If It's Not On Strava...

Maybe it's for the best.

Recently I’ve stopped recording my running. It’s not logged on Garmin, nor - brace for shock - Strava.

Sometimes I look at the clock when I leave the house. That’s it. The only evidence I generate is muddy shoes and (briefly) trampled grass. The anonymity feels good.

If it’s not on Strava, it didn’t happen, goes the meme.

I get it.

But there’s an insipid creep of Strava dependency that might leave you feeling unable to run without it, or anxious about what and how often you post.

For a long time I saw Strava as an essential component of running. It was a record of achievement, a place to tally progress and small victories. It kept me moving. I saw it as a rare digital community with no negativity, a place to share activities that are inherently good for you and enjoy seeing others do the same.

It still is those things, but it’s also a permanently updated record of all the things I’m not doing, and all the things I want to but perhaps can’t right now.

Sometimes the Strava feed weighs on me like water against a dam, pressing insistently against all else. It’s the weight of things undone and time passed.

It starts to feel like other social media, incubating a constant sense you’re not doing enough, or not doing the right things. The nagging doubt that you aren’t working hard enough, or don’t have a clear sense of purpose, and the confusion about what that purpose even is.

Comparison is the thief of joy feels like platitude by now, but no less true.

We live in a mirror-world, and each reflection offers us different choices. Each is a slightly different version of our current selves, and there’s no way of knowing which is the true one. Ultimately we’re rendered paralysed, staring into the potential of things we’ll never fully commit to.

Network error. No data.

When you lose your confidence with running, as I have lately, quantifying your performances (or even using the word “performance”) is not helpful. Looking at all the wonderful things everyone else is doing on Strava is not helpful.

And what do we sacrifice with all this over-sharing and comparing?

We tend to think that apps used to monitor and promote health are inherently good, but they’re not charitable organisations. Someone, somewhere is monetising your attention. Ultimately they don’t care about your health. Strava is backed by people with lots of money looking to make even more money. It’s just another Silicon Valley data-harvester, and it’s easy to forget that.

The data you generate might not be used for nefarious purposes, yet. Publicly, it’s mainly sold to town planners looking to improve cycle routes. But it’s not hard to imagine a future where your health data, that you’ve willingly generated, is sold to companies using algorithms to predict your future. Likely it’s already happening.

“I’m sorry, Mr Smith, but the 8440 miles you’ve logged on tarmac over the past ten years indicate there’s a 79% chance of a knee or hip replacement within the next twenty years…oh, and these heart rate patterns are consistent with the majority of people who suffer heart failure in later life…”

Not hard to imagine, right?

Of course, all these calculations will be invisible. All you’ll know is your insurance premiums are suddenly sky-high. You’ll never connect it to the fact you’ve given your health data to companies you’ve never heard of who are now churning through it so they can sell you stuff.

Strava’s revenue has skyrocketed over the past couple of years. In 2021 it recorded annual revenue of $167 million, up 60% from the previous year. In 2019 the company was valued at $300 million. In 2020 that rose to $1.5 billion.

With an estimated 95% of users with free accounts, you might question how this revenue is generated, and what the basis of the valuation is.

It’s historically struggled to make money. That’s why they’ve hunted ex-Instagram employees to boost their social media chops, and it’s why every update removes a few more previously free features and your feed becomes a little more Facebooky.

But perhaps more interesting than how Strava makes money is how it changes the landscape and culture of running, especially in technical terrain. The boom in FKTs over the past few years is surely symptomatic of the segment-hunting culture bred by Strava.

A couple of weeks ago American runner Jack Kuenzle broke Finlay Wild’s record for Tranter’s Round, completing the 37 miles and nearly 18,000ft of technical mountain running in 8hrs 38mins 23secs. It was Kuenzle’s first visit to Scotland and a deliberate and targeted FKT attempt.

As discussed on Finlay’s latest podcast, the attempt would not have been possible, let alone record pace, if not for the data that Wild had gifted via Strava, even if he didn’t know it.

Kuenzle mentions how he followed the gpx file ripped from Finlay’s Strava account so closely that he might even have taken a piss in the same place, had that been part of the trace!

This is all fine, of course. It’s a no-less impressive athletic achievement, and arguably just an example of someone using the tools at their disposal to achieve a given target. But it does seem a bit soulless.

Finlay Wild’s many records - particularly the local ones - are the result of not just otherworldly talent and strength, but years of being in the hills, of knowing every rock and dip and summit and bog with an intimacy that is earned, not given.

Records exist to be broken, and progress is progress. Jack Kuenzle’s Tranter’s Round record stands, and although his achievement is not less, it’s certainly different. Not quite like breaking a record on a track, but inching closer to that.

Wild was typically gracious in conversation with the man who’d taken his record by effectively standing on his shoulders. In fact, the dominant tone of the podcast was one of glee that he finally had the level of competition he so often lacks. It’ll be interesting to see if he responds, and hard to imagine he won’t. No doubt he’ll log it on Strava, too, and no doubt someone else is poring over his data right now.

Following data from an app that others have generated is certainly easier. It’s also more efficient to drop into a place and immediately take the right turns, but it’s a disconnected experience. There’s no joy of discovery, no embedding of memory. What do you learn? How much do you really get to know somewhere?

I guess it comes down to personal taste and what works for you at the time. One day you might follow someone’s route from Strava, enjoying the efficiency and comparisons, the next you might see more value in taking a few wrong turns but forging your own path.

But it’s worth remembering that this can change, and that your running doesn’t need to be regulated by an app.

It’s liberating not to record everything and feel the need to interrogate that record in the aftermath. Perhaps I’ll change my mind in time, and once again I’ll need empirical evidence, targets and kudos to help me on my running journey, but right now it’s good to be untethered for a while.