Insider Journal

Hello! My name is Geode and I am a member of Strava’s Community Management team specializing in account access inquiries. So, let me just say it… Login and account issues are frustrating ! But, I have tools and I am here to help. Let’s work together to resolve the issue you are experiencing and get you back into your account. Start with Step 1 below to diagnose the issue you are experiencing. Then go to Step 2, the recommended section to troubleshoot the diagnosed issue. Most likely all the information needed to resolve the issue you are experiencing is included in this article. Let’s get started! 01 Diagnose We first need to correctly identify the root cause of the issue you are experiencing. Below are the most common log in, email, and password issue descriptions I hear from athletes. Based on the description, I usually know which direction we need to go to resolve the issue. This does not always seem like a direct path to the athlete I am working with, but trust me as we navigate this journey as I have helped hundreds of athletes regain access to their account. So read through the list below and find the description that sounds like the issue you are experiencing. Then skip to the recommended section to begin troubleshooting. Go to Log In Issues: “I don’t know how to login to my account.” “I am getting an error message when logging in.” “The email address associated with my account is misspelled.” “The email address associated with my account no longer exists.” “I no longer have access to the inbox of the email address associated with my Strava account.” “I don’t recognize the email address associated with my account, xxxxx@privaterelay.appleid.com .” “I forgot the email address associated with my account.” Go to Email and Password Issues: “I login with Facebook or Google and would like to change to email/password login.” “I need to update the email address associated with my account.” “I need to update my password.” “I forgot my password.” 02 Troubleshoot We have done the initial diagnosis of the issue, now let’s troubleshoot. Go to the corresponding topic below that relates to the issue we diagnosed. If we uncover a new route to your issue, you might be redirected to another topic to troubleshoot. Stick with it! If we work together, the processes below will help you get back into your account in an efficient manner. Log In Issues In this section, my goal is to provide instructions to easily navigate the Log In page. Also included are tips on how to resolve any errors you might encounter. If after trying the troubleshooting tips below you find yourself still unable to login, that might be due to having a different email attached to your primary account. If that may be the case, go to the Find Account section for further instructions. “I don’t know how to login to my account.” There are 4 options for accessing your Strava account, via your email/password, or through Facebook, Google, or Apple Sign In. From the home page, first go to the Log In prompt in the upper right corner of the page. If you login with email/password, go to the “Log In with Email” prompt and enter associated information. If you login with Facebook or Google, the email associated with your Strava account will match the email associated with either of those accounts. “I am getting an error message when logging in.” If you receive an error message from the Log In prompt, that is due to either the email or password being misspelled. Or, if you receive an error banner that says the email address is already in use, that means you have mistakenly gone to the Sign Up prompt and not the Log In prompt. “The email address associated with my account is misspelled.” “The email address associated with my account no longer exists.” “I no longer have access to the inbox of the email address associated with my Strava account.” If the email address associated with your Strava account is misspelled, no longer exists, or if you no longer have access to the email's inbox, your Strava account is still accessible. To access this Strava account, go to the login prompt and enter this email address exactly as it is spelled or misspelled along with its associated password. Once into your Strava account, go to the section below entitled “I need to update the email address associated with my account.” “I don’t recognize the email address xxxxx@privaterelay.appleid.com .” If you Sign In with Apple, you have opted to "hide your email address" from Strava and Apple will create a separate proxy email address that will look like: xxxxx@privaterelay.appleid.com . That proxy email will connect with the email address associated with your Apple account. If you would like to change to an email/password login go to https://www.strava.com/account/recover and enter the email address used in your Apple account. Then you'll need to enter the proxy email address (ex. x xxxx@privaterelay.appleid.com ) that Apple assigned to your Strava account. You should receive a link to reset your password within minutes. “I forgot the email address associated with my account.” To find the email address associated with your Strava account, on the web go to Profile > Settings. On the mobile app, open your settings from the gear icon in the upper right-hand corner of the Home, Groups, or You tab then select Change Email. > If after trying these steps you are still having trouble logging into your account, go to Account Access: Locate or Merge Accounts . Email and Password Issues To reduce any possibility of future login issues, it is best to always associate your active email address with your Strava account. It should be an easy update, but if there are any issues please see the instructions below to contact Support. “I login with Facebook or Google and would like to change to email/password login.” If you would like to change to an email/password login, the best way to do this is to use the password recovery process. Go to https://www.strava.com/account/recover and enter the email address used in your Facebook or Google accounts. You should receive a link to reset your password within minutes. “I need to update the email address associated with my account.” “I need to update my password.” From the Strava website, hover over your profile picture in the upper right-hand corner. Click on Settings from the drop-down menu. Select View Account on the right and Change Password on the next page. Enter your existing password then choose a new password and save. From the mobile app, select the gear icon in the upper right-hand corner and select Change Password. To update the email address on your account, see instructions below for web and mobile. Web Log into your Strava account at www.strava.com Locate your profile photo at the top right corner of the page and hover your cursor over it to reveal the drop-down menu Select 'Settings' then find the 'My Account' tab from the menu listed on the left Under Login Details, select Change Email Address or Change Password . Enter in details and select “Update”. Mobile Navigate to the “You” tab on the lower right of the app Select the “Gear” icon on the top right of the screen Select 'Change Email' or “Change Password” Enter in your new email address and current password and select 'Save' “I forgot my password.” You can reset your password by clicking on " Forgot your password? " from the login page. You will need to provide the email address that is linked to your Strava athlete account. After submitting your email address, you will receive an email with instructions and a link to a page where you will be asked to enter a new password. The email and password reset page will look like the following: If you did not receive your password reset email, first check your spam folder and search for any emails from Strava. It will come from the email: no-reply@strava.com . > If you do not receive your password reset email after 2 hours, contact Support . Please provide the account information you are trying to access. If this email is not the same as the one you are writing from, please include the email, account URL, and your date of birth. > If you have forgotten or are not sure of the email address associated with your account, go to Account Access: Locate or Merge Accounts . > If you experience any issue updating your email, contact Support . Please provide the email associated with your account as well as a screenshot of any error messages you are receiving.

Want to let your loved one know where you are when you go out for a solo activity? Exploring a new route and don’t want friends or family to worry? If so, check out Strava Beacon...our live location sharing feature available to everyone. Beacon was built to give athletes more control over their own safety, and to keep them connected to their community when they need it most. You don't have a subscription? No worries, Beacon is available to all when you share using the Strava app on your phone. You can select up to 3 contacts keep track of where you are, in real time. Your location should update about every 15 seconds, depending on cell service. Your friend doesn't use Strava? Not a problem; the person following you does not have to have Strava on their phone to follow you. As long as the recipient of your text message has access to a web browser they will be able to see your activity. Please note that Beacon sharing from connected devices including Apple Watch and Garmin are a part of our subscription due to the complexity of supporting such integrations. Haven't tried Beacon yet? Give it a try and let us know how it goes. Have you used Strava and have a story to share? You can share it here in the community hub. Thanks to 1Danimal for posting the first Beacon story - If you haven't seen it yet, it's a great read! Check it out here and give some kudos! Questions? Want to read more about Beacon? Check out our Beacon help page to view common questions and how to set up Beacon on your mobile device. Like this post? Give it a kudos! When you a post, it lets us know what content you would like to see more of!

We're happy to announce Strava's integration with the Fi Smart Collar for dogs. The Fi collar uses GPS and the LTE-M network to remotely track your dog, and also tracks their sleep, activity and steps. Find out more about the Fi Collar Fi automatically records your walks with your dog, and with our new integration these walks will be uploaded to Strava to share with your entire community. When your Fi walks are uploaded to Strava they will include a graphic featuring stats on steps taken, and how your dog ranks among other dogs on Fi. If you’ve been waiting to try out Fi, now’s the perfect time because Strava athletes can access a special offer of $20 off and up to 3 months free. Use the code “STRAVA20” and learn more about the smart collar here Find out how to integrate Fi with Strava To celebrate, we've polled Strava and Fi employees about the dogs in their lives. If you like looking at pictures of dogs, sit back and enjoy. Meet the Dogs: Disclaimer: While we all enjoy having our pets tag along on our Strava activities, please note that only humans are permitted to open Strava accounts. Want even more dogs? Check out Dogs of Strava If you have a dog, or other nonhuman companion in your life that inspires you or helps keep you moving, we'd love to hear about them. Drop us a reply to this post and introduce them. Questions about the Strava Fi integration? Drop us a reply below and we'll be happy to help out. If you prefer, you can submit a support ticket and someone from our Support Team will get in touch.

