Remove "walks" from running challenges and expand challenges for walks

[runprime]

Walks have been added to running challenges as of January 2024 and as a person who does both run and walk acitvities as separate sports, this has ruined the experience of challenges in the app for me, and in general.

My walks are no counting towards running challenges which rightly used to be separate. They are separate sports.

I found an idea here from last year where somebody requested the opposite and now it has been implemented. From their point of view, they were lesser abled and some walks "felt" like runs to them, which i acknowledge - however, the solution there is ti simply record a running workout on your device, not a walk.

To improve the experience for walkers then more 5k, 10k and monthly mileage challenges can be set up to keep it interesting. 

Last year I really enjoyed tracking my walking challenge and sepaately doing the running challenges. 

Now there are fewer challenges in total which seems like the app is getting worse, not better.

Also importantly need to point out that runs are not included in the walking challenges.... I guess that's the real punchline to this joke.

[Sunny415]

Hello and thank you to everyone who has taken the time to add your feedback and comments to this post.

We appreciate and understand the sentiment you all have expressed here. It has not gone unnoticed and our Community Hub and support teams have been raising your feedback with the appropriate product team. We do not yet have any additional information to share about the future of these challenges. We know you are hoping for an answer. It’s not the end of the conversation and we are still considering our options. We strive to be as transparent as possible and provide updates to our Community when they become available. Thank you again for sharing your thoughts here, and for your patience.

In the meantime, I want to suggest a couple of other features on Strava where Subscribers can view and track their monthly running progress without walking activities included:

• Go to the top of the Progress section of the You tab on the Strava mobile app. From there you can select “run” and view your progress over a selection of time frames.  More info here
• Set a running goal to track your progress. Open the You tab from the bottom navigation menu of the mobile App and select Progress. Tap Add Goal from the Goals section. More info here

Additionally, challenges can be re-completed with a better performance later in the challenge window. If you complete the challenge with a walk, you can improve your completion stats with a run that has a faster average pace for the activity that also completes the distance later in the challenge window.

This post will remain open and our Team will continue to monitor your feedback. Thank you again for your contributions.

[MattBrewis]

@Sunny415 Sunny, thanks for your reply - but after nine months of no response, there isn’t much news here. Can you explain why the watering down/ruining of the the challenges happened in the first place?

Also, I don’t think you understand the bulk messages here - there are not any messages about doing a challenge faster - this is about you adding walking to running 100k challenge and also the removal of some of the more challenging running and cycling challenges. 

as you will see from this chain - you are losing members as a result of this nonsensical change. Please can you just give us a bit of insight into why these can’t be turned back on (or even how we can exclude certain events from our own challenges).

[miramoves]

I totally agree here. I was so excited to try and run 100km this month, only to be disappointed when I got the badge after having run 70km or so and having a couple walks. A walk is absolutely not a run. Please separate these! There are separate walking challenges anyway, and running does not count towards those either as far as I know.

A hike does not count towards running challenges, so until this is fixed, I guess I will mark my walks as hikes instead. Or not track walking at all, because this is just stupid.

[dangreen17]

Unfortunately, the admins don't care.  Because our feedback  shows they've not thought this through and implemented an extremely unpopular change, I suspect our feedback hasn't been passed up the chain and those who have the ability to roll it back do not know about it.   They're hoping that it will just die away quietly.

This whole conversation is tucked away in an old topic that you will not see unless to seek it out. 

The admins won't respond to direct questions at all, but if this issue is posted about elsewhere on the site, within minutes it has been moved over to this topic!

@Jane @Scout - let's hear your side of it.

While you're at it:

In regards to stopping walking activities being included within running totals. 

Please can you confirm:

* Has this been considered by Strava yet?  

* If it has, what is the official decision?

* If not, how much longer do you think it will be?  

* What is the normal time for a formal response (definitive answer)?  

[Hubert12]

Let's put that on X maybe! 

[dangreen17]

@Scout @Jane 

In regards to stopping walking activities being included within running totals. 

Please can you confirm:

* Has this been considered by Strava yet?  

* If it has, what is the official decision?

* If not, how much longer do you think it will be?  

* What is the normal time for a formal response (definitive answer)?  

Thanks in advance

[Hubert12]

As it seems Strava has lost the plot, can you please add run to the walk challenge I fear this is very unbalanced… I have not joined a single running challenge and will delete my subscription and profile now that I have almost finish updating Garmin. I’d be sad to leave but I don’t know why I should stay since you ate mixing sports only one way!

[dangreen17]

I’d like to see runs used towards running only challenges, in which I’ve used my HRM.  I cannot currently see a way to add it as gear.  

I also cannot see 200km and 300km monthly running only challenges.  I’ve searched the other ideas etc on this site and I cannot actually see Stravas response to the question, are they coming back?  Do you need another 8 months to think about it?  

thanks 

[Alexknight]

I really miss the running challenges that are no longer there, that had longer distances, and were JUST running.

Suggestions:
- Have 100k, 200k, 2000m vert running challenges where running and trail running count
- Have separate walking/hiking challenges where only walking counts. 50k, 100k, 1000m and 2000m vert perhaps

I can't be the only one who wants my running to only count for running challenges and my walking for walking ones.

Why is this important? Personally when I am training for a race and I am doing lot of running I want to work towards running challenges and some of them to actually be hard. I don't want my village dog walks to also count, as it makes them too easy!