Segment Leaderboard Guidelines

Each Strava Segment has a leaderboard that ranks all Strava athletes who match the GPS trace between the defined start and finish. Leaderboards are specific to a single activity type, meaning that a run segment only shows runs on the leaderboard and a cycling segment only shows rides on the leaderboard. If activities are uploaded to Strava under an incorrect activity type or with data that is motor-assisted by either an electric bike or while driving a car, the fairness and accuracy of our leaderboards suffer. Each Strava athlete is responsible for the content they upload, and we expect all athletes to contribute positively to the Strava community by following our guidelines. As stated in our Terms of Use, repeated actions that don't follow these guidelines can result in some action taken by Strava on the offending account.

In an effort to keep our segment leaderboards as fair as possible, we ask you to follow these guidelines:

• • Keep motorized and non-traditional bicycle data off the leaderboards
  • Use the E-bike Ride and Virtual Ride activity types
  • Hide motor-paced rides (cycling behind a vehicle) from leaderboards
  • Manipulated GPS data is not allowed on any leaderboards
  • Inaccurate or otherwise incorrect Virtual Activity data is not allowed on any leaderboards.
  • Keep rides with a mixed-gender tandem bike off leaderboards
  • Adjust privacy controls on duplicate versions of the activity to "Only You"
  • Responsibly participate in segment leaderboards
  • Report activities that should not be on leaderboards

Guidelines for motorized and non-traditional bicycles:

The Ride activity type is for conventional human-powered bicycles (including recumbents) riding outdoors. Do not use this activity type if your activity includes data recorded while driving a car, or motorcycle, pacing a vehicle, using an electric bike, or another electric-assisted vehicle, using a non-traditional bicycle with full farings or aerodynamic modifications including velomobiles, or using a GPS simulator program for virtual riding. 

Please note that motorcycle activities are not allowed on Strava, and cannot use the Ride or E-Bike activity types. For a full list of accepted activity types, please visit our article here: ​​Supported Activity Types on Strava.

Guidelines for uploading virtual activities:

If upon uploading your virtual data looks inaccurate (for example trainer malfunction, weight settings, or software bugs within the virtual platform), set the privacy controls on your activity to “Only You”. If you choose to leave this activity set to “Everyone”, it may be flagged by your fellow athletes or our system.

Use the correct activity type:

Leaderboards are specific to a single activity type, meaning that a run segment only shows runs on the leaderboard, a cycling segment only shows rides on the leaderboard, etc. If activities are uploaded to Strava under an incorrect activity type, the fairness and accuracy of our leaderboards suffer.

However, to keep a level playing field for adaptive athletes, we do in some cases allow adaptive athletes to compete in a similar sport type where that sport does not carry a technical advantage beyond the other bicycles in this category.

We ask that you categorize your activity as the appropriate sports type. This includes using the available E-bike Ride and Virtual Ride activity types for activities recorded using an e-bike or a virtual trainer respectfully.

Guidelines for motor-paced rides:

Motor-pacing, or drafting behind a motorized vehicle, is considered motor assistance and conflicts with the fairness and integrity of segment leaderboards. When uploading data from a motor-paced ride, please use the "Only You" or "Followers" privacy control on the activity edit screen. 

Guidelines for mixed-gender tandem bike activities:

Our leaderboards are gender-specific, and because of this, we ask our athletes to help keep men's efforts on men's leaderboards and women's efforts on women's leaderboards. If your tandem activity contains both men's and women's efforts, please choose from the following options:

• Use your activity's privacy controls to adjust the setting to "Only You" or "Followers" to remove the activity's segment times from public leaderboards.
• From the edit options, change the activity type to "Workout" (not to be confused with the workout tag for rides and runs).

Guidelines for uploading duplicate activities:

If you upload duplicate activities, set the privacy controls of one of them to "Only You". We do not allow two public versions of the same activity on Strava. If you continually upload duplicates and do not adjust their visibility to "Only You", your account will be at risk for deletion. 

Manipulated GPS Data:

If you use a third-party website to manipulate your GPS data, especially if it's to enhance your segment times, you may not upload this data to Strava. This includes uploading route files to your Strava account. Failure to comply with this guideline may result in account deletion.