Watts/kg Segment Achievements for users with power meters. This has the advantage of focusing your quest for a PR on increasing your effort while reducing your body weight leading you to greater fitness and speed.
Perhaps the most important metric in cycling is watts/kg (meaning how much power are you producing for your body weight). For example, a male world class professional racer can produce ~7 watts/kg for 5 minutes while a entry level race (cat 5) is estimated at ~3 watts/kg for 5 minutes.
By flipping the equation from time being the pursuit for a segment PR we focus the athlete on producing as much power per their body weight they can as that is what brings progression of their fitness. We call this a PowerPR and it’s an achievement awarded to your top, 2nd or 3rd best watts/kg on any segment. This feature is only used when a power meter is used and it currently only in place for cycling. We’re adding running segments soon given the advent of running power meters (e.g. Stryd).
This gives the athlete a better sense of when they are truly progressing as opposed to getting an assist by tail wind or lead out train. Not that those are bad because they are real factors in a race / group ride settings but Strava already measures time for their PRs and it’s been very successful!
strive.ai leverages the segment power history to train algorithms that can predict future segment performance and/or identify potential calibration or battery issues with your power meter.