Skip to main content

Sweat dripping down your forehead, your feet dragging on your doorstep as you reach for the knob, a big exhale, ahhh. Endorphins are high and you congratulate yourself on yet another excellent workout. You tap to stop recording and anxiously wait for your activity to upload to Strava. All of a sudden, you're stumped. "What on earth do I title my run?", you wonder... 🤔 🤔

A quick glance through your home feed displays your friends' activities, all sorts of activity titles pop up: from the generic "Afternoon Ride" to the auto-generated activity titles that reference obscure pop culture quotes, and everything in between.

Some people spend their entire workout mulling over the most suitable title to distinguish their effort. But if you're anything like me, you either leave it to the default, write something silly and edit it moments later, or spend unjustifiable amounts of energy pondering what you could have, should have and would have titled it. 💭


For a period of time, I shared jokes with the answer in the description. This proved to generate quite a lot of eye-roll emojis in the comments. A coworker of mine titles all his runs after quirky vanity plates he comes across, and some friends appear to write an entire journal entry in every title and description -- down to the nitty gritty details of what they ate that day, how they felt and sometimes things I consider to be a bit too personal 😅

How do you decide what to name your activity?
Do you just leave it as “morning/afternoon activity” or include details about the weather, food you ate, something you saw along the route?


I try to give a brief idea of the ride, but usually leave my walks at default.  I’ll always comment if it’s with my son. 

I go with a few different approaches.

1) HealthFit defaults

I like to use the default healthfit titles that describe the location of the run. At least my followers know I went outside 🙂. I usually end up with this because im lazy to make too many edits.

2) Describe the workout

If I did something I’m very proud of for a run, I like to use the workout as the title. For example, a “8x800” or “5 mile tempo” works out as an easy name for me

3) Race day info

If training up for an event, I like to put in the number of days until the event. It serves as a good reminder to me of how close or far an event may be, but it helps to explain why im doing a long run. Or for the event itself, its easy enough to just call the activity with the event name like, “2022 Walt Disney World Marathon” (which is an actually title for one of my activities).

Moody song lyrics for sure! 

Or I just leave it as the default <time of day> <activity> lol

Thanks for sharing @therunningryan -- I think the countdown to your big event day is a very cool thing to include in the title, it definitely builds up anticipation. I follow someone who counts down the days until the 4th of July (I have no clue why). When's your next big event?

What kind of details do you tend to include about your ride? Weather info? I went on a very cold and windy ride yesterday, climbed up to 12k ft and there was snow at the top, but I don't like to include those details in the title itself and let the photos/videos speak for themselves.

I often comment if it’s windy.  Gives a reason why I might be slow.  Gotta get the excuses in 🤣

This is the ultimate season for moody music. 🎶 What's currently on repeat for you?

Ha ha - excuses for being slow is great way to name an activity.  I have many runs titled "Dead Legs" or "Too Hot to Trot"

If it's a group run, the name of the club/crew at a minimum, and maybe something witty or punny.  If it's a notable distance, maybe a rhyme scheme or alliteration like "FriYay 10k" or "Sunday Runday Half Marathon".  I put out a challenge in the month of August to my club to write a haiku about a specific run and put it in the activity description.

Love the creativity and crossroads between sports and language arts here, I may have to borrow the haiku idea myself!

For a while, I was "reading" a book to my Strava friends. Each activity would be the next line of the book. This went on for a few months and I gave it up after only a couple of pages into the book. 😅 Maybe I'll try a shorter book someday.

Now I usually just put a line of the song that I was really jamming with that day for a run. If no music, I fall back to something simple like the special location or person I was with. But I will definitely spend the whole activity agonizing over what the title should say hahaha!

Anna, I have never seen anyone share a book in such a creative way before! I empathize with why you didn't follow through, maybe a very short book would be better, haha. I really like that idea though.

Are you a big reader? Are you currently reading something? I have started too many books and finished almost none of them this year 🙊 The most I read in one year was 45 in 2020, mostly nonfiction/history.

Haha, same! I love reading but I do have a lot of unfinished books. Currently I'm almost done "Not Without Peril" by Nicholas Howe, about the history of misadventures in NH's Presidential Range.

There's still time for both of us to finish 1 book by year end...go team!

I'm an advocate for genuine, meaningful ride names.  Wrote a post about this actually:

https://www.strava.com/athletes/157951/posts/663414

Still feel the same way.  You know what else, I hate that "bangkok" app or whatever that names rides for people.  

Thanks for sharing that post of yours, "Afternoon ride is not an acceptable option. 🤘"! I agree, haha. I tried using that activity name generator but I didn't like any of the titles it populated for me, I think they all reference weird cultural things I'm not familiar with, so I promptly stopped using it. 

Reply


Terms & ConditionsCookie settings