Today sees a touted ‘big’ change and also a teenie-weenie change to some of your STRAVA experiences.
Firstly STRAVA has just announced a major update to their maps ecosystem. I’ve not yet seen the new maps but from what I can discern, it looks like some of the map views that have already been on the desktop for a long time are imminently about to arrive on your smartphone.
Currently, my smartphone’s STRAVA app allows ‘Normal’, ‘Terrain’ and ‘Satellite’ views of my route and the ‘normal’ view is always displayed on the workout feed.
The changes to the ‘normal’ map seem to highlight details that runners and cyclists are more interested in. so we see more contour details and more of an emphasis on trail names rather than, say, Motorway names.
These maps have more detail and so I will keep my eye out to see if they start to appear in the feed by default. Why? Well, more detailed maps may well require more data to be moved…times that by millions of STRAVA users and you could see why STRAVA might not want to show that detail every time by default.
Here is an example from STRAVA themselves
The second change I want to talk about is the trend line on STRIVE.ai. Most of you will NOT be seeing this yet as you haven’t installed the free STRIVE.AI insights into your STRAVA account…you naughty people! Mike (and Rick) at strive.ai have included a trendline to better indicate movements in your fitness signatures. The EXAMPLE below is the trend across time of your maximum 30-second power achievements. But strive.ai is not just for power junkies and also looks at HR trends and many other aspects of your training. Couple strive.ai with the also-free stravistix/elevate and your STRAVA experience soon becomes much more data insightful and you might even be able to save £$£$£$ by trading in your Summit account for these FREE add-ons.
Can’t say I’m too psyched about the way maps are presented now. It takes far longer to load them and makes scrolling through the activity feed not as seamless as before. Aesthetically I’m not a fan of the green hue they chose either.
Downloaded strive.ai but fail to see how this is an improvement. I maintain a premium TP account and this looks like a (very) poor man’s version of it.
Perhaps not directly related, but possibly: Does anyone know if Strava fixed their compatibility with Garmin’s pool swims using HRM belts? Earlier (not too long ago) HR was never included in Strava for pool swims using Garmin watches, but now it’s fixed. It could be Garmin that did something I guess but it would be nice to know if anyone has more info.
Thanks in advance 🙂
Strava rolled out a fix the first week of October for it…four years later.
I stopped using Strava last year. Company is so out of touch with it’s base.