep, peaceful sleep experience. It was nonsense that got me so worked up that I couldn't fall asleep for hours. So now this Strava app that everyone is talking about. The whole bike world is supposedly in a fever. Tour recording. Performance analysis. Social networking. With Strava, every trail, every mountain, every combination of bends becomes a competition for the title of "King of the Mountain". There are "segments" everywhere, for which the app creates leaderboards without being asked. Strava is the link between real and virtual life. You tile alone through the terrain, always followed by an invisible mob. Just like Facebook. Only with sweating.
The Strava self-experiment begins
It was Friday, a cold November day, when I activated the Strava app for the first time. Fearing too much pressure to perform, I had given myself an alias as a precaution: Lars Vegas. This minimised the risk of having to justify myself to my mates for every leisurely kilometre I rode. A wise decision, as it turned out half an hour later. I had just rolled from the flat to the office, drained of adrenaline, but Strava had already analysed everything. The NSA couldn't have done it any better: 6.4 kilometres, 40 vertical metres, 22.6 average. Plus elevation profile and movement image. As well as all the "sections" I had cycled through, including my placings. My mood immediately collapsed: a tired 22nd place in the segment called "Evil Little Climb 2", in which my colleague Stefan Loibl, of all people, topped the rankings. I hadn't even realised that the poisonous stitch up to the main road was a stage for competitive sport. Loibl, the bastard, I thought. Now I could only hope that my cover wouldn't be blown. Otherwise I would have to live according to a training plan and eat omnimolecular foods. Just like those skinny performance nerds with their heart rate monitors, whose rock 'n' rolliest moment of the year is the glass of Radler (0.3 litres) at the club Christmas party.
The Strava thing seemed different somehow. More brutal.
I generally love sporting competitions. Marathons, for example. You pant up a hill in seven hundred metres until the drool runs out of the corners of your mouth from weakness. Everything hurts and you're constantly swearing at the course. For me, this is one of the most marvellous forms of leisure activity, I have no idea why. Even better is the battle for supremacy on the home turf. You cycle through the forest with a basic endurance pulse. If a rider appears in front of you, you push him in front of you at a brisk pace, only to put him in his place with a skilfully placed acceleration. Topped off with a casually mumbled "Servus" during the overtaking manoeuvre, the result is a feeling of power and might that only Stone Age people would have felt when slaying a mammoth. (Just a brief insight into the male psyche.) The Strava thing seemed different somehow. More brutal. More penetrating. As soon as you press the start button, everyone can see everything. Every turn of the cranks is witnessed, commented on and graded. A permanent stress test. The greatest possible public exposure of the human body.
The evening had started nicely when the Strava email arrived: "Good! Stefan Loibl is now following you on Strava." Panic shot through me. I was exposed! I had obviously asked my colleague too bluntly about the "Evil Little Climb 2" segment. Now I was in a tight spot! To beat Loibl's 30 seconds, I would have to tile into the segment at 42:11. My heart rate would be at its maximum and I would have to try and ignore the pain in my thighs. The exertion would burst blood vessels in my lungs, causing the taste of blood to shoot into my mouth. The biggest problem, however, was the main road that I would have to cross on the run-up to the start of the segment. A Russian roulette-like action. Triumph or emergency room? Pure coincidence. The road was barely visible. "Honey, I need someone to block off a road for me," I explained the tricky situation to my wife. Her sympathy was limited. "Yes, yes, of course. By the way, the empty bottles still need to be taken away." She completely failed to realise the seriousness of the situation!
There are bikers who would never download a training app onto their mobile phone out of disgust at the stress of performance.
And there are bikers who deliberately expose themselves to this pressure so as not to fall into neglect on the couch. The provider is keeping quiet about how many people use Strava. It is said to be several million. Hundreds of thousands are said to be added every week. Not much is known about the company at all. There is hardly any information on the internet. Press enquiries are ignored or only answered in very general terms. Strava was founded in 2009 by the Americans Mark Gainey and Michael Horvath as a "virtual changing room" where athletes can share their training experiences. Every few weeks, there are calls to join in. Recently, for example, the "Climbing Challenge". The aim was to climb as many metres in altitude as Mount Everest within 20 days. The winner, a certain "Marc MTB Biker Vegan Power", collected an incredible 68,413 metres in altitude on 15 tours. 773 per cent plan fulfilment! praised Strava. 47282 users took part in total. Bikers from Russia, Australia, Germany and Africa. It was perhaps the biggest uphill race in the history of mankind. There was no tape. And without start numbers.
It was Monday, "Bauer sucht Frau" was on TV, when Strava sent me another email: "Hi Lars, wow, you're big in the race! Christoph Listmann is now following you on Strava." I stared at the display, startled. Christoph Listmann, my strong colleague at work, who had various Strava segments under his control, was now watching my every metre. Well, great! The evening was over. "That's really annoying. Now delete that stupid app," commented Mausebärchen when I refused the offered glass of red wine, citing a possible loss of performance.
