I am very much not OK with strava's data retention and privacy policy, and paying for a service like that. With a basic $60 bike computer you can already track distance per ride, average speed, cumulative distance, max speed, duration of ride, cumulative duration. Go up just a little bit in cost and you can add heart rate functionality.

There's also a number of things you can do with an old Android smartphone and some common apps that create GPX format track files, if you want to import your ride paths into Google Earth pro on a desktop PC, without uploading to a cloud based service.

You don't need some $400 bike computer and a cloud based service to achieve a high level of road cycling fitness. Have a good digital scale at home. Track your cumulative riding distances and average speeds. Eat healthy, etc.

Having an offline log and metrics to compare your own performance against is extremely useful. Data and information can be a powerful motivator to compete against yourself to improve your average speeds, climbing times and so forth. Where I disagree philosophically is whether that data needs to become a subscription you pay forever for, or if your data needs to ever go out to a third party.