I ran just under four treadmill miles this afternoon, and upon completion, I saw something I have not seen in quite a while. Under my feed activity, I saw a little green ribbon with a message proclaiming that I accomplished my weekly running goal. I was going to do a post at the beginning of the year explaining the reasoning behind my running goals, but the fact of the matter was I did not put a lot of thought into the process. I had the nagging Achilles injury, so I set some modest goals and was done with it. Instead, I will steer the ship in another direction and give a review of why I use Strava.
Let's start off by stating the obvious, I am not your typical Strava athlete. Strava is as much a social platform as it is a workout tracker. So the fact that I have a grand total of three friends (a co-worker who does about seventy miles a week, a friend from high school who seems to run up mountains for fun, and a former Sunday School student who posts bike rides about once a month) is, to say the least, modest. Granted, I do not go searching for colleagues in the same way as other social media forms, but still, three friends are exceptionally sparse.
I link my Strava account from my Runmeter app on my phone. This gives me an instant transfer to Strava as soon as my run is finished while viewing a host of stats on the Runmetet app. The stats shown on Strava are somewhat basic for your workout, time, distance, pace, heart rate, elevation, laps. They do have something called GAP, which is pace adjusted for elevation. You can also view these stats at any point on your run.
Strava's strengths, at least in my eyes, are twofold. The first is a vast array of fitness metrics to keep you motivated. At the end of each run, your workout is given a Relative Effort or RE. This is a score or a rating based on both your endurance (time & distance) and your heart rate data vis-à-vis your maximum heart rate for your age. You then get a weekly range based on your workouts that lets you visualize your optimum training.
Another metric I like is the fitness and freshness curve. This is an overall daily fitness score based on your activities and then put into graph form for three months. I found this to be not onlya good fitness measurement, but an excellent form of motivation as well. It's pretty simple, workout and the graph line goes up, take time off and, well, I'm sure you get the picture.
The other strength is the list of challenges you can earn digital trophies for. It can be as simple as completing a 5K, or running 100 miles in a month. My favorite ones are running a designated distance over a certain timeframe. There is something motivating about seeing seeing your mileage creep closer to your goal in bar graph form. Strava has them for all activities, but I obviously just focus on running related ones.
Like all running platforms, Strava does have its drawbacks. One that frustrates many users is that you are locked into using Monday to Sunday as your week, instead of the customary Sunday to Saturday. It is also expensive, especially when you consider that many of the features can be found on free or cheaper sites like Garmin Connect or Map My Run. My advice would be to try the free version of Strava for a while and see how if you like it. Just like learning workout techniques, there is a lot to discover.
