Segments are a great way to interact with fellow cyclists and local routes in your area - or just keep tabs on your own performance. You can create your own or match other user-created area segments to measure your progress on sections of your favorite rides, or compare your ride times with other Ride with GPS cyclists.
Want to keep your efforts to yourself? Premium members can create private segments to match their rides only.
Match a Segment
- Public rides that traverse, or "match" to a portion of road, path, or trail that has established as a segment, will be visible on your ride recording.
- Planned routes that include segments will display those segments on the route itself.
- When you match a segment, you can view the segment to see where you stand on the leaderboard, and compare your efforts against others, or your own repeated efforts.
- Don't want to match to segments? Save your ride as "private" or "friends only," or disable segments.
View All Segments
Segment Leaderboards
Click the segment from the Route or Ride summary page or from your matched/created segments on your profile to load the leaderboard.
- Popularity: this shows the number of times a segment has been pinned or ignored, to give you an idea of how popular it is.
- Ignore this: removes you from public view on the leaderboard. When a segment is ignored, you won't match with it on future rides.
- Pin this: pin segments that you want to easily keep track of. Pinned segments can be found at the bottom of your Pinned items in the web dashboard.
- Sort by: the leaderboard is sorted by rank, starting with the fastest efforts. Sort by date to view the most recent efforts first.
Efforts
Best efforts will load by default, meaning that you'll see only one effort per rider. If a rider has multiple efforts on a segment, you’ll see a link to Show All Efforts to the right of their username. Click here to populate the leaderboard with efforts only from that user. This is also a great way to see all your own efforts in one place.
- Show ride: opens the entire mapped ride that matched to the segment. Click Go to Ride if you want to view more details of the ride in the summary page.
- Toggle Details: check the box to select specific users' efforts, then click Toggle Details to view speed/heart rate/power/cadence information (if available) for each selected effort.
- Show Best Efforts: use this option to return to the main segment leaderboard.
- Show friends' efforts: click this option to see efforts made by people who you have added as a Friend on RWGPS.
- Show all efforts: by default, the leaderboard only shows the best effort (one entry per user). Showing all efforts displays every public effort.
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Enable flagging: click Enable Flagging to initiate a review of a segment effort. For example: if it looks like a user continued their bike recording while driving in a car, you might flag it using the steps below:
- Click Enable Flagging at the bottom of the efforts list.
- Click Flag to the right of the effort you'd like us to review.
- Once flagged, we'll review and remove it from the segment leaderboard if it seems like an unfair effort.
- Comments: add details or have a discussion with other riders about a particular segment.
Compare Efforts
Select one or more riders and click Compare Efforts to break the segment into sections that allow you to analyze and see selected ride efforts within smaller sections.
- Split: split each of the displayed efforts into 2, 3, or 4 sections of equal distance.
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Effort: notice the efforts are displayed in split sections.
- The width of the bar is proportional to the time (a quicker section will be shorter). Green indicates you had the fastest time, orange indicates the time is within 20% of the best time from the selected efforts, and red shows the time is 20% or greater.
- The metrics displayed are specific to each split section. Hover your mouse over a section to see it highlighted on the map. Click on a section to zoom the map and stage a race for that specific section.
- Stage Race: click Stage Race to display playback controls. Adjust the playback speed by clicking and dragging the slider. Each rider is represented by a color dot on the list and within the map.
- Close Comparison: hide the effort comparison page, and return to the default leaderboard.
Segments on Routes
After you save a new route on the website, a Segments section will appear on the left panel to indicate there are segments matched on this route.
Hover your mouse over the segment to see where it shows up on the route and elevation profile. Click the segment to open the leaderboard.
Make a Segment
- Log into your account on our website.
- Click to open and view a Ride or Route that contains the road or trail segment you want to create.
- Select a section of your route by clicking and dragging across the elevation profile. Make adjustments to get the exact start and end point.
- Click Save As in the upper right corner of the elevation profile, and select Segment.
- Enter a name for your segment and choose a privacy level:
Once you have created a segment, we will automatically match the segment to all existing rides and routes in our system. This may take a few minutes to process.
Disable Segment Participation
All Public rides will match to public segment leaderboards and be visible to other users by default. Private rides will not be matched against a public segment.
If you don't want your efforts to post to public segment leaderboards, you can specify this by logging into your account on the website > click your Profile icon in the upper right corner > click Settings > Privacy > uncheck the option to Show my public rides on segment leaderboards.
Premium subscribers can create Private segments, allowing you to keep all your rides private while still matching to a private segment. You'll only match to yourself with a private segment, so it can be a great way to challenge yourself without the pressure of competing against other users.