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lehnben
Shkhara
Status: Open To Voting

Have you every wanted to reminisce about old runs? Have you ever wanted to show that multiple activities were linked together? or Tell people about your progress from one workout/route to the next. Well I propose there be a feature added to link activities. It would similar to adding media. You would press a plus button on the edit activity page which would take you to your activity list you would then select the activity or activities that you would like to link to this activity. Then when looking at the activity It would show the other activities title in the description with the ability for users to click on it. 

27 Comments
lancemcapel
Mt. Kenya
Currently I know many people that use Strava to track their training especially when gearing up for a specific race (or race season) -- it could be a local 5k/10k, an Ironman, a Century Ride, a trail run, etc. Below is the a feature that I would love to focus on and believe would be super valuable data for Strava athletes:
 

Enhance storytelling on Strava by giving athletes the ability to summarize all of their training geared towards a specific race

  • As an athlete I can:

    • Enter/select a race that I will be competing in (running, cycling, trail running, triathlon, swimming, etc.)

    • Assign specific training sessions towards that race (if they are in fact intentional sessions) i.e. I am an athlete training for IM 70.3 Oceanside, I will assign all of my intentional workouts (swim, bike, run, etc.) towards that race

    • See a summary of:

      •  all of my intentional training for a given race – metrics will be broken down by activity and will as # sessions (broken down by activity – i.e. swim, bike, run, etc. – any activity that is allocated towards a specific race) and will primarily highlight:

        • Total # sessions (by activity)

        • Total Time (by activity)

        • Total Distance (by activity)

      • See all of the people that I trained with (this really shows the community element involved in training for a race)

      • See activity that received the most Kudos

      • Photos that were shared in those activities allocated towards the race 

    • Share this “Summary” after my race is complete on Strava and other social platforms

I feel like this feature really summarizes and encapsulates training for a race, plus it would highlight the Strava community members, time committed to training and provide a benchmark for future races. I know that this can all be done manually right now, but I do believe that automating it for Strava Members is a special feature that could help to grow the engagement and user base. Interested to hear everyone's thoughts! 
mmoehlin
Mt. Kenya

I have a request for a feature that I think would be helpful to me and others. I would like to “group” activities together, so I can view multiple related activities at once and see their stats all together.
A few ways this could be useful: grouping the three activities of a triathlon, grouping several separate days of a single overnight backpacking trip, grouping several short hikes throughout a single day or several activities over the course of a single trip, and grouping all runs or rides you’ve done on a favorite route.
Perhaps this could be done by making customized labels that can then be applied to each activity, such as “October 2022 Triathlon” or “Track Workouts 2022” (similar to how you pick which shoe or bike you used). This could be either on the app or just on computer. Then we could look at cumulative mileage and time for those activities, and even have them posted in the feed together.
Thanks so much!

Bencze
Mt. Kenya

As I'm getting old, having a bit of knee issues, winter is cold, I recently I started warming up on Zwift before going out to run and I was a bit unhappy because it looks very odd to have a 10 minute activity, followed by another one that can be totally different. In 'human' terms, if I had to explain to someone what I did I wouldn't refer to it as 2 different activities, I would just call it as one activity (activity here not being the strava technical term) where I warmed up on indoor bike and then ran.

It would be great if these could be linked, or grouped. It could be difficult to combine the 2 actual files where they may even be recorded by different equipment (formats, different recorded data fields), but it can be kind of a 'front end' type of grouping, similar to when I run with my buddy and Strava links them.

Ideally the information would be presented in a somewhat compact and light way so it's easy to read, while the activity group would clearly make one entity, but both (all?) activities would be distinctly identifiable. I could categorize them, as I can categorize my run now, setting the first one as warmup and the second one as say, an easy run or training run (simple labels just so it makes sense together).

I think runners sometimes may combine running with basic core training or some strength training, not sure how often it happens, but I think my use case is not the only one. I'm only referring to running as I don't do other sports much.

Please add your thoughts if you would find value in this.

DN8N
Mt. Kenya

If you participating in a multi day cycle event or doing a triathlon (multiple activities), it would be great to have the option to link each activity together to show a complete map and summary of the activities combined. This would mean that each activity is still recorded a separate event but Strava could aggregate the data to show combined results while still allowing users to expand and see the individual activities 
Providing the option to link activities together could unlock interesting insights such as rest time, recovery speed, total event times and provide a better user experience for showcasing the overall event on the feed. 


ChrisBerry
Kilimanjaro

I have mixed feelings about this. I think for something like a triathlon it makes a lot of sense since it is one continuous activity happening in one day. Being able to see the total effort as one activity is preferable to breaking in into separate parts. It also reduces clutter in the feed. I think it's a bad idea to be able to combine most multiple day activities into a single activity. I often see people who take weeklong bicycle tours and post them as a single activity. It is highly misleading to post 7 separate 50 mile daily rides as a single 350 mile ride. If you are competing in a bikepacking race or a multi-day adventure race where you might only sleep for an hour or 2 at a time, that's a different story, but if you are just doing a tour then each day should be a separate activity.

DN8N
Mt. Kenya

@ChrisBerry I agree with your points and I would not want this idea to be misleading in any way. To be clear, the way I picture it is that each activity should still be recorded as a stand alone ride but by using a "Linking" option Strava could generate a new component that shows the combined map with each start and end point for each activity plus a indicator for time between starts. Aggregates stats should not give the impression of a single ride but rather an event with rest periods in between. I think interesting insights can be gathered by understanding rest/fatigue/fitness over the event/tour. 

There should also be limits that only allow linking activities where the start times are no more than 24hrs apart as an example.  

Main use-case would be triathlons / multi-day events.  


