Strava map types you’ll want to try!

[Mason]

Map Types are a clever way to enhance your activity’s map appearance in feeds. We’ve enjoyed seeing how our employees have been using them so we’ve captured examples of the different styles below.

WhatSelecting a map type on the website

Map Types, also known as Personalized Stat Maps, are a way for you to change the color and shading of your path (we call it a polyline) to reflect statistics, seasonal holidays, or important causes. Athletes can choose from the following styles (note some may be seasonal and not represented in this list): 3d terrain, pace or speed, heart rate, elevation, gradient, power, time, surface type, and temperature. We also have styles to bring awareness to important causes like: Black Lives Matter, Pride, Support Ukraine, and Strava Metro.

If another athlete has chosen to apply one of these map types, their path/polyline will be colored and shaded according to the style they selected. You’ll see these styles on feed maps such as the home, club, and profile feeds. Note: The web home feed does not currently display these map types.

How

To choose additional map styles, tap the ellipsis icon in the upper right-hand corner of the activity and select Edit Activity > Change Map Type. Certain styles are only available for subscribers. You can learn more about the feature here.

Employee Examples

We've asked employees to share examples of activities on which they used stat map types and why they've chosen that particular style. Stay tuned for “Part 2” of this topic where we cover map types for holidays, causes, among others.

Heatmap

This map style will highlight which area of the map or route you've spent the most time on instead of showing GPS points all over the map. This allows the map to give insights into the distribution of how much time was spent where on the field or course. Soccer, Golf, and Surfing get this heatmap style by default.

"I like the heatmap view for golf because it better visualizes where I spent time on the course. The satellite view is great too - it really shows how my round went!"

3D terrain

The polyline will be displayed on a 3D satellite map angled to easily visualize your path of travel among the terrain. This is the default map type for trail sports like hikes, trail runs, gravel bike, mountain bike, and e-mountain bike rides, however it can be applied to any activity type.

"It best exemplifies the struggle it was completing this activity”

 

Pace

Higher speed/lower pace will be a darker blue.

"I think the speed/pace map looks the most meaningful on rides/runs were the speed/pace is intentionally changed throughout. For this particular activity, I was alternating between slower and faster paces every 400 meters. From just the map I can glean meaningful nuances of an activity. I remember going by the boat launch during the 6th rep and this is clearly shown from just looking at the pace map."

Speed

Higher speed/lower pace will be a darker blue.

"Riding in Colorado mountains produce wild speed changes due to climbs and descents. I chose this map type to show the changes in climbing speed vs descending speed and at what points in the ride I was barely moving, and at other points where I am (almost) literally flying."

Heart Rate

Higher heart rate will be a darker red.

"Heart Rate stat map was chosen here because I wanted to see how my HR progressed throughout the duration of the activity, as it turns out when you go uphill for a while, your HR goes up?"

Elevation

Lower absolute elevation will be yellow and higher elevation will be black.

"This was my first 14er - a common hike Coloradoans participate in where you climb over 14,000 ft above sea level- the Elevation map type reminds me of the great summit I’ve reached. It helps make my journey look more dynamic than the static orange polyline you typically see in an activity."

Gradient

Descents will be yellow and inclines will be red.

"I chose this map because this event was at a ski resort and I thought it would be interesting to see the drastic changes in grades along the route represented by colors."

 

Power

Higher power will be darker purple. Please be aware this map treatment is not available for activities with estimated power.

"I chose this map as a reminder to myself to never go out that hard again at the beginning of a long ride. The darker purple shows a much higher power and then the second half of the ride was soft pedaling and trying not to cry/collapse as I rode back home."

Time

Longer elapsed time will be a darker red.

"The time map was chosen because of the longevity of this ride was fairly substantial, that I originally did not anticipate. The duration of this ride lasted over 8 hours. That required more poptarts and took much longer than anticipated, due to the climbing."

Surface Type

Dashed lines are unpaved, solid orange is paved, and white is unspecified.

"This was a great map to show anyone who sees it that the run was on incredibly varied terrain and was a fun route that stitched together a trail network and neighborhood paths."

 

Temperature

Higher temperatures will be a darker red.

"This was a ride up to Trail Ridge road (the highest continuous paved road in North America) that gets up to 12,000ft at its highest. I chose this map due to the incredible temperature differences that occur on that road vs. where my starting point was. 46ºf at the summit vs. 95ºf in Fort Collins."

Have you used any of these map styles? If so, tell us which and why?

[Jane]

3D maps are my favorite type.  I live in a hilly area and they do a great job of showing the peaks and valleys in my activities.  

[ThisIsAUsername]

I'm not a massive fan of the 3d maps, it is hard to see places and the surrounding area to see where the route went.

[eric]

Love the Trail Ridge example, what a temperature difference!

I've tried most of them. I was super keen on elevation map when it came out. Lately I've been preferring gradient over elevation on MTB rides, because that data feels more meaningful to me when I look at the whole picture. I think all the stat maps are cool. 