Some exciting news for Strava users everywhere. Today, Strava announced the acquisition of FATMAP, a mobile app for discovering, planning, navigating and memorializing outdoor adventures using 3D mapping technology. In the near future, Strava users can expect a new mapping experience upon completion of FATMAP’s proprietary 3D mapping technology being integrated into the platform. What does this mean? In the coming months, there will be more tools at your fingertips to holistically discover and plan an outdoor experience with curated local guides, points of interest and safety information. Designed specifically for trails and exploring the outdoor world, FATMAP’s technology helps you to safely discover, navigate and share adventures, even without a mobile connection. The combination of FATMAP’s 3D mapping technology with our data set of activities will make it easier to design routes whether you’re moving on the slopes, in the trails, city streets or neighborhoods. Your experience on Strava is important and the integration of FATMAP’s features will empower more movement and discovery of the outdoors. Stay tuned for more information on when these exciting new features will be integrated into your experience on Strava. Read more details about this news here.

If you haven’t heard, Best Efforts are now available for your Ride activities. Best Efforts compiles a Strava user’s top all-time performances and their top five performances per year in each category except power, where it shows your power curve. This new feature is available on both web and mobile. Performances are tracked automatically with GPS and power data from your cycling activities. A power meter is required to collect power data. Virtual rides are not included in Best Efforts except for power data. What to Know: Riding Best Efforts will track four categories. Longest ride: Tracks longest rides by distance. Elevation: Tracks performance in two elevation categories: Biggest Climb - vertical gain on individual climbs, and Elevation Gain - vertical gain from the entire ride. Distance: Tracks fastest performances at 5 miles, 10k, 10 miles, 20k, 30k, 40k, 50k, 80k, 50 miles, 90k, 100k, 100 miles and 180k Power: Tracks top performances for average power over 5 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, and 1 hour. It also produces a power curve showing your best average power outputs from time periods of your choosing. How to View: You can view your best efforts from the activity detail page on either web or mobile. On web, click on the Best Efforts tab from the activity. Once clicked you will see the best efforts for each category for that activity. On mobile, you can view best efforts by scrolling down from the activity detail page and under Results the first thing you see is the number of best efforts earned for that activity. Next click View All Results to see more information on the efforts you earned. Scroll down a bit until you see Achievements. If you earned a best effort for a specific category it will be shown here. And if a PR is earned you will see a medal next to the effort. Darn, you can see I didn’t earn any PRs for this ride, but that’s okay because now the next time I do this ride I know the times I need to beat. The next thing to know, if you click on View Your All-Time Best Efforts you will be taken to your all-time top three performances across all categories. You can tap through the categories to see your all-time personal records (PRs), plus your second- and third-best performances at each. In the longest ride, elevation and distance categories, for a deep-dive of your best efforts tap View Analysis to see your top ten all-time performances, top performances by year and a graph of your trend over time in that category. In the power category, tap View Power Curve to see your best average power at time intervals from 1 second to the length of your longest ride. You can pull up power curves from multiple time periods to compare them. For more details tap here . You can also view your all-time top three performances from the Progress tab on mobile. Go to the You Tab > Progress Tab and scroll down. You will see Run Best Efforts on this page. Click on View all your Best Efforts and click on the Run icon to switch to Ride. Click on one of your efforts and the page expands to show the activity involved. If you click on that it will take you to the activity, but you may have noticed the Remove Effort button. This button can be used to remove an effort from your Best Efforts history and erase the achievement banner from the activity. This will not delete the activity. If you remove a PR, your next-fastest time will become your PR. This is only available on mobile. My Stats You can see three of the four Best Effort categories on your Profile page under My Stats. Power Best Efforts are not viewable here, but you will be able to view Longest Ride, Distance, and Elevation. Make sure to click on the Ride icon to see those stats. You can learn more about this feature with the following: Best Efforts Overview Ride Best Efforts Troubleshooting Best Efforts And in case you missed it you can read about Running Best Efforts here . Questions? Drop a reply below and we'll be happy to help!

Have you ever deleted an activity, and then realized later that you want it back? That’s happened to most of us at one time or another. Good news - it’s now possible to restore deleted activities to your Strava account. On the Strava website, select “ My Activities” from the drop-down menu under “Training” . Then, click on the “Recently Deleted” tab. You’ll see a list of your deleted activities within the last 30 days. On the far right side of the list of deleted activities, you’ll see the option to “Reupload” your activity. Once you click “Reupload” your activity will be restored, and you will be redirected to the “Activity Page” page for that activity. For more details and an FAQ, please refer to our Knowledge Base article

Hello Everyone. I’m Jane, I work at Strava, and I love e-bikes! Today we’re going to talk about why e-bikes are so great, the best way to use Strava with an e-bike, and lastly, chat with Mona and Erika, both Strava employees and e-bike enthusiasts. Before we jump into any of that - let’s talk statistics. According to statista.com , the global e-bike market in 2021 was worth more than $26 billion and is forecasted to roughly double by 2027. E-bikes are becoming increasingly popular worldwide. We’re also noticing that more Strava members are using e-bikes. The share of cyclists on Strava with an e-bike ride increased 26% in 2022 compared to 2021. Europe in particular, is embracing e-bikes. So what’s the big deal? Well, e-bikes have a number of benefits. Benefits of E-bikes: *Convenient Commuting The pedal assist and increased speed makes e-bikes an excellent option for commuting or just helping you get outside to move your body. *Customizable E-bikes can be designed and set up for a number of functions. Hauling cargo, transporting kids, participating in gravel or mountain bike rides - e-bikes can do it all. *Improving Accessibility E-bikes allow cyclists of varied skill levels to be able to participate in cycling! The pedal assistance is easier on joints and muscles especially on hills or difficult terrain. *Going the Distance With extended range, e-bikes offer cyclists the ability to experience more trails or hard to reach destinations, or push themselves harder. They provide a way for cyclists to continue doing the sport they love through all stages of life, from pregnancy, injury recovery, or just the need for a change of pace. We welcome e-bikes and their owners on Strava. Here are some things to be aware of when you record and upload your e-bike rides to Strava: E-bike rides have their own activity/sport type on Strava . You’ll want to ensure all your e-bike rides are categorized correctly. One way to do this is to record with a device or app that supports recording in e-bike mode , since these will automatically sync to Strava as e-bike rides. Recording with a device that doesn’t yet support e-bikes? No problem, simply record in “Ride” mode and change the activity/sport type to "E-Bike Ride" after the activity syncs to Strava. Making sure your e-bike ride is set to the proper sport type ensures it matches with e-bike segments only, and will not appear on standard ride segment leaderboards. Pro Tip: Is your e-bike ride getting flagged before you have a chance to change the sport type? Do you sometimes get busy and forget to change your ride to "E-Bike"? Consider updating your privacy settings so that your newly uploaded activities will be visible only to you. This will give you time to go in and update the activity to an "E-Bike Ride" without worrying that it accidentally matches standard ride segment leaderboards. Once you've updated the sport type, you can then make your activity visible to Followers or to Everyone – or keep it set to just you. What kind of apps and devices work best for e-bikes on Strava? Many platforms – including Garmin, Wahoo, Apple Watch, Wear OS Watches, and the Strava app – allow you to record in e-bike mode. Some e-bike brands have an app that you can use to monitor your bike and track your rides, as well as automatically sync those rides to your Strava account. We are continuing to work to add integration for more e-bike brands that can record a wide variety of data like power, cadence and can connect to other sensors/devices. Let’s chat with Mona, Strava employee and e-bike enthusiast! Q: Hi Mona, what motivated you to get an e-bike? I got my first e-bike during 2020 after my friend let me ride theirs, and it was suddenly like I had gotten back all my confidence in riding again for the first time since I was back in college! I felt safe enough to ride in bike lanes on the street and trails without feeling like I was getting in the way or worrying as much about cars trying to get around me. The biggest benefit is that it allows me as a disabled cyclist to be able to ride again with confidence, and it made riding accessible for me again and that was truly freeing! Q: How much do you ride it? During the summer and fall I try to get out for a ride every day while the trails are cleared from snow and ice. Q: Do you use it when you might otherwise use a motor vehicle? I am fortunate enough to live in a place where I can ride from my home to the office completely on bike trails. I will often commute on my bike in the summer and can get to the office faster than I would be able to drive during peak commuting hours. Q: What about battery life? I get about 40 miles with high pedal assist on a full charge. Q: What’s the best thing about having an e-bike? It allows me to move my body and get outside without having to feel self conscious that I am being too slow on the trails and on the street. Especially working at Strava I am surrounded by a ton of super amazing cyclists, my e-bike allows me to join rides with my colleagues around town. Thank you Mona for chatting with us! Next up, meet Erika, Strava employee, Mom, and all round cycling fan. What Motivated you to get an e-bike? When I was pregnant with my first daughter, I didn’t want to take time off the bike but let's be honest, it was getting more difficult to keep up with my husband and have the ride still be enjoyable. So I got my first e-mountain bike in 2017. I rode the bike all the way up to my due date and then was quickly back on the bike once I was cleared by the doctor. The e-bike was a great way to slowly ramp back up! Now we both have e-bikes and I added a road/gravel e-bike to the mix too, which I use to tow TWO kids or go on longer adventure rides. The e-mountain bike has been great for pushing me to my limits in the mountains and getting up those challenging climbs at altitude that I may miss out on under my own power. How much do do you ride it? Every time I’m with my kids, it is primarily on an e-bike. I'll ride an e-bike to the mail box or park. Anything local (within 10 miles) the e-bike is a great option. Do you use it when you might otherwise use a motor vehicle? When it was just the two of us, we used human power bikes for everything. Even for 25+ mile commutes. Now with kids, the e-bikes are a game changer. I’m hoping we have a cargo bike in the future but we don’t live in a huge cycling community, so the street safety is still a concern with little ones. What about battery life? Extended range is the way to go, otherwise we still get some good distance on our bikes: E-MTB 5hrs (50-60 miles) E-Road 4hr (80 miles) add another 50% if you have a range extender What’s the best thing about having an e-bike? I can go further and still have fun. And it didn’t mean I had to slow down during pre-and post pregnancy. And now it is all about getting to share the excitement for bikes with my girls. They love when we ride our ‘fast’ bikes. If you have any additional questions for Mona or Erika, or want to share your own e-bike experiences or adventures, drop us a reply to this post. We would love to hear from you! E-bike activities are not eligible for all challenges on Strava, but we do regularly host challenges where e-bike activities are eligible. For example this challenge which runs March 4-24, 2023. The best place to confirm eligible activity types is on the challenge pages themselves, in the eligibility rules and details. Have a great idea for an e-bike related feature on Strava? Review our idea submission guidelines and then jump over to our Ideas Board to submit your idea.

