Despite Its Shortcomings, Strava Is Still the Best Running App
There are many apps that work, but only a few stand out. Nike Run Club is a free, fun activity that will never leave you bored. Runna will make you tick all the boxes in its structured programs, making you faster and stronger along the way. But the best app for the job is one with mapping tools, in-depth performance analysis, and social features that your friends actually use. Yes, you just can’t beat Strava.
And I say this, fully aware that there are problems here. Mainly privacy: If you don’t find and adjust all your privacy settings , you may end up exposing more personal information to the public than you intended. Every new feature seems to come with new privacy concerns, such as the weekly heat map launched earlier this year that made individual runners in less populated areas stand out like sore thumbs .
But privacy concerns only exist because Strava has social and mapping features; and the social and mapping features are the best part of Strava. Do I think Strava is a good company that only does responsible things? No, not really. But I’ve adjusted my privacy settings and am having fun with the app, moving up the segment leaderboards and using its route-finding tools while traveling. So let me explain what Strava offers that other working apps don’t, and I’ll go over all the pros and cons so you can decide for yourself if you want to join me.
As we go, I’ll point out where I’m talking about free features and where you’ll need to subscribe to get the good stuff. Many of Strava’s best features are behind a paywall, but the free version is pretty good too. A premium subscription costs $11.99 per month or $79.99 per year, with student and family discounts available.
(And yes, Strava is also a cycling app. Today we’re only discussing running-specific features.)
Strava stats are top notch
If you use a watch to track your runs, it will probably give you some basic information – time, mileage, pace, heart rate. However, sync this data with Strava and you’ll get much more. It will take into account the hills on the route you ran, add up your elevation gain (total number of hill runs), and calculate your incline-adjusted pace.
It will break down your pace and heart rate into zones. It will include a note about the weather conditions at the time you ran. It will calculate whether it thinks your “fitness” is increasing (this is a flawed metric, but can sometimes be useful) and compare your effort to similar runs you’ve done in the past. The run I did yesterday around a lake at a local park was the fourth time I’ve done this route recently, and Strava tells me that yesterday’s run was the fastest of the four.
Strava also tracks my weekly and monthly mileage. I want to ride a total of 100 miles this month and now they tell me I have 66 miles left to go. Runners often track their workload and recovery by calculating their weekly mileage, and when I click on the You tab in Strava, the first thing I see is a graph of my weekly mileage over the past few months. I can zoom in on the whole of last year and see that I’m now running more miles per week than I was at this time last year (and also that I’ve been logging boops all winter).
Yes, in theory you could get most of this data from your watch app (Fitbit, Apple Fitness, whatever it is for you), but it’s rarely presented so well and clearly. An exception might be using the Garmin app, but most people I know who wear Garmin are interested in Strava for all the other features, so they still use both. Let’s talk about these other features.
What you get for free : Splits, climb, max height, PR effort, and a pace graph that displays next to your lift time, elapsed time, and fastest split.
What deserves a premium : Almost everything else, including class-adjusted pace, pace zones, matched runs, fitness assessments and relative effort.
Segments is a fun game that you can play with yourself or with others.
Whenever the topic of Strava privacy comes up, there are always people who ask, “Why do you even want other people to see your runs?” Part of the answer is that humans are social creatures and love to share parts of their lives with their friends and community. This is also a big part of the joke. But on the other hand, when your stats are public, you may accidentally compete with others in segments. And for many of us, it’s fun, motivating, or both.
A Strava segment is a section of road or trail that exists somewhere in the world. It has a name (in the Strava app), a start and end point, and an in-app leaderboard showing who ran the fastest segment. Some segments are a challenging climb; some are popular park trails; some were probably created just because someone came up with a funny name.
For example, my local park has a small section of road less than a quarter mile long from the dam to the lake. Someone labeled it as a Strava segment called Dam You . The fastest time for men is 39 seconds, and the fastest time for women is 54 seconds. Click on this link and you can see who owns these titles.
You’ll also see who has local legend status in this segment. A local legend is the person who ran the section the most often , regardless of speed. Local legend Dam You has launched it 33 times in the last 90 days.
You may not realize you’ve launched a segment until you look at your Strava stats after you’ve launched. But the app keeps track. Apparently I’ve launched Dam You 13 times in the last year. I am ranked 2644 out of 5454 participants on the leaderboard. Getting to the top of this list would be a major achievement if I decided to strive for it. (When I view the page, Strava now prompts me to set a goal and a deadline to achieve it.)
This may seem like an impossible goal, but you just need to look beyond the popular parks to find more laid-back options. I have local legend status in several areas near my home simply because there aren’t that many people around. One of them is a hill I found by looking in segment explorer for the steepest slopes in my area. If it weren’t for the Strava segments, I would never have noticed this hill. But right now it’s one of my favorite hill repeats .
I find that knowing the segments makes my runs a little more fun. Sometimes I’ll plan a route to try to complete as many segments as possible, or do quick repeats of a segment as an interval workout. And even if I’m slower than other people on the leaderboard, Strava will tell me how my latest effort in a segment compares to my previous efforts. It’s nice to get a little PR medal when I beat my best score.
What you get for free : Location of segments, time spent on segments.
What deserves a bonus : best efforts ever, comparison of segment efforts over time, segment leaderboards, comparison of your effort numbers with local legends.
Wherever you go you will have a running route
My favorite thing to do is Strava when I’m traveling. All this data it collects from your public launches? Strava uses this to create heat maps of where runners like to go. Then, when you open the app’s Maps tab, you’re automatically presented with several suggested routes.
You can filter suggested routes by length, elevation (flat or hilly), surface (paved or dirt) and difficulty. You can also look at a suggested route, decide that you like some part of it rather than all of it, and create your own route based on what you see.
When you select or create a route, Strava will tell you its length and elevation profile. It will also tell you how popular the route is and how long it usually takes people to complete it.
I can drive into a city I’ve never seen before and within minutes find a four-mile, mostly flat trail (or whatever I’m looking for) that starts at or near my hotel. If I want to find a track, I can simply turn on the heat map layer, zoom out, and look for ovals. I also used these features to find places to run in my hometown.
What you get for free : View heat map from app, pan heat map, preview suggested routes.
What requires premium : Search by heat map, routes and segments; viewing route details; creating your own routes.
All your friends on Strava
Thanks to all of the above, Strava has become a popular running app among a wide range of runners, including athletes and recreational runners. Your friends who run? They’re probably all there, or they will be soon. If you want to share your activities and show each other ‘appreciation’, this is the app for you.
Strava also syncs with all major apps and devices. Even if you track your runs (and rides, and strength training) using another app, you can set it to sync everything with Strava. My Strava account has several years of workouts that I’ve tracked from Apple Watch, Garmin, and even Peloton. When I wore the Garmin Forerunner 265 with the new Pixel Watch 3 , Strava correctly (I’d bet) logged it as a run that Beth and Beth did together.
So if you just want to use the app that everyone uses, here it is. If you want to use an app that provides detailed analytics of your runs, here it is (and you’ll probably need a premium subscription). And if you want to find new routes in your area or while traveling and “compete” with neighbors you’ve never met, this is another sign that this is the app for you.