[lopey66]

This is my own work using the strava API, on my ride just now where I had  a bit of an FTP test, I dont use color graduation, its simple code to implement, in this example I have passed values to find my best 20 mins of effort and map it with power zones and clearly (anticlockwise on this loop), the zones are calculated on the highest 20mins effort

[Fill_Freakin]

It would be cool to have a map that shows your speed relative to your PB on that particular part of a trail. Green of various brightness for faster than your PB over that location,  red for slower. That would show you where you're getting better, and where you need to improve.

[lopey66]

@Fill_Freakin speed is deceptive, power is not as like with wind in one direction you can have a tailwind and another a headwind, watts are grouped into color buckets 

your suggestion is in reverse orange going to brown is when your making effort, if you understand about training its the efforts, red=blood and  Vo2max is  the Maximum of Volume of oxygen uptake is which how much oxygen you can deliver to your muscle. Training is about doing intervals (fartleg) at certain levels and then recovering from them and repeating, my focus is on intensity and how much I do thats where improvements come from. 

same ride with further data (loop was done twice with second with 2 smaller efforts), I can quickly drill into certain parts by selecting the segments 

[VikK]

I use a few the HR one as I am doing some MAF runs, I like to see where I had the spike which is not always uphill. The gradient one is neat, shows others how steep some of my hills can be but the 3D ones doesnt really unless there's a mountain on the route.

The surface type one is nice on those unexpected trails as I live in London, it surprises people there is plenty off road about

[lopey66]

Running is sometimes is about training at an intensity of keeping form and being smooth and efficient on the long runs with technique and then intervals, try measuring your pace when you're unable to talk

[Vincent]

Hello !

I use different types of map depending on the main feeling or objective of the record.

For example Power when I do intensive work out repetitions, pace when targeting a specific speed, gradient when having many difficult climbs or temperature when weather is  either very cold or very hot !!!

Nevertheless, one thing I would suggest as improvement is to be able to choose the range for the coloured min and max.

For instance if I choose Heart rate map, it’s when I want to show that I ran  at low intensity and then would like to highlight a light colour at my low FC (which could be on common FC default ranges or best would be based on my personalised FC ranges)

And same for pace/speed, temperature,

And thanks for all your ideas and initiatives !

[thetomfox]

Being able to select a default map type for new activities would be nice.

[Fill_Freakin]

@Iopey66  I agree power and speed are different things, but I'm less interested in power. I'm not a road cyclist. I MTB, so I want to see speed to see where I might need to improve/change my technique.  I.e., do I need to improve my cornering, or accelerate more out of a section, or work on punchy climbs...

[BryanC]

3D terrain is cool

[Silentvoyager]

I find various map types kind of useless for analysis because that works only in the feed. I can't go into activity details and see the same map.

What would be actually helpful is being able to see the map and the graph at the same time, and then being able to link points in the track to the corresponding points on the graph. I know that is quite hard to achieve on mobile, but some other apps achieve that with various levels of success.

I find the 3D map especially unuseful. In most cases it makes it harder, not easier, to understand where the activity was, and a large part of the track is often obscured by terrain. It would be more useful if it was possible to rotate the 3D map and choose the projection, but that isn't an option and south-to-north projection is always used by default. 

[Tim-B]

Update to 3D Maps in feed. We have just released an update that will improve the visibility of your activity when you select the 3D static map option. We now select the best camera angle for your followers to see what you have accomplished. Here is a screenshot of what an activity looked like vs now with the latest changes in this feature. Hope you all enjoy it!

[Mason]

Hey all,

Dropping a quick note to let everyone know we've updated this blog to reflect the updates we recently made to 3d maps as well as a new style we added called "Heatmap".

Enjoy!

[Sander]

Hello Jojo,

Although there are different map types, I almost always use the default variant, but I still want to ask / tell you something about selecting one of these different types;
If I go to an activity of mine and I do edit it, I see the map with the default route shown in red.
If I now select a different route view or the 3D view, the map will not be updated immediately / you will not see an example of how the map will be displayed. For this I have to save my changes first.
Once I've done this, I'm automatically sent back to my activity. Here the route is also shown in only a red line. But if you select an activity from someone else, where you see a different map view in the activity feed, then that is also the case on the page of this activity.

If I now click on edit again, the correct view will appear in the edit screen. It is also now displayed as such among all other activities in the activity feed.

My question to you is why I don't immediately see an updated view in the edit menu and why this other view is also not visible or selectable on the page of my activity?

Now you first have to do several actions to see whether the selected map view is good for your driven route. Who knows, for example, a route in the power view is much nicer than it is in the height view.

[Jana_S]

Is the Temperature map restricted to only some regions and/or activity types? I can’t see that option and don’t recall ever seeing it (subscriber; Central Europe; usually Run and Walk activities); it would definitely be useful as the weather conditions sometimes change significantly during a longer activity. 

[RyanDeRosa454]

My fav are temperature and heart rate. I am endurance rider but I like to power push at some segment, when I am able to trace the relationship between my data and these two factor I am able to tell what went wrong and what can I do about it. 

[carlotatrx]

I think the Temperature map is not very well made. It should be in terms of absolute temperature, not relative. You record an activity all in negative degrees and there will still be some part of the map showing red.