Greetings! What do backcountry snowboarding and dog ownership have in common you might ask? Both have grown increasingly popular in recent years! I’m here to share some tips for maximizing safety and stoke when venturing into the backcountry with your pup. First, meet Lily! My beloved 5-year-old husky/shepherd mix who loves nothing more than a good romp through the snow. Cold Weather and Long Days Lily’s athletic build and thick fur coat make her well-suited for snowy backcountry adventures. It’s important to make sure that your dog is able to handle cold weather and long days of strenuous exercise. Shorter-haired breeds can benefit from a doggie jacket to help them stay warm in the snow. Train, train, train! This is arguably the most important piece of advice, but it’s imperative that you’ve developed a strong bond with your dog through consistent training. Training your dog to obey voice commands and stay away from the edges of skis/snowboards is crucial to ensuring a safe day in the backcountry. Essential Gear In addition to a first-aid kit and the obligatory avalanche rescue gear that all backcountry skiers should carry (and know how to use!), there are a few dog-specific items that I feel are essential to a safe day in the snow. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but rather I’ve called out what I believe is most important: Musher’s Secret is a natural, food-grade wax that forms a breathable protective barrier for your dog’s paws. This has been a game changer for both winter and summer adventures, allowing Lily to run for miles without tearing up her paws. Emergency dog carrying harness. It’s a packable, lightweight rescue sling that allows you to carry your dog on your back in the event of an emergency. Exhaustion, injured paw, or broken bone are just a few examples of what can ocurr, and it’s important to always consider whether you’d be able to carry your dog all the way back to the trailhead if something were to happen. This is an item I've thankfully not had to use, but I always make sure to throw it in the pack. Water and snacks! This may seem obvious, but I’d be remiss not to call it out. Don’t forget to pack a water bowl, extra water, and snacks to make sure all humans and animals are hydrated and well-fueled throughout your day. Start slow, work your way up The best way to build trust in your dog's abilities in the backcountry is to start off with a mellow route. Take it slow and monitor how your pup is doing. Are they getting cold? How are their paws holding up? How quickly do they start to show signs of fatigue? Starting slow and working your way up to longer tours is the best way to ensure you don’t get in over your head. Sometimes it’s best for your dog to stay home As difficult as it may be to leave your dog behind, you must consider if the conditions and route you’re planning are suitable for your furry friend. Be sure to check out FATMAP by Strava, a fantastic tool for adventure planning and navigating. Deep heavy snow can be exhausting for dogs after several miles, and a hard, icy, snowpack can lead to bleeding paws. If your heart is set on a long tour with thousands of feet of vertical climbing in tricky snow conditions, it might be best for your pup to sit this one out. And now the moment you've been waiting for... Have you taken your snow-loving dog into the backcountry? Do you do other outdoor Strava adventures with your dog? Any other advice that I may have left out? Let's chat about it in the comments below!

Strava is proud to announce that our Live Segments can now be ridden in the virtual world on Rouvy! This exciting new feature marks the first time that Strava Live Segments have been available for athletes recording a virtual activity. Find a supported route on Rouvy with Live Segments to compete against the King or Queen of the Mountain (KOM or QOM) or your Personal Record (PR) if you’ve ridden the segment in the past. While previously the changing of seasons meant that competing on Live Segments would need to cease until the return of warmer weather, the inclusion of Strava Live Segments on Rouvy means that your training and competition can continue all year long. What is Rouvy? Rouvy is an indoor riding app which allows athletes to ride virtually on real world routes through the power of augmented reality and 3D avatars. Learn more about Rouvy on their website at https://rouvy.com/. What are Strava Live Segments? Live Segments give athletes the ability to compete on Strava segments in realtime while recording their activity. To learn more about Strava Live Segments, have a look at our Live Segments article on the Strava Help Center. Requirements To ride Strava Live Segments on Rouvy, an athlete must ensure that their Strava account is correctly connected to their Rouvy account. This connection can be performed via the Connected Apps page on Rouvy.com. Once the connection is successfully established between the two accounts, the setup process is complete and you are ready to ride Strava Live Segments on Rouvy. Strava Accounts: Free versus Subscribed Any Strava athlete will be able to ride Strava Live Segments on Rouvy. While Strava athletes using our free plan will be able to compete on Live Segments and see their segment efforts on Strava, Strava athletes with an active subscription will additionally be able to compete against QOM/KOM and PR avatars on-screen during Live Segments. How to Ride Strava Live Segments on Rouvy After the requirements above have been met, riding Live Segments on Rouvy is as easy as opening the Rouvy app and selecting a route. Routes which feature Strava Live Segments will display a count of the number of segments on the route next to the Strava logo: When you begin riding a route, a notification will appear alerting you to the Live Segment which is approaching: Shortly afterwards you will see the start of the segment come into view. The QOM/KOM and PR avatars will also appear from behind you to reach the start of the segment at the exact moment you do. At that point, it’s time to give your best effort! As you put in your segment effort, you can track your current time, progress, and distance to the finish along the top of the screen. Crossing the finish line will cause the segment effort’s time to be displayed as a notification along with your time to the QOM/KOM and PR.

