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Strava integrate new features, present training functions, a web-based route planner and a new membership concept

If you’re a cycling enthusiast, chances are you’re familiar with Strava. Founded in 2009, the company has 180 employees worldwide, more than 55 million members and over 3 billion recorded activities. In response to the demands of their users, Strava have introduced a few new training and route planning features to its paid membership.

Training – mobile and on the web (paid membership)

To meet the community’s desire for more training-related features, the Summit tab has been replaced by the Training tab. This is intended to give athletes a better overview of their entire training process and the development of their fitness. The Training tab consists of four modules: weekly activities, training log, weekly intensity and monthly fitness. The diary now shows all 32+ sporting disciplines instead of just running, cycling and swimming. Athletes can filter their training activities to visualise their data according to time, distance, elevation and discipline. The weekly intensity calculates your weekly workout load based on heart rate/power meter data or your perceived effort. Your monthly fitness is compared with that of the preceding months and, given certain criteria, should give you an indication of possible overtraining.

4 training modules: weekly activities, training log, weekly intensity (left) and monthly fitness (right)

Routes on the web (paid membership)

After the launch of the mobile route planning function, a web-based version of this feature is now also available with added functionality. You can create a route from A to B, instead of just looping back to the starting point. Besides the added option of displaying the Strava’s heatmap and segments, you can also select between asphalt and gravel road surfaces. With the help of the filter, you’ll be able to see the type of surface and elevation profile of the selected route. In order to determine the terrain as accurately as possible, Strava combine data from OpenStreetMap with your the data from your tracked activities. The free version only has the ability to display your saved routes or the routes saved by others.

Route planning with heatmaps displayed: you can select the start and endpoint as well as points in between by clicking on the map or entering an address.

Route preferences with an elevation profile

Strava Membership

Summit has been discontinued; from today onward there will only be one membership option costing € 5/month. All members get a free 60 day trial of the new membership. Some features previously available in the free version have been made the exclusive domain of paid subscriptions. This includes segment leaderboards and matched activities, though the top 10 leaderboards remain free. Segments also remain free for everyone, but competition within the segments in the form of leaderboards and their analysis is now part of the paid membership, as is the analysis of your estimated performance.

For more information check strava.com


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Words & Photos: Strava