Remembering Cycling Before Strava (Nostalgia Bombs)

You hop on your bike. It’s the end of the ride. You’re sweating, a little out of breath, the adrenaline still buzzing in your veins.

What do you do? Not the obvious — you don’t just rest, grab a drink, or sit down and take in the view.

No. You grab your phone. Or your Garmin. Or maybe you even still have one of those old Cateye speedometers on your handlebars.

You’re checking your stats, aren’t you?

Here’s the thing.

A few decades ago, that wasn’t the first thing you’d do.

In fact, it was the only thing you couldn’t do.

There was no Strava. No instant gratification from a glowing screen showing your stats.

No “battling” some guy from the other side of the world for a KOM you’d never heard of.

We were blissfully ignorant, lost in the simplicity of it all. And damn, it felt good.

So let’s take a look at how it used to be, before the trackers, before the endless data, before the obsession.

1.We Didn’t Know Our Speed—And We Didn’t Care

There was no GPS. There were no gadgets measuring how fast you were going.

If you were lucky, you had a basic cycle computer from Cateye, but that thing was as bare-bones as it could get.

It showed you how far you’d gone and maybe how long you’d been out there.

That was it. Speed? You guessed it. It was a rough estimate. You knew when you were flying downhill, and you knew when you were pushing hard on the flats, but did you really know your average?

Nah. You learned to listen to your legs, your lungs, your heart.

Now? Now you can check every microsecond. But back then, those moments of “not knowing” were pure. You had the raw experience of the ride.

2. Route Exploration Was A Gamble

You didn’t pull out your phone to find the best route. You didn’t plug a GPS into your handlebar mount and follow a neon line like a robot.

No. You grabbed an old-school map, or maybe, if you were feeling adventurous, you just went.

You saw a road heading off into the distance, and you took it. No real plan.

Sometimes, you’d get lost. Sometimes you’d find something beautiful. Sometimes you’d find yourself in a place you never wanted to be. But you always found your way back. That was part of the adventure.

There was something about the unknown, the thrill of “where does this road lead?” that gave you a different kind of joy than just checking “Turn left in 500 feet” on a screen.

3. The Absence of Strava Meant No Fake Racing

Strava has made cycling a race against everyone. You’re always chasing something.

The dopamine of the leaderboard, the KOMs, the PRs. It’s all virtual. It’s all numbers.

But before Strava, there was just the ride. You raced against yourself, but there wasn’t this constant comparison with strangers.

There wasn’t this obsession with winning segments that don’t matter. We just rode. And we rode for the love of it, not the need to prove something.

Back then, your competition was the road in front of you. That was enough.

4. No Computers, No Tracking, No Pressure

Can you imagine a ride without worrying about your stats? Without calculating your cadence or your power output?

Without looking at your heart rate monitor every minute? Before all the numbers, we just rode.

We didn’t care if we had the latest gadgets or the fanciest bike.

What mattered was the feeling — the wind in your face, the rhythm of the pedals, the view that took your breath away for a second.

Now? Now people compare watts like it’s the only thing that matters. And don’t get me wrong — gadgets have their place. But they’ve turned cycling into something else entirely.

5. No Tracking = No Obsession

Now, if it’s not on Strave, it doesn’t matter. Before Strava, we didn’t care.

We didn’t track every ride like it was a data point in some never-ending experiment.

We weren’t obsessed with our times, our heart rate zones, or the calories burned.

We didn’t log our rides, obsess over splits, or waste hours dissecting our data. And guess what? We didn’t need to.

Cycling was simple. You did the ride. You went home. You might talk about it with your friends over beers, but it wasn’t a thing you needed to document.

It didn’t need to be tracked to be meaningful. And, hell, maybe that’s the reason the rides felt so much better. We weren’t chasing anything. We were living it.

6. We Had Actual Conversations About The Ride

We didn’t need to go over our ride stats, because we didn’t have them. We talked about real things.

“That hill was a beast.”

“Man, I almost ate it on that turn.”

“Did you see that view at the top of the climb?”

We talked about the experience — not the numbers. Now, you meet a fellow cyclist and the first question is always “What’s your time on that segment?”

It’s as if the ride itself no longer matters. It’s just a collection of data points.

Sometimes, I miss those old conversations. They meant something. They made you connect with people. It was about sharing the ride, not competing for glory.

7. The Joy of Getting Lost

Getting lost on a bike ride? That was freedom. You didn’t need a device to know exactly where you were.

You didn’t have some bright screen telling you when to turn or what your exact location was.

You wandered. Maybe you’d end up somewhere familiar, maybe somewhere new.

But you found your way back. There was a freedom in that uncertainty. You embraced the unknown. You didn’t need a gadget to confirm that you were on track.

8. There Was No Need To “Keep Up” With Strangers

You didn’t have some unknown rider from halfway around the world judging your ride.

You weren’t chasing their numbers or competing for meaningless titles.

Cycling used to be about personal goals.

Your challenge was the road in front of you, not some stranger’s idea of what was fast.

You didn’t need the constant validation. You didn’t need to compare yourself to others to feel good about your ride. You just rode.

That was enough. The numbers didn’t define you.

9. The Freedom To Fail, and To Fail Again

We weren’t chasing perfection. We weren’t afraid to fail. There was no race to win, no leaderboards to climb.

You could ride poorly, struggle up a hill, and still feel like a king at the top.

You didn’t need to analyze why your watts dropped or if your time was slower than last week.

You were just riding. And sometimes, you failed. And that was perfectly okay.

A Table of Comparison: Pre-Strava vs. Post-Strava

Aspect	Pre-Strava	Post-Strava
Speed Awareness	Guesswork, no instant feedback	Real-time speed tracking
Route Exploration	Spontaneous, based on intuition	Planned routes with GPS guidance
Competition	Personal challenge, local races	Global comparisons, chasing KOMs
Riding Motivation	Joy of riding, simple fun	Metrics-driven, competitive, data-based
Post-ride Discussion	Stories, memories, shared experiences	Focus on numbers, segment achievements
Getting Lost	Freedom, adventure	Stressful, fearful of being lost
Tech Dependency	Minimal, optional	Essential, omnipresent
Ride Experience	Pure, raw connection with the road	Fragmented, distracted by data
Social Interaction	Real conversations, shared moments	Data sharing, digital competition

Conclusion

Back in the day, we didn’t measure time by numbers or measure success by seconds. We lived the ride.

Today, it’s different. We’re glued to our devices, and I get it. Data is powerful. It can make us better. But sometimes I think we’ve lost something.

The purity of it. The simplicity. The freedom.

So, take a ride without looking at your stats. Turn off the GPS. Ride into the unknown. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll find what we lost in all the data.

Don’t worry about your time.

Just ride.