Strava: Tool or Toy? - George Bennett, Jay Vine & Mark O’brien

Life in the Peloton, presented by MAAP

Mitch Docker

Health & Fitness, Fitness, Sports, Wilderness

4.8 • 543 Ratings

🗓️ 10 August 2022

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Rapha presents Life in the Peloton! Strava, the social networking app that tracks physical activity, has become a phenomenon in the cycling world, with ‘taking Segments‘ and ‘giving Kudos‘ becoming part of everyday cycling chat. Strava was something that I completely ignored as a professional. It didn’t exist when I was a young rider, and as I already uploaded my training for my coach and my team, and I raced people for a living, I just wasn’t interested in another way to be competitive or to measure my work. This all changed when I retired, and I’ve found myself not only pretty active on Stravabut also really interested in how people use it. For this episode, I thought I’d try to break right down what Strava is, how it works, how people use it and why. I wanted to understand it better and I also find out what the guys in the pro peloton currently think about it. I started with my old mate Mark O’Brien who, post-career, has become a self-confessed ‘KOM hunter’ in Melbourne. Mark is also a coach and was great at breaking down the nuts and bolts of how it all works and why so many people enjoy using it. I also spoke to two current professional cyclists, who I thought would have interesting point of views on Strava. The first was Jay Vine. To me, Jay seems like a poster boy for the Strava generation. Even before he was a pro Jay had a reputation built on taking some pretty famous KOMs around Girona, and as he admits himself he has never known cycling without Strava being a part of it. Jay spoke about how he used Strava to help his career, how he now thinks about some of his famous KOMs and his current use of Strava in training. For a different take, I also spoke to George Bennett. George has been a pro for twelve years, and he really comes from the old school of bike racing. He also, like myself, always considered race results to be the ‘real’ measure of ability and not just a time on an online leaderboard. But even George, it turns out, is a fan of Strava. I picked his brains about what he likes about it and what benefits he sees from using it alongside his training and life as a pro. I enjoy using Strava these days and I know a lot of cyclists of all abilities do too. I found it fascinating to open my eyes up a bit more about it, and I hope you guys all get something from it too! Cheers, Mitch Listen Listen & subscribe to this series on the Life in the Peloton website, at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, GooglePlay, Stitcher, Youtube or your favourite pod app. Show Notes . . . This episode is brought to you by Rapha, makers of the world’s finest cycling clothing & accessories and the worlds largest cycling club, RCC. Find out more about Rapha: their kit, their club, their events and awesome clubhouses at rapha.cc. . . . Merch The last of our T-shirt collab with Çois Cycling for the Tour de France are available online! Shop now exclusively at coiscycling.com Talking Luft casquettes: The first release of our new Talking Luft cap has now sold out. Stay tuned for the next drop this week. Get ready for next year’s cobbles with our Paris-Roubaix Cap. Jump over to our online shop to grab one. Shop LITP casual Merch anytime online at our store. From casual caps to mugs, embroidered tees, logo tees, sweaters and much more.. Keep in touch Find all our episodes, LITP news and merch on our website www.lifeinthepeloton.com Listen on all good podcast apps, and now on Youtube. Follow us on socials: Instagram: @lifeinthepeloton Twitter: @lifeinthepelo

Transcript

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0:00.0	Well, good I, everyone.
0:03.0	Well, get-day everyone.
0:24.5	Welcome to Life in the Peloton.
0:26.3	I'm Mitch Stocker, and this podcast this week is about Strava.
0:31.0	Now, I'm assuming everyone listening to this knows what I'm talking about, but not necessarily.
0:35.6	Look, since coming back to Australia and retiring as a pro,
0:39.9	I had no need all the use to upload my rides to training peaks or some other coaching format.
0:45.6	You know, because at the end of the day, I'm doing it for myself. But the thing was,
0:48.9	everyone kept hassling me. Mate, where's your ride? Mapped on Strava. How come you don't
0:53.4	have a Strava account? So I was like, that's it. I'm getting an account. And I have since been discovering how to use it and how it works for me as a non-pro. Look, at the end of the day, it's a way to get some kudos on my rides as they call it. This podcast this week has been no means sponsored by Strava of any sort. I thought like myself,
1:11.9	there's going to be some people out there who use it and be interested to find out the nuts and
1:16.1	bolts, some hacks, hear how to use it to go pro and what the pros think of it. Do they use it? So I went
1:24.0	away and I spoke to three riders who could give me that insight. Firstly, Mark O'Brien.
1:29.3	Now, Mark O'Brien and I started riding together as a junior here in Victoria back in Australia in the early 2000s.
1:36.3	We crossed paths on our way through the ranks to we rode together in Drapak Porsche, my first professional team,
1:42.3	you could call it, a pro-continental team here in Australia
1:45.5	in 2007, 2008, before I ventured off overseas. Mark himself has had a very colorful career
1:51.9	riding in and out of Australia in many teams. He was over in Malaysia, he was in the UK, but he's
1:56.9	been mainly racing in Australia over those years. And this year, he was based in the squad in form TMX make, a really successful team,
2:05.7	if not the strongest team in Australia.
2:07.5	So he's at the front end of the racing side.
2:10.8	Aside from racing, Marco has a passion for training and coaching, and he's been a coach
	...

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