STRAVA Heatmap – updates

STRAVA has some new updates to the PERSONAL HEATMAP features that subscribers see on the web.

This is a minor update and will go live from  27 January 2020, probably being rolled out to all subscribers over a couple of days. Whilst classed as ‘minor’ for what you will see it looks, to me, like this was a sizeable amount of work. Nice job STRAVA.

• Old Personal Heatmap – manually generated
• New Personal Heatmap – automatically generated

• Old Personal Heatmap – either running or cycling
• New Personal Heatmap – any sport from: Ride: Ride, Handcycle, Wheelchair, Velomobile, E-Bike Ride. Run: Run, Walk, Hike, Rock Climbing. Water: Swim, Kitesurf, Windsurf, Kayaking, Rowing, Stand Up Paddling, Surfing, Canoeing. Winter: Alpine Ski, Ice Skate, Backcountry Ski, Nordic Ski, Snowboard, Snowshoe, Winter Sport

• Old Personal Heatmap – manual choice of ‘all’ or ‘calendar year’
• New Personal Heatmap – this choice is the same but now quickly accessible via a toggle

• Old Personal Heatmap – Heatmap is full zoomable
• New Personal Heatmap – High-level heatmap is replaced by proportional circles and numerals to indicate activity is a high-level area.

• Old Personal Heatmap – One map style
• New Personal Heatmap – New map styles including WINTER and SATELLITE

• Old Personal Heatmap – Blue-to-red colouration to indicate heat
• New Personal Heatmap – New heat colourations including orange, red, blue, purple, and grey.

You old personal heatmaps will be deleted at the end of this week.

Take Out

This is a nice feature-boost for existing subscribers. Heatmaps are like puppies and cute cats, almost everyone loves them. Better still, they can even be useful at a population-level to help you with new route discovery and route creation.

Strava HEATMAPs are still web-only and it would be great if they could emulate the Suunto 7 by allowing a personal heatmap watchface which the S7 does on Wear OS, I reckon there is an Apple Watch watchface app waiting to happen here! A simple unzoomable image for a watchface could be easy to code but a zoomable one would be a tad trickier.

Several other platforms support HEATMAP and one of the more interesting and functional is that of RidewithGPS where further logic is applied to the heatmap to eliminate heat data that might result in less optimal routing options. (Read this for more on RwGPS)

Lots & LOTS more STRAVA-Related Content here: list of STRAVA posts. or try the following post for a critical look at the ongoing viability of STRAVA for non-subscribers.

STRAVA *Free* – Fit for purpose in 2021?