About Strava Segments

A segment is a specific section of a road, climb or trail created by the community of athletes on Strava with a leaderboard for everyone’s performance that completes the segment.

About cell service, battery and data usage

The Strava app needs to communicate with Strava’s servers in order to find matching segments during your activity. When enabled, real-time segments uses more battery and data in order to update your results immediately. However, the usage is minimized when the screen is turned off, or you are in areas with no coverage. In these cases results are queued up and displayed as soon as the data connection resumes.

Real-Time Leaderboards

For each segment on your activity, Strava maintains a real-time leaderboard of activities that that are currently taking or took place that day. Both Free and Premium member results will appear on the real-time leaderboards, but only Premium members can see the leaderboard, including their results, during an activity.

Segment Accuracy

The real-time results are unofficial until you upload, but most of time they will match your actual performance. On longer segments, results may be a few seconds off. Results will not be available for segments that are marked as hazardous.

Active Friends

This feature lets you see a list of Premium members that you follow who are currently out riding or running. When you choose to share your activity status, athletes that follow you can see that you are out riding or running, as well as the distance traveled, start time, and pace for runs. You can enable Enhanced Privacy to manage your followers.