My Love/Hate Relationship with Strava

Introduction

I’ve been an avid user of Strava for a few years now. Using it to log all my active endeavours. I don’t need to go into details with what Strava is but in a nutshell it’s a tool that allows you to record activities that incorporates social network features.

I’m going to write about my love/hate relationship with Strava in this blog, I hope you enjoy reading the blog, any feedback would be great. The focus will be with regards to Strava usage rather than my running journey, although elements of my running journey will be referred to.

My early days of Strava usage

When I first became aware of Strava I downloaded it onto my phone and I used to carry my phone on me recording and tracking my activity using my phone’s GPS. At the time, the novelty factor of getting stats for my run was exciting. Comparing stats of my runs was almost gamifying my runs. Each run I thought I had to run faster and /or further than my previous runs. I felt tired and exhausted – was I really enjoying my running? I seemed to be redlining my effort on each run to become ‘better’. Take note of my mindset here, we’ll refer back to it shortly.

When I started getting kudos and the odd comments from others on my activities this opened a whole new layer to my Strava use. Some of the people were from the same city as me, I followed some of the people and started seeing their respective activities on my Strava timeline. OK let’s go back to my mindset mentioned earlier…some of these runners were seasoned and experienced runners. I made the biggest mistake and compared my run stats with theirs. I became fixated on pace and thought I would try and match their paces. Bare in mind I was redlining my own efforts trying to beat my previous runs.

As we all know running is relative – one runner’s easy run will be another runners max effort. My attempt to somehow match their paces was the worst idea ever. What was I thinking? Anyway I sort of learned that we’re on our own journey even if I hadn’t fully grasped this at the time. I was still a newbie to running, my footwear and socks I wore weren’t suitable and I used to get blisters all the time.

Strava opens doors

When I became a more savvy runner, having learned the ropes after meeting other runners at my local Parkrun some of who are now amongst my best friends. I’ll talk about my Strava use as an ‘experienced’ runner. By experienced, I mean I understand that redlining every run is not the way, I’ve invested in proper running shoes and socks and I am running more consistently.

I found that over time I built a fairly sizeable group of followers (and in turn I followed lots of people), I was using the social network aspect of Strava a lot more, constantly giving out kudos to pretty much anyone on my timeline I was also commenting on people’s activities a lot more or responding to comments others had left for me related to an activity I did. I know I shouldn’t have felt compelled to leave comments but I did! As you can imagine this would consume a lot of time.

Over time my usage with Strava and in particular interactions with a core set of runners felt like I had got to know them (from a running perspective). The comments we left for each other included general feedback, encouragement, advice and/or questions – one thing for certain is with these core Strava runners it seemed genuine. We setup a WhatsApp group and we have done the London Marathon together, we have also met up on a few occasions just to meet up, catch up and have food together. In this case I would say that Strava opened the doors for me to an amazing group of friends whom I am still in contact with to this day.

Some people literally saw my progression as a runner through Strava. I joined Strava as a newbie runner and progressed over the 2 or so years that I’ve been on Strava.

More recently when picking up my bib at the London Marathon expo, I managed to meet in person some of the people that I follow on Strava. It was nice to meet the respective people in the flesh. I also met some Strava people during the London Marathon that were either running or others that were supporting. One of the Strava athletes I follow I met whilst running the Marathon, she was an official pacer at the marathon, we had a nice conversation before we parted ways – haha you couldn’t make this up.

The Strava Pressure

Have you ever set out on an easy run and changed how you run – maybe increasing the planned pace because of how you think others will view your run on Strava? If you haven’t good on you! I found myself thinking during the run what will people think of this run? Isn’t it too slow?

We need to go back to the hard truth that running is relative, from one person to the next we’re all on our own journeys. We all have our own HR zones, lactate thresholds and our own relative paces. It’s taken me a lot of time to come to that realisation but now I run without any Strava pressure. Logging my runs to monitor my own progress and to encourage others and to also just maybe inspire others.

