As soon as the craziness of Black Friday is out of the way, the next thing comes along: all the year-end lists. There’s Spotify Wrapped, Apple Music Replay, Strava’s Year in Sport – all packaging up 365 days of music or podcast consumption or countless hours spent on the bike into a nicely presented graphic for you to whack up on social media and wait for the kudos to come flooding into your inbox.
But, as much as it pains me to say this, it’s not all about you. There are millions of other users of each of those apps who are contributing their data to a big cauldron of data soup that the companies aggregate and send off to media outlets worldwide – which is why there are a spate of news stories around this time of year telling you that Taylor Swift is the world’s most listened to artist (surprise, surprise). It’s information, sure, but it’s also marketing – it gets the brand out there, with mentions in headlines of Serious Publications all around the world.
Every year, Strava puts out its aggregated findings – its ‘Year in Sport Report’ – and sends it around to its media contacts. Sometimes it’s genuinely thought-provoking (I’ve written about in the past here and at least one other time that doesn’t seem to exist on the internet anymore), with little nuggets that lead to greater understanding of cycling and its place in the world.
This year’s report is … not that. There are stats, sure, but they are often compiled not from Strava activity data but from a survey that was sent out to an unspecified number of users asking lifestyle questions – which is how we get scintillating insights on the ‘1 in 5 Gen Z surveyed [who] have been on a date with someone they met at a group fitness activity’ and the culture wars between short socks (51% of Gen X) and high/crew socks (57% of Gen Z). Lots of seed-sowing for generational division, in fact.
As for actual interesting, meaningful data about cyclists? In a running-heavy wrap-up we learn that:
- The average weekly ride distance for boomers is 62 km/38 mi, versus 35 km / 22 mi for gen Z (see what I mean?)
- 82% of pro cyclists also logged activities outside of their sport
- The median pace for rides on the app was 19.6 kmph / 12.1 mph
- The Garmin Edge 530 was the leading tracking device
- And that the top road bike brand was Trek (#2 Specialized, #3 Giant). Specialized was the top gravel bike brand (#2 Trek, #3 Giant), with the big S also taking top honours in the mountain bike category (#2 Trek, #3 Scott).
Aaand … that’s about it. Which doesn’t leave me, personally, feeling intellectually nourished, and comes at the end of a turbulent year for Strava and its relationship with its consumers. All of which meant this felt as good a time as any to flip the formula – a year in review of Strava itself. Here are all the notable events and news from the past 365 days in the life of Strava, the company.
In-app messaging
December 2023: One year ago today, Strava introduced messaging to its app. While this accelerated its path from being an exercise platform to a social media platform, it was not a universally well-received update – mostly because of how it broadened the scope for people to be creeps to each other (like most other social media platforms).
Major executive turnover
December 2023: Strava’s co-founder and CEO, Michael Horvath, stepped down. Another man called Michael (Michael Martin) took over as CEO, bringing experience from YouTube Shopping, Nike, Disney and NBC Universal. A third Michael (Moritz, a board member) said that Michael #2’s experience in “some of the world’s most competitive digital markets and intimate familiarity with what it takes to delight hundreds of millions of consumers provide[d] him with all the necessary gear to build on the many accomplishments of Strava’s founders.” (Fun fact: Strava press releases are put together by a fourth Michael. I’m not ruling out the existence of dozens more.)
Annual report stats are wrong
January 2024: Bane of sports tech companies (and industry legend) DC Rainmaker had a closer eye on its 2023 Year in Sport Report than most, noting that Strava had incorrectly designated the Wahoo Elemnt Bolt as the top upload device for cyclists in the USA (the Garmin 530 was the global leader). Only problem: Strava was basically counting all Wahoo Bolts twice, seeing as there were two (very different) models of the same name released seven years apart. Strava eventually issued a correction that the Garmin 530 was top of the tree in the US, too.
Chipotle burrito competition turns into exhausting battle
January 2024: A partnership between Strava and mass-market Mexican restaurant Chipotle promised a year’s worth of burritos (or, more accurately, “one (1) free entrée per week for a year” to a total of 52 units of “burrito, burrito bowl, quesadilla (only available through digital orders), single order of tacos, or salad, subject to availability.” The only hitch: the winner would have to earn it by running a month of laps of designated segments – which started or ended near a Chipotle restaurant – in a number of US cities.