Weightlifting + HIIT + Strength Training + Stationary Bike + Pilates + Yoga + Rebound + Rowing + VR Fitness + CrossFit + Circuit Training + Rock Climbing + Stair Climber + Jump Rope + Kickboxing + Online Programs + Obstacle Fitness + Zumba + Treadmill As you can see from the list above, there’s a wide variety of ways to get active indoors. Chances are you’ve tried one of these out, but did you record it? If not, why? In this blog, we'll teach you how to use devices you likely already own (your smartwatch or mobile phone) to record indoor workouts. We'll walk you through how to upload these activities to Strava so that you can benefit from tracking trends and progress over time. I don’t have a fancy device to record indoor workouts You don’t need an expensive fitness device to record your indoor workouts, in fact you probably already have the tools you need. If you don’t know where to start, don’t worry, we're about to walk you through how to use what’s readily available to you to record and track your activities on Strava. I don’t think my indoor workouts are worth tracking on Strava There are plenty of reasons (besides 's) you should track your indoor workouts on Strava. The primary reason is that these activities contribute to the big picture of your fitness journey and by excluding them you’re missing out on tracking progress towards your personal goals as well as valuable insights into your training. There are also a bunch of features that you’ll benefit from: Fitness : Identify patterns in your training and see the big picture of how all your workouts add up over time. Your score is entirely relative to you and serves as a benchmark, to show how many points you currently have compared to any date in the past two years. Relative Effort : Measures how much cardiovascular work went into any activity that has heart rate data or Perceived Exertion. Chart these values over time to easily spot trends. See how Jane uses it to make sure she's not over or under training. Fitness and Freshness : Helps track your levels of Fitness, Fatigue, and Form over time. Fitness = Accumulation of training. Fatigue = That tired feeling that limits your performance. Form = When one is very fit but not fatigued. Goals : Set a distance, time, or elevation goal and the timeframe in which you'd like to achieve the goal (weekly, monthly, or annually). Power and segment goals can also be set from the Strava website. See how caling uses goals to stay motivated and maintain both a healthy body and mind. Training Log : View all of your training in one place. Filter by activity, distance, time, relative effort, and month. See how Granola uses it to track training after an injury. Clubs : Participate in clubs, and if you’re doing an indoor workout that records distance you can also compete in the leaderboards. Group Challenges : Group Challenges allow you to set a goal and a timeframe to see who can reach the challenge goal and beyond. See how Lindsay uses it to hype her friend group and chase that top spot. If you need some extra inspiration to record when you’re active, check out our blog on Recording All The Things ! Demos of those features in use Fitness Relative Effort Goals Training Log 01 Fitness apps for mobile devices Most of us have a smartphone, and most smart phones can support fitness apps. Mobile apps allow you to easily record the elapsed time of an indoor workout. However, if you’re looking to record additional data like heart rate, cadence, distance, etc, you will likely need to pair the corresponding sensors . If this interests you, make sure to read part 04 of this blog! Strava for iOS or Android The Strava mobile app can record a wide variety of activities—including indoor workouts. You can check out a full list here . If you don’t see your activity listed, don’t worry because you can always use the inclusive “Workout” category. Helpful articles: Stationary, Indoor and Treadmill Activities Recording an Activity And if you don’t have a heart rate monitor to help measure how hard you worked, you can always use Perceived Exertion . This feature lets you manually record how intense your efforts feel on a 1-10 scale ranging from “Easy” to “Max Effort.” What’s great about tracking this type of data is that it can supplement or stand in for your heart rate data and that means you can still use features like Relative Effort, Fitness & Freshness, and Fitness. Other options Even if you prefer to use other fitness apps to record your activity, there is usually an easy way to get them to Strava. Most popular fitness apps offer a direct syncing integration by connecting your accounts. Below is a list of popular fitness apps that let you record indoor activities and sync directly to Strava: Weight lifting and bodyweight workouts: Fitbod, Aaptiv , Sworkit, Barre3 Indoor cycling : Zwift, Peloton, Rouvy, Wahoo RGT, Wahoo SYSTM, TrainerRoad Yoga : Glo, Sworkit, Peloton, Mindbody General Indoor workouts : Wahoo Fitness Hot Tip : HealthFit is an integration that can sync any activity from Apple Health to Strava. So if you can get the workout into Apple Health, you can get it to Strava! 02 Smart Watches If you have a smartwatch, you can likely use it to record indoor workouts. Below we cover a few of the most simple/straightforward options, but it's important to note there are a variety of watches, apps, and syncing services that can be used to accomplish recording/syncing to Strava. Apple Watch The Apple Watch comes with a native workout app, which is very simple to use. It has a ton of sport types, records heart rate, and calculates estimated calories burned. It even reminds you to record an activity if it senses you’re working out. If you’re unfamiliar with the app, take a look through Apple’s article on using the Workout app . To get those activities to Strava, all you have to do is connect your Strava and Apple Health accounts and future activities will be synced automatically. You can find instructions on how to do so here . Note: There are a variety of other fitness apps you can use to record workouts on your Apple Watch, including the Strava app. If you prefer to use a different app, check our Help Center and Community Hub to see whether automatic syncing to Strava is supported. WearOS Watches The Strava app can be downloaded to your WearOS watch in order to record activities. The app can track elapsed time, and if the watch has a built in sensor, you can also track heart rate data. If you want to learn more about how to use the app, check out our help center article: Wear OS and Strava When you record with Strava for WearOS, your activities will sync automatically to your Strava account shortly after you save them. Note: There are a variety of other fitness apps you can use to record workouts on your WearOS watch, including Google Fit, the watch’s native workout app. Google Fit does not automatically sync to Strava so if you prefer to use a different app, check our Help Center and Community Hub to see whether automatic syncing to Strava is supported. Prefer a different watch app? No problem, there are plenty of apps that can record indoor activities and many of these offer ways to directly sync to Strava. Search our Help Center to see if your app/fitness platform is listed. If not, ask the Strava Community Hub for advice on how to sync data from your preferred app to Strava. If all else fails, we’re always happy to help if you reach out to our support team . 03 Manual Activities If you don’t have the equipment above, forgot to record, or for whatever reason weren’t able to record your workout, you can always create a manual activity after the fact. Manual activities are also eligible for Perceived Exertion, which we explained the benefits of above! Manual activities allow you to record core details like: date & time, sport type, gear, distance, duration, elevation, perceived exertion, and public or private notes. Learn more about creating manual activities: Uploading Manual Activities 04 Bonus data If you’re looking to get more insights from your recordings, consider investing in biometric sensors. There are plenty to choose from ranging in price and functionality and they’ll help contribute data that can tell a more complete story of your effort. If you can only pick one sensor, we absolutely recommend a heart rate monitor! Heart rate is core to so much of what powers analytic features and is a great way to get to know your body. We’ve even heard stories where heart rate data was used by our members’ doctors to discover important and sometimes life-changing information about their cardiovascular health. The Strava Mobile Apps for iOS and Android can both pair to compatible Bluetooth heart rate sensors. Heart rate monitors, like most devices, range in accuracy. Optical monitors built into smartwatches have a reputation for being less precise than a chest strap. However, I personally find chest straps incredibly uncomfortable and have found a nice compromise using an arm-band monitor . Scosche’s monitors are reported to be as accurate as a chest strap, and as I mentioned, might be more comfortable for you! Learn more about pairing sensors to Strava: Pairing Sensors with the Strava app Other biometric Sensors If you’re curious about what additional data you can get while you’re recording, there are other options like power meters and cadence sensors. Keep in mind that the Strava app can only connect to Heart Rate monitors at this time. If you want to use other sensors, make sure your preferred app supports it.

Best Efforts are a cool way to track your progress and they allow you to see which portion of an activity was the fastest at certain distances. Best Efforts tracks your top three all-time efforts and top five annual efforts at each distance, as well as your fastest efforts from each run. Follow your progress at benchmark running distances from 400 meters to 50k with Best Efforts. How to access the feature: Mobile : Visit your profile page on the mobile app and scroll down to “Best Efforts”: Here you will find your top efforts for the distances that you have completed. At the top, toggle between distances to view the Best Efforts. You can tap into “View Analysis” to see more details on your progress at the given distance. You can also find your Best Efforts on an activity by going to the "My Results" page of an activity: Website: On your web profile page, look for "my stats" on the right side of the page, select the "run" icon, and you'll see your Best Efforts listed. Visit a specific activity page on which you achieved the Best Effort > Click Best Efforts on the left side of the screen > View Best Efforts for all benchmark distances. When viewing another athlete's profile on the Strava website, you will see your best efforts compared to theirs. How I use Best Efforts Of course, competing on leaderboards is a blast. But what gets me excited is our Best Efforts feature, It’s like having a cheerleader motivating me. When I’m competing against myself, that’s when the magic unfolds. It’s like a challenge to beat my high score, and when I do, man it feels great to see my progress. Additionally, it’s nice to be able to check out my speed records during longer road races. Seeing my comparisons from past performances is why I keep utilizing Best Efforts! Experiencing GPS Issues If your device had GPS issues during an activity that resulted in an incorrect Best Effort, you can remove or edit your Best Efforts to ensure that there isn’t bad data displayed (NOTE: This can only be done on your mobile device) Learn more: Best Efforts - Running Estimated Best Efforts for Running How does the Best Efforts feature keep you motivated? Let us know below!