I decided to put the record attempt on the "Evil Little Climb 2" segment on hold for the time being and instead check my regular lap for segments. I rode at a brisk pace, but by no means at the limit. Strava knew the score: eleven sections. Two third places, one sixth place, one seventh place. I zoomed into the segment "Under the Tennispark north uphill". It was the gravel path from the Isar up towards Grünwald. 0.2 kilometres, 13 metres in altitude, six per cent gradient. The fastest was user Gerald Lederstatter* with 25 seconds. I was third with 27 seconds. I felt a force rise up in me that I had never known before: ambition! Real, unrestrained sporting ambition! There I was now. An over-40 man with a penchant for a pleasure-orientated lifestyle, for whom nothing suddenly seemed more important than knocking this Gerald Lederstatter off his throne on the gravel track. I had no idea what that would entail.
It was around lunchtime the following day when I slammed up the gravel hill with my thighs fully strained. My muscles were burning and I felt dizzy from lack of oxygen. It took me minutes before I was able to click off the pedals. Not a chance. I missed a second. I stared hatefully at the mobile phone display. I was very, very disappointed in myself.
For decades, I had been a self-determined person.
I had always neutralised any training effects with snacks. I had never been interested in the results lists for marathons. But that was over now. The app started to take over. It was a subtle but clearly noticeable takeover. I started to study the satellite image of the gravel hill to find the optimal starting point. I read articles about amino acids and alkalising foods. I pondered how many watts of pedalling power I could get if I carried the spare inner tube in my jersey instead of my 150 gram saddle bag. I googled Gerald Lederstatter and learnt that he was riding with a tight chain at the TOUR Transalp and liked the techno buzz of Firedog. I was as fixated as an Olympic athlete before the grand finale.
"Hey, this guy set the fastest time in June. And now I have to ride in two degrees of cold," I said over dinner. "Great! Are you building yourself up with the fact that the guy was warmer?" my daughter twisted her pupils theatrically. Jesus: the app had radicalised my body awareness. I had become an exemplary
I had become a model biker and at the same time an embarrassing, place-hungry philistine. The app was a blessing for my legs, but an instrument of torture for my head. My life oscillated between heaven and hell.
It was a Sunday when I set off on another record attempt.
I had eaten an optimal breakfast in terms of sports science. The air I was breathing condensed and I could feel the nervous twitching of my carotid artery. The stress hormone levels swelled with every turn of the crank. Adrenalin, testosterone, all that endogenous stimulant stuff. If video artist Chris Cunningham had been commissioned to film the scene, he would have had fountains of hissing fire bursting out of the ground to my left and right, accompanied by a gloomy death metal soundtrack. I stomped on the pedals like a testosterone-fuelled orc. My whole body was on fire. Oh my goodness, what on earth was the universe thinking when it programmed this man? Then I angrily channelled all my energy into the cranks. The taste of blood shot into my mouth and the pain in my thighs was almost unbearable. "KOM" flashed on the display - King of the Mountain! A pure, crackling feeling of happiness poured into every corner of my body. It was almost outrageous that no representative of the international press was present. The question was: What now? Conquer section by section as a segment nomad? Live only for the calves? The only non-erogenous zone of the human body?
Three weeks after downloading Strava, I deleted the app from my mobile phone. A moment as liberating and blissful as an after-work beer after a hard day's work.
Strava App - Good to know
The Strava app is downloaded to your smartphone in a matter of seconds. But before you press the start button, there are a few things you should know.
Functions
The basic version of Strava is free and is completely sufficient for most bikers. It records tours, including all relevant data as well as the corresponding altitude profiles and motion pictures. The Subscription membership for Strava costs around 60 euros for an annual subscription and offers numerous extras such as filtered leaderboards (e.g. by body weight), Tour planning functions or even more detailed performance analyses.
Accuracy
Strava creates the training data based on GPS signals. This works well in most cases, but altitude metres are often measured less accurately than with barometric devices. The GPS function drains the smartphone pretty quickly. Strava relies on members' self-monitoring for the leaderboards. Suspicious times can be questioned and reported.
Data security
With Strava, you become a transparent person. Everyone can see which tours you ride. In England, there have even been burglaries in bike basements because thieves spied on the addresses of cyclists on Strava. With the "Privacy" setting, your place of residence and office address remain hidden.
Liability
Strava encourages speeding. In the USA, a cyclist died in an accident because he was trying to beat a record time. The parents sued Strava, but the judges ruled: Everyone must be able to judge dangers for themselves and adhere to traffic rules despite the app.
Facts & figures about Strava
1.6 trillionn This is the number of kilometres uploaded by Strava users in the last twelve months alone. Several million bikers are registered worldwide. However, Strava keeps the exact number of users secret.
60 % More than half of Strava users are cyclists, 30 per cent are runners and a further 10 per cent are involved in other sports.
One hundred thousand Around 100,000 new users join every month. 70 per cent of Strava customers live outside the USA. The company has 90 employees.
47.282 bikers took part in the Climbing Challenge. The winner collected 68,413 metres in altitude within 20 days.