ChrisBerry
Kilimanjaro

If you look at the leaderboard for the May Climbing Challenge, the guy at the top has posted a ride with an elapsed time that spans 19 days as if it were a single ride. What he did over the course of 19 days was a huge effort covering over 3000 miles and 300,000 feet of elevation gain. It was, however, 19 separate rides over 19 days and not a single 3000 mile ride as it is represented. This kind of nonsense is the reason why I believe there should be some limits on linked activities. 

AnonTramper
Mt. Kenya

I would like a feature that incorporates multiple activities over many days into one single session/post, labelled a 'project'. The idea would be for the 'project' to be viewed as one post on your follower's feeds, with all the different days combined into one map. 

This idea would be best for multiple day hikes. For instance, if you do the West Highland Way in Scotland and you want to record it, then currently, you have to have each individual day recorded and then labelled as 'West Highland Way: Day 1' and 'West Highland Way: Day 2' etc.. These would all appear as separate activities to your followers and yourself. Instead, with this 'project' idea, you get to see the entire 160km route at once. Followers would be able to click on the 'project' post and then see it broken down into the individual days. 

The mechanic would be as such. After recording a day's hike, in the screen where you edit the name, add pictures and participants etc., there would also be a drop-down menu to add it to an existing 'project'. When you post it, then followers would see the complete 'project' (how far you have walked so far on the map, from Day 1 to Day x) and you can keep adding posts to this 'project'. Followers can click on the posted 'project' (it would appear on their feed as something along the lines of 'A has added to their project!'), and see all the days and the analyses of these days from Day 1, thus not depriving them of interesting information and pictures. 

This would be a really useful tool for people such as myself who enjoy multi-day hikes and want to share them with family and friends. Additionally, a big plus is from an organisational standpoint. Instead of having your followers spammed with x number of activities, they would just see the 'project' as one post which repeats itself as you continue to update it. On top of that, it groups all the days together which helps if you want to hunt out a piece of information etc.

Status changed to: Open To Voting
Soren
Denali

We have revisited this idea since it has gained more traction and decided to open it up for voting once again.

MarkRD
Mt. Kenya

I would like to see the ability to post multi-day activities.  When I go on a multi-day backpacking trip, I can combine the days into one activity using Gotoes.org; however, STRAVA thinks that the combined activity was done on one day rather than over multiple days.   It is impossible to get the full sense of a multi-day backpacking trip when you have to post each day's activities separately.  The attached photo shows my route for a 4-day backpacking trip that I combined into one activity using Gotoes.org.  The full route is only clear when combined.  As 4 separate activities, the trip appears very disjointed and you lose the sense of the full multi-day activity.

MarkRD_0-1694019800373.jpeg

 

MarkRD
Mt. Kenya

There are some very different ideas about linking or grouping activities that would make it difficult to vote on. ChrisBerry’s criticism of grouping multiple days activities seems to be predicated on the grouped activity being saved as a single day’s activity.  I want the daily aspect of each activity to be maintained when they are grouped.

lehnben
Shkhara

There seems to be two distinct ideas here

1) Multi day activities

2)Linked activities

I would propose that these ideas are separated into their own categories. I think it would makes sense to focus on the idea of linked activities on this thread as that is the original post.

Linked activities

Here's an idea for how the linked actives would work and look. Underneath both the title of the activity and the description there would be the bolded linked activity. The size of the font would be the same as the description but just bolded so that text size is distinguishable from the actual title of the activity and the bold font would distinguish it from the activity description. People would know that they should look at these linked activities for more context to a person's activity. I'm not sure if there should be a limit to number of linked activities but something like 4 or 5 linked activities seem reasonable. When you click on the linked activity it would take you to that actual activity. 

After you upload an actual activity is when you would have the chance to add a linked activity. On the "Edit Activity" page under the description text box you would have the option to "Add linked activity" You would click on this button and then the "activities" page would come up and you would be able to search them just like you can on your profile activities page. There may just be a "+" somewhere on the activities you are searching. You would press the "+" and it would add it as a linked activity. You would be able to repeat until you added all the linked activities you want. On this list you would not be able to go into the actual activity but only see it as it appears on the "activities" page and press the "+". 

Linking activities would allow you to show that you did a warmup/cooldown with a run or maybe a second activity for the day or it could allow you to link to a past activity such as last year's race or last week's workout so that you are able to show your progress or maybe you just want to do a throwback to a favorite route/run from the past. 

In theory you could also link separate activities for Multi Day events but that would mean that the data of all those events are NOT merged. No data is merged doing the linking of activities it merely allows you to navigate between the linked activities quicker. Any linked activity would show the other linked activities. So essentially when you link an activity it is shown on every activity that is linked with that activity. For example you link "Warmup run" and "Cooldown run" to "First Marathon!" When you navigate to "Warmup run" from "First Marathon" you would see the links for "Cooldown run" and "First Marathon" 

 

 

Soren
Denali

@lehnben thanks so much for the extra details, this really helps. It's quite clear what linked activities suggests, and regarding merged activities and multi sport activities, we have existing ideas to keep these all separate.

pwilczynski
Mt. Kenya

Currently, Strava's feed is composed of activities. Increasingly, however, athletes participate in multi-activity adventures - think bikepacking trips, hiking journeys and ski touring adventures.

Adventures pollute the activity feed by over-posting, and reduce the amount of social behavior by partitioning comments and discussion across semantically related activities.

Strava should introduce a new concept (an adventure) which groups together contiguous activities for the purpose of increasing the prominence and engagement on the feed while also helping users remember particularly meaningful adventures by selecting key photos to highlight the experience.

akshathv
Mt. Kenya

I think being able to group activites into 'sessions' would be useful. For example, if i have a workout with multiple runs, it would be nice to group them into one session. Further, if I do a multi day hike then I tend to record each of the days as a hike and would like to group them into one session.