At Strava, our mission is to help people live their best active life. For many of us, one of the goals of being active is to maintain or increase fitness. In this article, we'll talk about your Strava Fitness score (available to Strava Subscribers), how we calculate it, and how it can help you analyze your progress. How to view your Fitness Score: Mobile App: You>Progress>Scroll down You'll be able to view your Fitness score graph over a number of different timeframes and see how your score has increased or decreased over that time period. In the example above, we're looking at fitness over 6 months and we can see it's increased by 2% over that time period. Web: Training>Fitness & Freshness A couple of things to note about viewing fitness on the Web. You'll notice the web view shows a change of -7 in fitness. This value differs from the value you see on Mobile, because the Web view value is derived from fitness changes over the last 7 days. The Web view shows not only Fitness, but Fitness and Freshness. Your Fitness and Freshness graph tracks levels of form and fatigue in addition to fitness. Visit this link to learn more. How the Fitness Score is Calculated: We use your relative effort and/or power meter data (cycling activities only) to calculate Fitness. Relative effort is derived from either your heart rate data or perceived exertion score Power data is from a power meter on your bike. Estimated power values are not used. You get Fitness points based on the amount of relative effort and/or power on each activity, and these accumulate. What the Fitness Score Means: Your Fitness score on Strava helps you analyze your training efforts and see how they add up over time. It serves as a benchmark to monitor your training efforts as compared to any previous dates over the past 2 years. You can select any point along the graph to view your Fitness score for that day, and see how it's changed from the start of the selected time frame to the date selected. This can help you see trends in your training and rest periods and understand how they're changing through time. Frequently Asked Questions: Question: My friend and I train together and are both pretty fit. Her Fitness scores are a lot higher than mine. Why is that? Answer: Your Fitness score on Strava is a relative number, not an absolute number. It's designed to help you compare you to you, but it not useful or intended to help compare fitness across multiple Athletes. Question: I was training hard and watching my Fitness score increase. Then I took a much needed rest day and my Fitness dropped. Aren't rest days important? Answer: Your Fitness score on Strava is based on outputs; your relative effort (heart rate data or perceived exertion) and/or power data. For this reason, it's normal and expected to see the Fitness score drop on days when you don't train. Generally, the Fitness score is intended to help you analyze the accumulation of your training over time frames longer than a couple of days. Question: My Fitness scores don't match between the Web and the Mobile App? Answer: Your Fitness score on Mobile will always show the value calculated using both Relative Effort and Power data. On the Web, you can set a filter to show the score based on either or both of these. For the Fitness scores to match across the Web and Mobile view, you'll need to ensure you have the "power and relative effort" filter selected on the Web Question: I have activities missing from the Fitness graph? Why aren't they being counted towards my Fitness score? Answer: Check the activities in question to see if they have either a relative effort score or power meter data. One of these is required for the activity to count towards your Fitness graph. If you didn't record either heart rate or power data, you can still add a perceived exertion score to generate a relative effort, which will add the activity to your Fitness graph. Question: My training has been consistent but I've suddenly seen a huge drop (or increase) in my Fitness. What's going on? Answer: Did you recently change your Heart Rate zones on Strava, either by adjusting custom zones or your Max heart rate? Making changes to your HR zones will cause changes to your relative effort scores, which in turn will affect your Fitness score. Question: I adjusted my Strava settings to use custom heart rate zones instead of Maximum HR, and suddenly my Fitness score is dropping. Answer: This is caused by your Relative Effort scores being lower, which in turn results in a lower Fitness score. We're aware of some differences in RE calculations between custom HR zones and max HR. We're investigating ways to make these consistent with each other. In the meantime, we suggest using Max HR if the relative effort / Fitness score seems too low with custom heart rate zones set. If you have any tips or tricks about how you use your Fitness score on Strava, or if you have any questions, we'd love to hear from you! Drop us a reply below.

If you are a football/soccer player or enthusiast, you may find this article interesting. Do not worry if you are not an expert in football, I still miss a few offsides when the referee blows his whistle; or, mix-up some professional players' positions but, as with most things in life, it only takes a little bit of passion to get you somewhere— and, if a person is determined enough, those times spent on street matches with careless abandon for any rule may have been the first crucial step to develop the skills they need to get hired by the best football clubs in the world. Given a few more years of hard training and experience, they could be on their way to winning their first Ballon d’Or. The funny thing about football is that you do not really need a very high budget to play it —where I am from, kids learn how to play it in plazas, rules are secondary, and being the top scorer is what matters the most. Nevertheless, over time they learn that one of the most important elements in football is communication between players, “and all player’s positions are key to keep the game in play”. Even the best players in the world can’t make it very far without their teammates. Football is not just a sport, but an inclusive experience for all to enjoy, be it in the comfort of your own home, or while chanting with thousands of people in a stadium. In my home province, Barcelona, one of the most visited tourist attractions is precisely the FCB Stadium, better known as “Camp Nou” or “The New Ground”. And I can confirm this quite emphatically, not only because there are statistics that support this, but also because I had the pleasure of working in the tourism sector in the past and could see how that stadium welcomed millions of people every year. The city, and even sometimes the country, gets partially paralysed every time the typical “Clásico” is played at home; especially, if both teams compete in the final for the “UEFA Champions League” or “La Liga”. You will probably know what I am talking about: Culés against Merengues; but for those who are not familiar with these specific soccer nicknames, I am referring to FCB (Football Club Barcelona) vs RM (Real Madrid). It is not that I want to delve into another topic that is not football related, but if you want to enjoy a romantic dinner in a restaurant in Barcelona or in any Spanish city, ​​the best day to do this is precisely the day of the “Clásico”, since you will most likely find a spot in many restaurants considering that half of the Spanish population will be in pubs or in their homes watching the match. Of course, you might have noticed I am exaggerating a little bit, and please, do not blame me if you are unable to book a table for the next Clásico on the 19th of March 2023, but if you are a local or a football fan, you will probably agree with this joke. The controversy between playing or simply being a mere spectator is often debated. Personally, I like both, although if I have to choose, I prefer playing! Would you rather play or watch? Whether you play football or just like to watch the World Cup, I have good news for all of you: you can now track your football sessions , or view your followers’ football activities on Strava! Football/Soccer Activity type: Yes! I know this is what you have been waiting for for a long time, myself included. Although I have played football since I was a kid, I can say I started to practice football as a routine 6 years ago and I missed the fact that I could not record my sessions on Strava. Technically, I could record my sessions as “run” but this was impacting my running distance stats, so I finally opted to record my sessions as “other” or “cardio”. However, using the cardio-type activity did not activate the GPS in my device, so that’s why I used to select “other” activity type as a good workaround if I wanted to see the map. Heatmap or conventional map style? Regarding maps, I take advantage of this section to explain a feature that I have recently started using to analyse my football training and that some of you might have already heard about before: The heatmap. As you can see above, the picture on the top is the regular map style, whereas the bottom picture is the heatmap style. To give you more context about why this feature was created it is important to know that the Existing map styles drew a line tracing out the activity GPS trajectory. This worked well for some specific sports such as runs, rides and hikes where the entire activity might usually be a big loop or out and back, however for some sports like football, tennis or golf, this style map was not very convenient, because the activity is mainly based on a confined field and athletes might take a certain amount of time in the same area, so the result would be a scribbled mess as we can see on the image 1. Engineers saw that this was not a good representation in terms of GPS visibility, that’s why they came up with the heatmap idea, which instead draws the activity as a heatmap over where time is spent in the activity. This allows the map to give insights into the distribution of how much time is spent where on the field or course. If you want to know more about personalised stats maps and heatmaps, I highly recommend you to check the following article How should I record my football/soccer sessions? In a nutshell, now there are two options to record your soccer sessions, either from the mobile app, selecting "football (soccer)", or from your watch. If your device does not have “football/soccer” as a recording option, you can select “run” or “other” as activity types and change it to football once it is uploaded to Strava. This is Strava's first big step towards football, although we know and are aware that we still have a lot to build in this field, we would love to hear your opinion regarding this newly introduced sport type. Don't be shy and share your experience!

Want to send a message to a friend on Strava? Maybe have a group conversation? How about sharing an Activity and/or Route? Now you can! SENDING A MESSAGE: You can message a friends or create a group message for you and other members. Messages can be sent to Strava athletes who follow you but you may not be able to message another athlete depending on their privacy controls.-Tap the Message button on the profile of the athlete you wish to message -Tap the speech bubble icon from the Home and Groups tab. Tap the pencil icon in the upper right to choose from a list of athletes that follow you. VIEWING MESSAGES: To access messages and invitations you’ve received, click the speech bubble icon found on the Home and Groups tabs in the Strava mobile app. Note: Messaging is available via the mobile app; it is not presently available on the Strava website. SETTINGS: You can control certain aspects of individual chats by opening the chat & tapping the icon () in the upper right of the channel. Creators can: Members can: Name the conversation. Delete the conversation. If you created a group message you can also manage (add or remove) participants and control whether participants can invite other athletes. View the participants. Mute the conversation. Invite participants if it’s allowed by the creator. Leave the conversation. To decide who can message you, head to your Settings in the app. There are 3 options to choose from, and you can switch at any time: 1️⃣ Following: Anyone you follow can message you.2️⃣ Mutuals: People will only be able to message you if you follow each other.3️⃣ No One: No one can message you first. Only you will be able to start chats with other people. SHARING: Public activities and routes can be sent to chats on Strava. To share your own activity, the activity’s privacy controls must be set to “Everyone” or “Followers”. Please be aware that everyone in the chat will be able to see a preview of your “Followers” activity but only participants that follow you will be able to view the full activity details. For others to share your activity, the privacy controls must be set to “Everyone.” However, another Strava athlete who follows you could copy and paste the link to a “Followers” activity in a chat. In the mobile app click the share button () on shareable activities and routes and you will see the option to send the content to a joined or new chat. Users can share their own saved routes directly in a chat by pressing the route polyline icon () next to the chat keyboard as well. Shared activities and routes will be visible to everyone in the conversation where the content is shared. For additional info, check out hour help page HERE. Happy messaging!

If you ride with SoulCycle, your Strava journey just got more complete. Now you can now sync SoulCycle rides to Strava and connect your entire active life. Don't forget to join the SoulCycle community to stay in the loop on their official Strava Club For more information on how to connect and more details about this integration, please visit our Knowledge Base article: SoulCycle and Strava Now every time you hit the studio, you'll be able to relive it on Strava. Questions? Drop us a reply below and we'll be happy to help out.

