Justfindit.se Magazine

I love Strava

I love Strava. Some years ago someone told me to install and use this app on my smartphone. With it we can know more about our route, pace and splits. And the health is more important than speed so it is important to listen to our body.

In this magazine we have written several articles about healthy lifestyle such as Double up – let’s enjoy the M-15. They were mostly about cycling and running. We have also compared different ways of measuring the distance and in that article we mentioned the Strava app. More about it you can find in this article: Strava, iPhone Health app, Endomondo and Google Maps.

As an elite skier, author and owner of this magazine, I have decided to write a reportage about this app. Hopefully this article will contribute in inspiring some future users. So, let us go for it!

Why Strava? Some years ago someone told me to install and use this app on my smartphone. At that time I was not so interested in it but I did not forget the name. Then, when I started running I decided to try how it works. The goal was to see more information about the running. It would be great to see illustrated route map and information like time, pace and distance.

The route, pace and splits

Using Strava we can see where we have been running. Our route is illustrated like in other similar apps and it shows almost exact position on every step we take. It can vary little bit depending on the GPS signal but normally the result is reliable.

Looking at the time we can see how long it took from one to another point and if we wish we can always try to improve that. Calories depend often on the time and the route. Strava makes some calculations that fit the position, speed and time.

If we take a closer look at the pace we can analyze our speed and method of running. We can look back at some parts of the route and see how we ran and why we did so. Sometimes the pace can be lower if we run upwards. Running downwards is easier and can give us better speed which can contribute to a better pace.

Health, speed and challenges

But higher speed can result in becoming tired afterwards. If we lose much energy and get tired then we are in risk zone. That means that our body maybe wants to slow down so much that we must go instead of run in maybe 40 seconds or similar. And it can repeat more than one time in some situations.

Being careful with speed is important if we actually want to reach the goal without slowing down to the walking speed. But that is not a problem. According to Strava, the health is more important than speed so it is important to listen to our body.

Challenges in Strava seem to be very interesting and stimulating. They are created so that users simply can join them without any required registration or payment. They let you challenge yourself in different runs. For example May 5K or May 10K or May Half Marathon. There are also challenges like Salomon Running League (Marathon over 4 weeks) where participants get 20% discount on some purchase.

Now at the end we can just say: Use and enjoy Strava. It is a very good app that can stimulate you every time you want to run. It creates a satisfaction!