Strava during Injuries

I’ve had my fair few share of major injuries that have kept me from running for several months. I won’t go into details of the injuries but when you’re injured it can be a very lonely place when all those around you are still running whilst you’re sat at home not being able to do the thing you love and whilst losing fitness and your self esteem in the process.

Even though I wasn’t using Strava whilst injured, (an activity doesn’t exist for watching Netflix) I would still get Strava notifications on my phone. Opening the app would usually make me feel worse as all your Strava buddies would still be smashing out their sessions but you’d be at home until the injury healed enough for you to try and go again.

What was humbling on one of my most recent injuries that kept me out for months some of my Strava buddies would try and enquire about where I was through mutual contacts or try and make contact with me through my other social networks. This was heartening to know that people cared.

Taking a break from Strava

When making a comeback from one of my more recent injuries, I decided to make all my activities private to me. This allowed me to fully focus on my comeback whilst tracking progress for myself. Taking this public break from Strava was so refreshing as I didn’t have to worry about dealing kudos to anyone on my timeline nor was I worried about commenting or responding to comments.

I realised with this renewed approach to Strava allowed me to literally free up so much time. It was quite the revelation, a welcomed one at that. Granted, I am always motivated when I see runs from fellow Strava buddies, but during my comeback and rehab I needed to focus on myself.

Even during my comeback, I still had Strava buddies enquiring about where I was, how I was, how rehab was going. There are some absolutely wonderful human beings out there.

I decided to comeback on Strava once I felt comfortable, even when I started posting on Strava again I had changed my Strava habits. During my self exile (i.e. not posting publicly) I realised how much time I had saved. So I decided I would only comment on Strava buddies activities when I logged an activity myself, this allowed me to strike a balance between Strava use for logging activities and interacting with my Strava buddies – the social network aspect of Strava.

What will my Strava Buddies Think if I post this Activity

Since completing the marathon, I missed the structured training that I did, structured training gave me focus and helped me schedule my weekly activities around training. I decided to undertake a 16 week Garmin HR training plan.

The reason for selecting this training plan was to satisfy the structured training I craved, as well as this I would be able to adopt a training plan that would in theory help to build a stronger aerobic base allowing me to get fitter in the process. (I plan on writing a blog on how I get on with the HR based training plan, watch this sapce!)

The first session of this training bloc was a zone 2 run for 30 minutes – oh my word it’s so hard to run in zone 2 without my HR drifting and trying to control it would involve walking breaks to bring the HR back into the desired zone. So this translates as a 40 minute 5k (including the warmdown) – the question is should I post this publicly on Strava? What will people think? The answer to this question is a resounding YES. Of course I post this, maybe people on Strava have thought of doing HR traininf and seeing something popup on their timeline may motivate them to take it up? But even if you disregard that reason, I’m no longer my old self where I second guess and feel insecure.

I choose to post because I continue to monitor my own progress against my own personal targets. If I am able to inspire or motivate someone in the process then that can only be a good thing.

Conclusion

Strava has been instrumental for me to log my activities, monitor my progress against my goals. The social network aspect has always been a big part of my progress as my Strava buddies have been able to motivate me by posting their own respective activities or commenting on my activities/training.

I remember reading a comment on Strava on an athletes comment section, regarding training in Ramadan – it wasn’t addressed to me but I took a lot of inspiration from it. It was regarding a Strava buddy feeling apprehensive about marathon training in Ramadan. The advice given by the athlete was to train in Ramadan you need to have a positive mindset and not put barriers on yourself before you’ve even tried. This sat with me with my own training in Ramadan so much so that it was almost like a mantra for me when training in the month.

Some of my closest friendships have been forged through Strava!

Whilst I’ve written about not succumbing to Strava pressure when doing an activity or when deciding to post an activity or not. I think it’s healthy to take short breaks from Strava for your own mental well-being and focus on yourself without the social networking aspect. I took breaks when I was injured but I believe you can take a break even when fit.

You may agree with or you might not agree with my views or you may agree with aspects of what I’ve written that’s fine. We’re all on our own journeys at the end of the day.