We are happy to announce a new integration that allows F45 members to connect their Lionheart devices to their Strava account via the F45 Training app. F45 Training is a global fitness and lifestyle community that brings you a complete wellness solution from functional training and HIIT, to nutrition, challenges and accountability. Workouts will automatically upload to Strava, displaying class type and location. Paired with Lionheart, members can track F45 points. Synced activities will include a photo that can be grouped with other athletes who attend the same class as you if they have also set up their app and enabled Group Activities Privacy Controls . Read more about how to set up the new F45 integration here and check out the F45 Training Strava Club to connect with others. And learn how to get a free F45 class here!

Howdy! I’m Clyde and I work on the Community Management team at Strava. I’m also a runner, and like most runners, I have been injured. I’ve always been excited to see more injury and recovery-related features on Strava so when Strava acquired Recover Athletics, I was thrilled I was able to be part of the Community Management team working with Recover. So what's Recover? If you don’t know, Recover is an app meant to help you reduce the risk of injury via personalized routines based on your activity data and an in-app soreness tracker. It provides athletes with warm-ups, drills, general strength routines, lots of prehab activities, and post-activity recovery routines. As hard as I fight it, I continue to grow older and I’ve learned (the hard way) that I need to take better care of my body. I have had to manage a few injuries that require consistent care and this app has helped me keep those injuries at bay through a series of mobility and strength routines and post-activity reminders. The Recover app is available on both iOS and Android and syncs directly to your Strava account. If you are a Strava subscriber, you get access to Recover’s premium routines for free but you are welcome to try either app without a subscription. This app has been really helpful for me and has taught me ways to stay mobile and strong. Let's take a tour Logging in: Accessing this is fairly simple, you can log in with your Strava account: Where are you sore? Once you’re logged in, you can choose areas of the body that you’d like to track progress/soreness on: Routines: You can also choose routines to do from the Studio tab. Here is where you’ll see some familiar faces with their tried-and-true routines: Routine Builder: You have the option to create your own routines combining multiple areas of the body based on the equipment you have available to you. I find this useful if I want to focus on a few areas at once or if I want to create a different routine without my normal equipment like when I’m traveling: Reminders: You can be reminded to do these routines when you have a completed activity on Strava or even set up a daily reminder for yourself: Frequently Asked Questions Being on Strava’s Community Management team working with Recover, I’ve seen the majority of the questions we get from athletes. I thought I would share some of the most frequently asked questions with you: We have had many athletes asking about upper-body and cycling-specific routines. At first, this app was developed for runners but with all the requests we’ve received, our team has developed some cycling-specific and upper-body routines. These are coming top the app this month! Your prehab goals consist of strength and mobility routines. Most routines suggested will end up being strength routines so you may have to look for a mobility routine on the Studio tab to hit your goals. Some examples of mobility routines are: Leg Stretches with Nikki Hiltz, Pre-Race Mobility with Nikki Hiltz, Full Body Mobility with Hillary Allen, Post Run Stretch and Roll, Meb’s 5 Minute Loosen Up, etc, etc. You’ll know they are mobility routines based on the Activity Type found on the routine home page. Another question we see frequently is that the body map is missing something the athlete needs. While we may not have a recovery routine for every body part on our body map, we do have a blog that contains many additional resources for athletes: https://recoverathletics.com/common-running-injuries-and-how-to-fix-them/ We also find some athletes reach out to Recover asking questions that aren’t app related, such as for medical or coaching advice. Trust me, you want neither of these from me. Unfortunately, our Community Management team doesn’t have any medical providers or coaches so we suggest athletes reach out to a professional for these types of questions. The Recover app is great for improving strength and keeping minor aches and pains minimal via the routines provided. What is prehab? Lastly, I’d like to leave you with one of the responses we send to athletes when they ask what prehab is and how often it should be done. This is such a good bit of information to have handy. When to do prehab? Golden Rule: Keep easy days easy. Hard days hard. When you’re doing a slow easy recovery workout or taking the day off, that’s a great time to do mobility work. When you’ve done a harder workout (and you’re not too exhausted) that’s a perfect time to do strength training. Avoid doing lower body strength training 2 days in a row. The key is to give your body time to recover and repair itself, while also integrating the prehab training that is going to improve strength and make you resistant to injury. What prehab routines to do? If you have soreness in a specific area or are rehabbing a diagnosed injury, stick with the corresponding recovery program (body part-specific routine) for 2-4 weeks until the pain has completely gone away. Do the program 2-3x per week. Start with 2 strength routines per week, and make sure not to do lower body strength 2 days in a row. You can always tell which routines are “strength” by looking at the routine overview screen and seeing whether the routine is majority strength exercises or majority mobility exercises. You can complement it with mobility routines every other day and core on the days you don’t do a strength program. If you don’t have a specific soreness problem, then do a strength or prehab workout 2-3x per week, mobility work 3-5x per week, and core 1x per week. Any of the strength & prehab routines from Studio are great additions to your routine. That’s it for me! If you have any questions about Recover, please ask them in the comments below and I’ll do my best to find you some answers. Thanks for reading along and learning more about Recover. Be sure to download the app and give it a try!

Any parent will tell you that life changes when you have kids. Exhilaration, joy, exhaustion and increased stress are just some of the experiences reported by parents of young children. Life can go from ordered and structured to seeming unpredictable and out of control. Many parents report feeling low on both time and energy - two things generally needed for a fitness routine. How then, is it possible to build or maintain fitness while parenting a young child? We recently caught up with Stephen and Stephanie at their home in Colorado. Stephen works full time for Strava and Stephanie is a mental health therapist working in both private practice and hospital settings. Both are avid Athletes who love the outdoors, and are the parents of one year old Willa. They agreed to share their experience and their tips around staying active and fit when you have a young family. Can you tell us a little bit about your Athletic lives before becoming parents? Stephen: We both ran 5-7 days per week, usually on the local trails, and probably ran together 1-2x per week. We would have long days in the mountains with friends. We ran trail races and some road races. We have even traveled around the country for some races. We actually found out Stephanie was pregnant the day after she did a trail race near Lake Tahoe (Broken Arrow) and then she had to withdraw from her pacing duties at Western States due to uncertainty about how the heat could impact the baby. Before Willa was born, did you think about or plan in advance how you would continue to stay active? Stephanie: The unknown about how our lives would change was probably the biggest factor in why we waited so long to have kids. We both loved the stuff we were up to and it caused a lot of anxiety that we didn’t really know what a post-baby life would be like and if there would be space for the things we love to do. There was a point where we just had to agree that we would do our best to continue to support each other in being able to pursue our passions as best we could and take a jump into parenthood. Stephen: We both wanted to stay active and knew it would look different now. We had talked about how important communicating and supporting one another would be and that was the extent of our plan. We’ve got a new routine now that we didn’t really plan, afternoon walks (titled the same on my Strava.) Almost daily we are taking a short walk with the stroller and the dog, it’s been a really pleasant way to wind down the day. In fact, one of Willa’s first few words was “oussside.” We’re hoping she likes the fresh air too. It’s difficult to anticipate everything. Even the best laid plans can go awry. What was your biggest surprise you encountered as fitness motivated parents? Stephanie: As the birthing parent, I think the biggest surprise was the postpartum recovery and return to running process. I guess I hadn’t thought too much about what it would be like prior to having the baby. I’m really grateful that I was surrounded by a lot of wise runner moms who encouraged me to pump the brakes, do pelvic floor PT and be really thoughtful about how to get back to running in a safe and sustainable way. The process was definitely slow but it felt like a huge deal when I ran my first post-baby mile and we made sure to celebrate the heck out of it. There are definitely some changes post-baby that impact my running but there are certainly also gains - like mom strength! What successful strategies did you adopt to find the time and energy to resume your Athletic lives after Willa was born? Stephanie: We jokingly call ourselves “Team Steph”, but realistically our ability to work together to make sure each person can achieve their goals is a really big part in being able to stay active with a 1 year old. We communicate A LOT about scheduling and childcare. And we are both super committed to making sure the other person has time for training but more importantly, time to recharge (and thank goodness for both of us, those overlap). The other thing for me individually has been to do some recalibrating of my expectations. My priorities have shifted, I want to spend more time with Willa and that means I’ve swapped some trail adventures for a run with the stroller and a stop at the playground. Stephen: Like Steph said, communication. The past month here we’ve been taking turns with mountain adventures each weekend day. This time is rejuvenating and so we’re showing up with more to give to each other and the kiddo. What would you say the biggest obstacle or challenge you’ve encountered so far is and were you able to overcome it? Stephen: For me, it’s time. Sure, I have the same amount of time but I spend it in different ways now. Before Willa, I never spent 45 minutes crawling around the sunroom through a couch fort, although maybe I should have. Your priorities change and some things you used to spend a lot of time doing, you maybe don’t want to do as much or maybe you choose a more efficient way to do them. For example, instead of driving 20 minutes each way to the hilly trails, you run from the door, get a bit less vertical gain, but your long run is done 75 minutes earlier. Any final tips or words of wisdom? Stephanie: Don’t take anything on a stroller run that you don’t mind losing. We’ve lost hats, socks, sunglasses, shoes, water bottles, and snack cups already. Consider alternating the side you hold the baby on to avoid busting up your body. We both learned this the hard way. Stephen: As with most (all?) parenting tips, what works for some may or may not work for others. In the beginning eliminating any expectations of what we were going to do seemed really helpful. Also, just remember to be kind to yourself, you’re caring for a human who needs you 24/7, it’s not the easiest job but it’s pretty rewarding. Big thank you to Stephen and Stephanie for talking with us today. Are you a parent grappling with some of these same challenges? Drop us a reply below - we would love to hear from you.