Over the month, the winning runner in Denver clocked up 442 miles (711 km) over 62 hours – including a 176-mile week (283 km) and a marathon, all on the same 300-metre out-and-back segment. In LA, five runners mutually agreed to exploit a loophole in the terms and conditions, stopping when they got to the same number of laps so that they all won.
Dog collar uploads
February 2024: A new integration with the smart collar company Fi meant that Strava users were able to upload their dog’s activity stats, keeping track of its step goals and exercise streak and find just how it ranks against all the other Weimaraners globally. But here’s the thing: how many steps should a dog target, and do they need to double their human’s steps because of their leg count? Are they concerned how they stack up against the Borzoi at the park? Do pets need a #grindsetmindset? What Orwellian hell are we shaping for our furry friends, and why do I get the feeling that Jack Russell terriers are going to be its ruling class?
Collecting tax
March 2024: A less immediately scintillating update came through soon after: news that Strava was collecting tax on its ‘web-based subscriptions’, which – correct me if I’m wrong – is the only format in which you can subscribe to Strava. Subscription prices pre-tax, Strava said, would stay the same (in early 2023 they’d quietly rolled out pricing changes, increasing rates both significantly and inconsistently around the world).
More executives!
April 2024: A new chief product officer and chief technology officer (regrettably, neither called Michael) to dovetail with the new CEO (Michael #2).
Athlete Intelligence
May 2024: AI was always coming for us all, but Strava’s introduction of it to the platform has been especially polarising (those poles being ‘something users mostly ignore’ and ‘something users actively despise’). Early teething pains were to be expected, but the bland, banal motivational messages from Strava’s AI show no signs of letting up. Case in point: this week I was warmly congratulated on my “nice first ride!”, which came as a bit of a shock for the 2,165 other rides I’d already logged on Strava since 2012.
Dark mode and anti-creep filters
May 2024: Announced in May but rolled out for months afterwards, there were more updates from the same batch of announcements as the headline-grabbing AI one. For starters, you could set the app to dark mode (easier on your eyes/less energy-intensive [yay!]). And there were a suite of updates that were packaged as being for female users of the app: like the ‘Quick Edit’ feature, which allowed users to update privacy settings before publishing it to their feed, and thus avoid all the creeps that were probably stoked about all of the creepy potential they’d been given access to in December via Strava’s new in-built messaging. Also in: ‘night heatmaps,’ so that users could identify where it’s busiest when dark, and hence safer for exercise. Good updates, but pretty bleak that they are needed at all.
Strava acquires Fatmap, then kills it off
June 2024: Strava acquired the popular mountain/hiking/skiing app Fatmap in 2023, announcing big plans to integrate its “3D maps and features like Flyover and 3D map images in the feed.” By June it had announced its plan to completely kill off the Fatmap app and website, with the plug being pulled in October. Fatmap’s users were, understandably, not stoked with this outcome, seeing as a majority of its features were not integrated into Strava at all.
Security personnel giving away whereabouts of world leaders
October 2024: An investigation by Le Monde was able to track the whereabouts of world leaders including Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron, and Donald Trump – by following the Strava activities of their bodyguards, who would exercise and upload during time off-duty on assignment. (It’s not the first time that Strava has been an unwitting tool in exposing top secret movements – in 2018, Global Heatmaps showed the position of a number of secret US army bases in Afghanistan, Syria and Djibouti, while in 2023 a Russian military commander was assassinated, likely after having his regular rides tracked on Strava.)
The third party switch-off
November 2024: A change to Strava’s API agreement caused considerable distress among users, commentators and third-party developers, with the company’s wording suggesting that pretty much all data shared with other apps (and coaches, or anyone beyond the user) would be restricted, hence effectively killing off tens of thousands of apps using Strava’s API. Which is bad.
(After largely declining to elaborate and even threatening to delete critical messages about the change on Strava’s own community hub message boards, the company appeared to backtrack four days later, clarifying that it expected “less than .1%” of apps to be affected by the changes.)
2024 Year in Sport report
December 2024: Sock heights = way up*. [*Gen Z only]
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