Billed as its ‘biggest app update of the year’, Strava has launched two new features that will… ‘enable people to stay connected with their family, friends and community through friendly fitness competition – regardless of their own fitness level or location.’
In a new Group Challenges feature, athletes can create virtual workout competitions with up to 25 of their friends based on any of Strava’s 30+ sport types, for varying goals (such as distance, time, speed, elevation gain). Strava is also updating its Maps tab to help athletes reach their goals via Segment Suggestions.
Group Challenges
This personal mode of competition is meant to be easily accessible and adaptable to ‘any athlete who sweats,’ regardless of preferred sport or fitness level. Group Challenges will be launched behind a metered paywall, but any athlete can create and join three Group Challenges for free.
The full Group Challenges experience will be accessible via the mobile app on iOS + Android. Free athletes (non-subscribers) can create or participate in three Group Challenges before being prompted to subscribe.
The Group Challenges feature is positioned as Strava’s new flagship product, enabling athletes to create challenges and compete with friends. Group Challenges are located in the Groups tab of mobile apps.
Once invited, athletes must accept the invite to join and participate in the challenge. Athletes can only invite athletes they follow and who follow them back. Challenge creators can choose a challenge goal and create a Group Competition (max 25 athletes) using one of the competition formats below:
- Most Activity – set a goal for time, distance, elevation gain or loss. The goal establishes a milestone for the group to reach in order to complete the challenge. The leaderboard ranks athletes by their overall activity.
- Fastest Effort – average pace across a specific distance via running, virtual running, or wheelchair. Setting a race distance gives athletes in a challenge a guide on how far they should go. This is the distance all efforts will be measured over, and the leaderboard will rank runners by their average pace.
- Longest Single Activity – single activity recording of a longest distance across any sport that supports distance. Setting a minimum distance helps athletes in the challenge understand how far they need to go, how the leaderboard ranks are determined, and provides a level of difficulty for the challenge.
All sports supported by Strava (32 in total) will be eligible for Group Challenges. Athletes can select which sport(s) count towards the Group Challenge. The minimum number of days for a challenge is 1 and the maximum is 365.
Activities with privacy settings set to ‘public’ or ‘followers only’ activities will count towards a Group Challenge. ‘Only me’ (private) activities will not count towards the challenge.
Challenge creators can name their challenge and provide a description. The description is an optional field. Photos will be pulled from participants’ activities and show up as a carousel at the top of the detail page – visible to all athletes in the Group Challenge.
Segment Suggestions
With this Maps tab update, all things Segments and Routes are in one place and ‘Segments are smarter to use than ever.’ Here, athletes will be able to plan a run or ride, find popular spots, see their course records and more all in one place, and receive personalized segment suggestions. These personalized suggestions include: ‘hottest spots’, ‘record breakers’, ‘training grounds’, ‘uncharted territories’, ‘podium contenders’, and ‘legend makers’.
Organized into 6 categories, segment suggestions are personalized for each athlete.
- Visit popular spots: a sampling of the most popular segments in the area.
- Discover new places: popular segments in the area an athlete hasn’t matched to yet.
- Break a record: the segments where an athlete is close to beating a personal record.
- Climb the leaderboard: segments where a top 10 spot on the leaderboard is close.
- Go for a workout: find nearby tracks, areas for interval training and other areas where the community trains.
- Become a legend: segments where an athlete is close to becoming the Local Legend.
Strava’s latest app update comes on the heels of the company reporting a surge in activities on the platform.
With publicized athletic competition halted during the pandemic in 2020, and into 2021, around the globe, Strava notes that people of all ages and fitness levels were competing (and connecting) in record numbers:
- They strived to hit new goals and do better than they did before: among runners active on Strava in the past two years, 56% logged a new personal best time in their 5K, 10K, half marathon or marathon distances in the past year (May 2020 – Apr 2021).
- They looked for substitutes to traditional sporting events: over the past year, there’s been +215% (3.2x) as many Everesting rides (accumulating 29,029 ft in one activity by repeating a single bike climb). 53% of all marathons on Strava over the past year have been solo – a 3x increase from the previous year.
- They tried new types of competitions: Strava saw a +34% year on year increase in global athletes who joined a Strava Challenge.
- They searched for connection with their communities: Strava saw a more than 2x increase (+120%) in global athletes who joined Strava Clubs over the past year. Not only that, but among athletes new to the Strava platform, there was a +28% increase in athletes joining clubs in their first 7 days on the app. And there was a 1.9x year on year increase in new social connections on the platform.
‘Strava’s founders Michael Horvath (CEO) and Mark Gainey (Executive Chairman) see Group Challenges and the access to customizable and gamified peer competition as a way to give Strava’s community what it wants and needs. But it’s also bringing Strava back to its roots: after all, Strava was first founded as a way for the two Harvard crew teammates to reconnect after college, meeting up for friendly athletic competitions between their respective meetings.’