New to Strava? Welcome! Our mission is to help people live their best active life. Our Getting Started with Strava series is designed to help you get the most of your Strava membership and Subscription. If you've been tracking activities using another App or platform, read on - in this article, we'll provide some tips for importing your historical activity data into your Strava account. The first step is to determine if your activities are located on a platform that you can connect directly to Strava. If they are, some of these integrations are designed so that at least a portion of your previous activities will sync automatically. Some examples of these are Garmin and Apple Health. Visit this link for the complete list of available integrations. If you still have un-synced historical activities after setting up any available integrations, the second step is to see if you can get your activity files in one of our supported formats. Those are: .fit .tcx .gpx Save the files to your computer and upload them to Strava by selecting up to 25 files at a time. View detailed file upload instructions here If you have a very large number of files (100 or more) the third step is to reach out to Strava Support if you want assistance importing them. We'll be happy to assist. Be sure to subscribe to this series so you don't miss any articles about getting started with Strava. Questions? Feel free to drop us a reply to this post, or submit a support ticket.

Listen up! This one’s important. Well, all of our privacy tips are important, but this one applies to anyone who uses Strava, no matter what you’re here for. Yep, we’re talking about how your Profile and Activities show up (or don’t) on the internet to logged out viewers. Read on to find out what shows up by default, what options you have, and what someone sees when they view your profile or activities without a Strava account. Profile Page Like many other apps, Strava allows you to share your Profile information with people even if they don’t have a Strava account, or if they are logged out. We allow this but we don’t require it. You can use your Privacy Controls to choose the option that suits you. Public profile: If you have Profile Visibility set to “Everyone,” your Profile page will appear in search engine results—even to someone logged out or without a Strava account. Please note, this is the default setting for Strava users unless you’re under 18. To see your full profile, the viewer will need to be logged into a Strava account. If they are logged out or don’t have a Strava account, they will see a condensed version of your profile page like this: How to hide your profile page from search results and logged out viewers If you do not want your profile page to be visible while logged out of Strava or you do not want your profile page appearing in search engine results, adjust your profile page privacy control to “Followers”. You can do this via your Privacy Controls settings page on the Strava website or via the ‘Privacy Controls’ option within Settings in the Strava mobile app. Here is a look at the same profile page as shown above when the profile page privacy control is set to “Followers”: Activity Page Similar to your profile page, your activities each have a logged out page that can be viewed by navigating to the activity’s URL. However, two conditions must be true in order for information from the activity to be visible while logged out: The activity’s privacy control must be set to “Everyone” Your profile page privacy control must be set to “Everyone” If both of those are true, someone logged out of Strava or without an account will see a version of the activity that looks like this: If your activity’s privacy control or your profile page privacy control are set to “Followers”, we won’t show anything about your activity. Instead, they’ll see a login screen like this: Activities which use the “Only You” privacy control are never visible to anyone other than yourself, either while logged in or logged out. Pop quiz: What if you have an Everyone activity and a Followers profile? Will someone logged out of Strava be able to see your activity or profile? Select the text between the arrows to reveal the answer: →Nope. They’ll see the logged out page (even if they’re trying to view your Everyone activity).← Appearing in Search Engine Results Depending on your settings, your Strava account or activities may be more likely to appear in results of third-party search engines such as Google. Any account on Strava can appear in search results, though accounts included in Strava’s “sitemap” are more likely to appear. (Remember, if you set your Profile visibility to Followers, the search result will not show your profile page. It will show the logged out page with the stock photo.) A sitemap is a file which provides information to a search engine about which pages are most important to crawl so that the pages are indexed by the search provider. You can learn more about sitemaps here in this article written by Google. In order for your account to appear in Strava’s sitemap, three conditions must all be true: Your account’s Profile Page privacy control must be set to “Everyone” Your account’s default Activities privacy control must be set to “Everyone” You must be at least 18 years old If any of these conditions are false, your account will not be included in Strava’s sitemap. While being excluded from Strava’s sitemap lessens the chance that your profile or activities will be included in search results, it does not guarantee that they will not appear. For example, if your profile or activities are linked to from another location, a blog post or article on another website, those sources may cause your account to be indexed. When updating the privacy controls on your Strava account, it can take up to 7 days for your changes to influence your appearance in Strava’s sitemap. Join the Community Hub by logging in with your Strava account info so you can join the conversation. And be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any future editions!

We are happy to announce a new integration that allows Ladder app members to connect to their Strava account via the Ladder app. Currently, this app is only available on iOS and not Android. Ladder gives you a strength training plan that fits into your schedule, every single day. And now you can automatically send your Ladder strength workouts to Strava, combining your running, cycling, and hiking data with your strength training data. Read more about how to set up the new Ladder integration here . FAQs: Do I need to change my activity type? All activities will be uploaded to Strava as the "weight training" activity type. Can I use the Ladder app on Android? The Ladder app can be used on an iPhone or with an Apple Watch, not Android. Can I record my heart rate during my activity? For your heart rate to be recorded, the Ladder app must be installed and opened while recording your activity on your Apple Watch. What dictates the stats shown on the image sent from Ladder to Strava? Avg HR and Cals Burned- If recorded with an Apple Watch. Image - Either a workout poster image or a selfie. Streak - If you’ve recorded multiple activities in a row. Weight Lifted - If you logged your journal with weight. Reps - If you logged your journal with reps.

New to Strava? Welcome! Our mission is to help people live their best active life. Our Getting Started with Strava series is designed to help you get the most of Strava . In this article, we'll talk about achievements. Competing with others on Strava through achievements can be a fun and motivating experience. If you prefer focusing solely on your own progress, achievements can also be utilized for personal goals. When you upload an activity with GPS data to Strava as a subscriber , you may be awarded “achievements” for outstanding performances. They include KOMs/QOMs/CRs, Overall Top 10 Leaderboard Placement, Personal Top 3 Placement, and Local Legend. Crowns are awarded to the fastest athlete to date on a segment’s overall leaderboard. A trophy is awarded when you place near the top of an overall segment leaderboard. Trophies exist for 2nd place to 10th place all-time efforts. Medals are awarded for your best personal performances on a segment. If you clock a new personal record on a segment, you'll receive a " PR " medal. Likewise, for your second and third fastest times. The laurel crown indicates that you are the Local Legend of a segment. To earn the Local Legend achievement, you must match to the segment more times than any other athlete in the past 90 days. Common FAQ's: Sometimes you may run into an situation where you're expecting to see an achievement but it doesn't appear. Check out our frequently asked questions below: Is it the first time you've completed the segment? ⚫️ You will not receive personal segment achievements on your first time completing a segment, but you are eligible to receive all time (top 10 leaderboard) achievements. Personal segment achievements become available only after completing the segment a second time. Are the Activity's privacy controls set to "Everyone"? ⚫️ Activities will only receive all-time (top 10 leaderboard) achievements if the activity's privacy controls are set to "Everyone". This includes Private segments as well. More information regarding Activity Privacy can be found here. If you prefer to keep your activity privacy control set to "followers" or "only me", you can still earn medals for your personal records." Does the segment start/end in an area that's hidden by your Map Visibility Settings? ⚫️ Activities will only receive all-time (top 10 leaderboard) achievements if the activity's map visibility settings are not hiding the start/end of the segment. More information regarding Map Visibility can be found here. Is the Segment hidden? ⚫️ "Unhide" that segment if it's a cycling segment and star the segment if it's running a segment. Refresh Activity Achievements using the button located in the actions menu (3 dots icon). None of the above? ⚫️ Refresh Activity Achievements using the button located in the actions menu (3 dots icon). Additional Resources: Looking for information about your Best Efforts over benchmark distances? Visit this link for more information Be sure to subscribe to this series so you don't miss any articles about getting started with Strava. Have any Questions? Feel free to drop us a reply to this post.

