Review of Strava – An Online Training Tool and Community

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With the explosion of social media more and more niche communities and tools are sprouting up that allow you to share your workouts with others online.

I Personally love these kinds of tools and communities for a number of reasons:

1. I like having my training and workout information online, so I can access it from multiple locations and devices.
2. Making something public (like your training or a specific challenge) reinforces most peoples desire to not fail, increasing the likelihood that you aren’t going to miss sessions and let things slide.
3. Niche communities in particular allow for interaction with others, participating in similar activities. This allows you to share workout ideas and compare your performance against others, which further adds to that sense of motivation to out-do someone else and not let them out-do you.

I currently use 2 main sites: Strava (which I am convering here) and Garmin Connect. The following article is a personal review of Strava, which in my opinion is massively under marketed at the moment given its functionality and the opportunity.

I am nothing more than a paying member who has a great appreciation for what Strava has produced – I am not affiliated with them in any way, so this is an honest reflection of their product from my own personal viewpoint.

Strava

I joined Strava just over a year ago when I moved to Singapore and found it under fairly heavy usage across the individuals I cycled with. Initially I used it purely for cycling, but around 6 months ago they really upped the product by introducing Strava for running.

This was really important for me as I run a lot and wanted to ideally sync all my workouts into 1 single tool.

Its a globally accessible product, so as long as you can get a GPS signal you can join and upload your activity anywhere in the world.

Its completely free to use, but you do get some additional options for a small fee of $6 a month or $59 a year. These additional features are largely focused on extra filtering options, which you can read more about further into the article. For $59 a year – its worth it in my opinion.

How It Works

In order to use Strava you’ll need to have a Garmin GPS product (I currently use an Edge 800 for riding and a Garmin 410 for running, but most models are perfectly workable) or an iPhone/Android application, which can be downloaded from the App Store. Once you’re all set on that front you just head out for a ride, run or walk allowing your GPS to record the relevant data for that workout.

Once you’re finished you log into Strava and upload your activity directly into their system, which then breaks down your workout appropriately based on the activity type. Below is an example of the automated upload process for my Garmin410, which just uses the standard ANT+ agent you’d use to upload data to Garmin Connect.

There is time stamped information on the workouts as well as the ability to select and de-select which workouts get uploaded.

Once your data has been uploaded Strava really starts to shine. Your main dashboard will provide a view of all your recent workout data, plus a snapshot of what your connections on Strava have been up to. In this example I can see a few of the guys I ride with have obviously done a group session recently and no doubt given each other some “kudos” (aka the online high-five).

I can then click on my workout and take a more detailed look at the route and my performance across the entire session. For the running in particular Strava have added GAP analysis (grade adjusted pace) which estimates your equivalent pace when running on flat land. This is pretty useful when assessing your performance if you’ve been running on a particularly challenging route with lots of hills.

As its using Google Maps functionality you can zoom in/out and in most locations utilise the street view for a better look at your route (or someone else’s route). You can view this page here for a closer look.

Another great feature of Strava is your individual profile page that nicely summarises your activity over a customisable time period. At the top you see an activity summary for the last 4 weeks, which is broken down by the activity type (cycling or running). I’ve been in the UK recently without a bike, so my activity has been all running of late.

Below this you see your recent achievements, which is defined by pre-created and community generated segments (more on that in a minute). As an example though, you can see that I am the current segment leader for a particular stretch of road that has been called “The Close Climb” in essence meaning nobody has ran that segment quicker than me (at least nobody that is on Strava).

The final segment allows you to keep track of your total distance, time and metres climbed over the course of a month and year. If you click a single month it will then display all of the individual training sessions you completed, such that you can dig into the detail if required.

Its really all about the segments….

Aside from the fact that Strava just works bloody well, its real differentiator is the segment functionality, which is just flat out awesome.

The basic idea is that Strava have pre-created thousands of “segments” of road or trail that can then be added to or edited by the community. These segments then become challenge hot spots where individuals can in essence compete for the fastest time in those individual segments (they are separately handled for cycling and running). Of course if you’re less interested in beating other individuals then it still provides you with information about your own personal records.

When you complete and upload an activity Strava will pre-populate the segments you passed through and provide a snapshot of times and any achievements. The example above is from a standard Saturday morning ride and you can see multiple segments. Two in particular stand out though as achievements highlighted with the gold cups. You can view the screenshot in more detail here.

This is not only a great motivation tool, but it also drives a real sense of fun competition across the community. I can for example click on “NTU Climb” and look at the segment in more detail: where was it, where am I on the leader board and so forth. This particular segment is not hugely competitive with only 29 riders having ridden the segment and uploaded the workout to Strava, but there is other popular segments where you’re in competition with thousands of other individuals.

If you’ve taken the subscription route, which is $59 per year then you also get access to additional filtering tools that allows you to monitor your segment performance by age group and weight. I noticed as I was writing this article that they are offering two pretty amazing subscription options right now:

1. A Garmin 410 + 12 month subscription for $278
2. A Garmin Edge 500 + 12 month subscription for $278

Now granted both the Garmin models are second generation now (replaced by the Edge 800 and Garmin 610) but that is a great deal in anyone’s book – so get your butt over to Strava and sign up now.

A final note on the segment functionality is the recently added ability to also explore segments, which in essence allows you to find routes and segments that you could challenge yourself against. The below screenshot is showing all segments in Singapore, for cycling that have a hill specified as 3-4 (which basically means its steep!).

Some Negatives on Strava

As a product Strava is fantastic and constantly being improved with new functionality that I haven’t seen on similar products so far. The only negative I have against Strava at the moment is the size of the community and location of individuals using the product.

If you’re in a country where Strava hasn’t seen good adoption you still benefit from the many good product features it has to offer. Crucially though you’ll find most segments aren’t competed for, and thus you end up competing for segments with yourself which takes some of the edge off it.

If I owned Strava – I’d be putting a lot of dollars and time into marketing the product and increasing its adoption outside of key locales like the US. Obviously this is blue sky thinking, but I think the product is good enough to generate massive adoption if pushed harder.

Still, I have no doubt that its own organic growth through word of mouth will continue to see its adoption rise over time and I wish the team the best of luck in these efforts.

If you’ve read this review and decided to join, please feel free to follow me. I mainly ride and run in Singapore, but from time to time I head to the UK and US.