Getting To Know Strava

Strava is a community and a way to record your runs

Strava turns every iPhone and Android into a sophisticated running and cycling computer (and we work with your GPS watches and head units, too). Start Strava before an activity and you can track your favorite performance stats, and afterwards, dive deep into your data. Record an activity and it goes to your Strava feed, where your friends and followers can share their own races and workouts, give kudos to great performances and leave comments on each other's activities.

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Background

Strava is Swedish for 'strive' and is a great choice that reflects the aspirations of the vast majority of its users. Founded in 2009 it has 95 million users and is a social network for athletes. An athlete is defined by Strava as 'someone who sweats'.

Strava is an app that allows you to track many sports, although cycling and running are the most popular. The free version of Strava allows you to track your exercise and see post-run stats like time, distance, and calories burned. The paid version, known now as the subscription version provides a range of features, focused on routes, segments and detailed analytics. The partner website works alongside the app and must be visited for certain functionality.

There is a huge amount of data from other users within Strava and this is used, in anonymised form, by governments and agencies to understand cycling and running patterns and subsequently to help them create better urban spaces for bikers and pedestrians.

Pricing

There are two plans: free and the premium option.. If you are looking at the premium version but you're not quite sure you can trial it at no cost for 7 days.

• Free - You can track your run, log stats and access the social activity feed

• Subscription - £8.99/$11.99 per month or £54.99/$79.99 a year

Challenge yourself against previous efforts, challenge friends and the rest of the community with the segments functionality. See all your training in one place and chart your progress with unique analysis tools and an interactive record of your activities. Discover new routes and create your own.

How do you use it?

Once you're signed up, or logged in there are some quick questions and you're then on to the home screen.

• Home: This is where you do much of the basic set up and upgrade to the paid subscription option. The activity fee is located (not shown above) at the bottom of this screen. Once you've done the set up this is pretty much dominated by the activity feed.

• Maps: Here are the segments and routes, all only accessible if you have subscribed to the paid option.

• Record: This is where you record your run. Once complete you can say what type of run it was and how it felt and add notes. There is also a shoe tracker. You then decide who gets to see it.

• Groups: You can select challenges here and these are available on the free version.

• You: This is where your activities are displayed. your progress and profile are also on tabs on this screen.

Key features

Let's explore some of the main features in a bit more detail.

Live tracking

This is a really important safety feature that is available on both the free and subscription plan. Called Beacon it generates a unique URL that you can share with your safety contacts via text message, allowing them to follow your activity in real-time. Your location should update about every 15 seconds if the phone signal is good.

Activity feed

Of all the running apps out there this is the one that is really focused on community. It is a social media site for athletes and it's the home screen where this is really evident. The app also has a friend finder on this page and here you'll see posts detailing the activities of the people you follow, as well as your own. You can get the detail by tapping on an individual activity and you can save any of those routes if you're on the paid option.

Most of the posts will not be from activities created on Strava but from synced devices, like a Garmin and one reason there's always a good feed is because Straave is compatible with so many devices. There are very few that you can't sync with. You're able to share these posts and comment on them.

Routes

On Strava you can only create your own routes and get some suggested for you as a paid subscriber. The free version of Strava means you can track your runs, but you'll need to start a subscription to build them. This is very different from Runkeeper.

You can decide if you want a run, walk or cycle route and its length, its gradient and the terrain. You're then given some options, with the details. You can create your own routes on the app (you use your finger to draw the route between two points and it will make three suggestions for you). It suggests routes based on the heatmap tech, that aggregates routes users have previously used.

This is a quick option that has obvious benefits, but the website version is much better for detailed longer runs and if you have the time, as it's easier to edit and there's obviously a lot more space. If you use the Maps feature in the app to create a route, you'll then be able to examine Segments (more on Segments below) along that route. You can get much more detail on Segments on the website version by zooming in on a specific route.

On the mobile app, you can star the routes that others have created and that they have made public. However, you cannot do this on the desktop version.

Segments

Many Strava users pay for the subscription not just for routes, but also for the segments functionality. Using this you can see how well you perform on a certain part of a route (the segment) against a previous time you did it and you can also see how well you did compared to others. This is the part of the site where competition comes to the fore.

Creating segments on routes you've created is a good option, if you live in an area where few are available. This can act as a real incentive to drive improvements. These will then be available to others who stumble on them in the future.

Segments also includes Strava's Local Legend feature, which highlights athletes who log the most activities on those Segments.

Groups

There are three tabs on the Groups area of the app, with Challenges being at the heart of it. There's also 'active' and 'clubs'. Active is where you can set up a group challenge and clubs, including local clubs that are sharing information, in addition to sponsors who pay for space in this part of the app.

There is plenty of sponsorship in the main Challenges section in the middle of the Group area. This is a separate tab on the website, but with the same content. It's short term, motivational stuff, which is great if you're not tied into a training plan. Strava allows companies to target users here in a big way, without the messaging appearing as a typical ad and without the disruption associated with it. It doesn't come cheap, with brands paying anything from $20k to $200k.

The Challenges area of the website

Tracking your performance

If you're into stats you'll love Strava. But of course, as with anything it's only as good as the information it gets from its users. As a result of being compatible with so many third party devices it is capable of receiving a huge amount of data. You can feed it data from various devices that you use and it will present it all in one place where comparisons can be made and progress can be assessed.

If you're starting out on your running journey you don't need too much data, but if you're a runner looking to trim 10 minutes off your best marathon time it's a different story and that's where this level of information is so important. How much did that track session impact on your heart rate and how does it compare to the same session from three weeks ago? Can you interpret the data from different shoes if they were used on the same segment?

Much of the real detail is only available to paid subscribers, but there is enough on the free version to give you an idea if your training is on track. You'll be able to see how well your training is progressing and if things aren't going to plan you will be able to make changes and then monitor their impact. Regular insights will be displayed on the app so there will be no getting away from it!

How social is it?

Very.

If you're looking for a social network where everyone is into fitness and many of them are competitive you've come to the right place. From the first stage of the sign up process it's very clear that a major part of this site is to get plenty of interaction between users, lots of sharing and heaps of feedback. You can of course keep yourself to yourself by making everything private, and just observe. Whether or not you're a paid subscriber you'll still get other people's info on your activity feed unless of course you don't add any friends, but you are regularly reminded that you should. If you're just not into that then you may be better off somewhere else where the social network side of things is just not so dominant.

How easy is it to use?

Strava has undergone some major changes in recent years, with changes to the routes' functionality and more of the functionality now hidden behind the paywall.

The vast majority of users still use the free version and there is plenty there to give you the basics that can help you move forward with your training and to help you monitor your performance sufficiently. If you need more then, you'll need to invest. Generally it's the more competitive, or more advanced athlete that will fall into this group.

The free version is very easy to use and intuitive, but the more advanced you get the more you'll need to explore the online help guides and they are very detailed and easy to access. Syncing data from multiple devices and then analysing the data within the app isn't something that too many of us will worry too much about, but for an advanced performer it's really important and Strava has the capability to do that and much more.

The homepage of the website

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