Nausea, fatigue, moodiness, these are just a few of the physical signs that come with pregnancy. Trying to maintain your fitness routine while pregnant can be quite challenging. With a number of colleagues at Strava who have experienced pregnancy, we took a poll to find out their experiences. Here’s what we found: We also asked employees to share their best tips on fitness and pregnancy. Here's what they had to say: Can you relate? We would love to hear your experiences and tips! Drop us a reply below. Postpartum? Check out this post about how one mom incorporated running after giving birth.

New to Strava? Welcome! Our mission is to help people live their best active life. Our Getting Started with Strava series is designed to help you get the most of Strava. In this article, we'll talk about tracking performance. Strava provides a variety of features to track your performance against yourself and others. Whether you’re interested in tracking distance, time, speed, or other data points, we provide numerous tools and features to help. This article isn’t intended to be a comprehensive description of all our tracking tools; today I’m going to talk about my 3 favorites: segments, goals and relative effort . Segments Segments are available for GPS based activities and define a portion of a route – such as a climb, or a section of a trail or road Each time you complete a segment, your time is recorded and your speed is calculated. If you're recording heart rate and/or power meter data, we’ll also show your average heart rate and power output With a Strava subscription , you can use segment leaderboard filters to compare your segment time/speed to previous efforts and those of your friends and other Athletes My favorite way to use segments is to use the My Results/Efforts leaderboard filter to compare my own efforts over time. Visit this link for information on how to access these filters Take a look my results on short climb segment that I ride often: The filter shows all your efforts on the segment sorted by fastest to slowest. You’ll see that I’ve completed this segment 71 times and that my 4 fastest times were all from last year. If you run, ride, walk or hike the same routes over and over, I recommend giving this feature a try. Goals Tracking performance isn’t necessarily about trying to get faster or go further. I use goals on Strava to help me stay consistent and make sure I’m exercising and moving regularly. Strava subscribers can set weekly, monthly, and annual goals for all of your favorite sport types using the Strava Mobile App . You can also choose the type of goal: distance, time, or elevation Visit the Progress Tab in the Mobile App to set goals and view progress on your existing goals Something about getting those circles to close when your goal is complete is super satisfying. Checking my goals often motivates me to get moving, even on days when I would rather not. Give them a try. Relative Effort Strava Subscribers who record heart rate data on their activities can use our Relative Effort feature to track and compare the intensity of their efforts Your relative effort score tells you how much cardiovascular effort went into any activity. We calculate this by looking at how much time you spent in each of your heart rate zones , with higher points being given to higher zones The great thing about relative effort is that it helps you compare your efforts and performance across disparate sport types. This is especially helpful for Athletes who record indoor non-GPS activities , like weight training or HIIT workouts Monitoring your cumulative relative effort can help you monitor your training week to week, and help you understand when you might need a rest or recovery period Visit the Progress Tab on your Mobile App to see your cumulative weekly RE scores. If you record heart rate data, be sure to give relative effort a try. Segments, goals and relative effort are just 3 of many performance tracking tools we offer. Other Tools to Track Performance: Are you a runner and/or a cyclist? Check out Best Efforts Want to monitor your performance on segments in real time? Check out Live Segments Want to see all your training in one place, visualized to show your progress? Check out the Training Log To find out more about performance tracking on Strava, browse our Knowledge Base We'd love to hear what performance tracking tools you find useful - drop us a reply to this article and let us know.

Strava integrates with a wide range of devices and platforms. Today we're going to talk about the Strava/Apple Watch integration and share some commonly asked questions. You can record and upload activities from your Apple Watch to Strava one of two ways: using the Strava watch app or the native Apple Fitness app. With the Strava watch app, activities are synced directly to the Strava mobile app on your phone. Using Apple Fitness, activities are stored in Apple Health and synced to Strava once a connection between the two apps has been established. 3rd party activities (from Zwift, for example) uploaded to Strava can be synced to Apple Health, however 3rd party activities synced to Apple Health will not be available for import to Strava. If you are using the Strava watch app and have a Strava subscription, you will have access to Beacon functionality, which when enabled will automatically send a text to your chosen safety contact during your activity. Frequently Asked Questions: I want to record using my Strava mobile app for routing and my Apple Watch for heart rate, is this possible? No, the mobile app and watch app operate independently and the watch cannot be paired to your phone as an external heart rate sensor. If you’d like to record activities with heart rate, please use the Strava watch app or the native Apple Fitness app. I saved my activity on the Strava watch app but it is listed on my watch as ‘un-synced’ and is not appearing in my Strava feed? The watch app can only upload activities once it is in range of your mobile device and connected via bluetooth. Please ensure that you are in an area with sufficient cellular/data reception and that bluetooth is enabled on both devices. If the activity is still not appearing in your feed, please record a short test activity and save it to see if that helps push through the missing upload. I saved my activity on the Strava watch app but it is not showing as ‘un-synced’ and is not appearing in my Strava feed? There could be several reasons for this issue. It is possible the watch was unable to record sufficient data during your activity or there were errors in processing. This may also occur when the watch can write neither GPS nor heart rate data to the file during the recording process. Verify permissions are enabled via: Settings app > Health > Data Access & Devices > Strava. Heart Rate should have a green toggle to indicate that we are allowed to read this data. If you are still having issues please submit a support ticket so that our team can investigate this for you. I’ve synced my activity from Apple Fitness but there is no map or GPS data displayed on my upload? This may be due to missing permissions for reading and writing routes. Verify this via: Settings iOS app > Health > Data Access & Devices > Strava (Please make sure that Strava has access to read/write Workout Routes) You can toggle this setting off and on. Please note that once toggled back on only new activities will display GPS/map data as intended, we cannot add in this missing data for historical uploads. I’ve recorded an activity using the Strava watch app but it shows zero distance on the upload? You may need to grant Motion & Fitness permissions to Strava On your iPhone go to the general settings: Settings -> Privacy -> Motion & Fitness -> Fitness Tracking If the setting is already enabled, please try toggling it off and on again. I’ve recorded and saved an activity using the Strava watch app but I was in an area with low or no cellular/data reception and/or did not have access to my mobile device and now it doesn’t display on my profile? Please note that if you did not have sufficient reception during the time of saving the activity, that will cause issues with syncing once saved. Try and force quit both the Strava watch app and the app on your mobile device. Press and hold the side button on your watch until the shutdown screen appears, and then press and hold the digital crown until the app closes. You must be in the app to force it to close. This should force a sync of any missing activities. I’ve recorded a running activity using the Apple Fitness app and synced it to Strava, but am not seeing cadence ? Strava does not support running cadence from Apple Fitness at this time and it will not be present on the upload. I am trying to set up Strava on my watch and keep receiving a prompt to complete the process on my mobile device but no further options appear? This can occur when your device tokens are mismatched. Option One: First, force close Strava on both your watch and phone. Access Motion & Fitness settings on your watch and toggle Strava off, then on Open Strava on your watch, followed by your phone. Complete the installation steps as intended. Option Two: Use the Watch app located on your iPhone to force an uninstall of the Strava Watch app. Note that it may take some time for the app to be fully uninstalled from the Watch face. Next, uninstall the Strava app from your mobile device. Make sure to force close all other apps on your device. Restart both the watch and mobile device, then re-download the Strava app and ensure you are logged in to your account. Confirm the Strava app has been re-downloaded on the watch, then unlock your phone and load the Strava app on the watch. The installation prompts should then work as intended. I’ve enabled permissions for my Apple Watch and granted Strava access to my health data but my uploads are not displaying heart rate? Verify if you’ve granted permissions for Strava to access heart rate on the watch by opening your phone and going to Settings > Health > Data Access & Devices > Strava. Under ‘Allow Strava to Read’ you will see the following options, ‘Heart Rate’ should be toggled on: I have old activities stored in Apple Health from before Strava, can I sync this data to my account? Only the past 30 days of activities can be synced from Apple Health to Strava. I’ve recorded a running activity using the Apple Fitness app and synced it to Strava, but am not seeing cadence or power? Strava currently only supports running power from Healthkit, we do not currently support cadence information. If you’d like to see power for your running activities, please ensure that you have accepted the necessary data permissions: Strava > Settings > Manage Apps & Devices > Health (Connect with Health) > Tap ‘Health’ at the top > accept permissions once more I’ve recorded a cycling activity using the Apple Fitness app and synced it to Strava, but am not seeing cadence or power? Strava now supports cycling power & cadence information from Healthkit! Requires athletes be using iOS 17+, watchOS 10+, and Strava app version 403+. If you’d like to see power & cadence for your cycling activities, please ensure that you have accepted the necessary data permissions: Strava > Settings > Manage Apps & Devices > Health (Connect with Health) > Tap ‘Health’ at the top > accept permissions once more This is still required even if you’d previously accepted Health permissions. If you have an Apple Watch/Strava related question that we haven’t covered in our FAQ, feel free to drop us a reply to this post and we’ll do our best to help you out. Or, if you’re currently using an Apple Watch with Strava and would like to share your experience, we would love to hear from you!