Last week we hit on the topic of low motivation due to the Covid19 pandemic and the cancelling of the vast majority of races across the globe. The next several weeks we will continue to cover ways to maintain motivation to train even without a goal race on the 2020 calendar. Today I’ll talk about one of my most toxic training relationships; Strava.

We’ll start with some positives,

what CAN Strava do for you?

Find a local group of friends: Possibly the best part about Strava is that it truly allows you to find who is training in your space and allows you to connect with that person or group...almost as if this is why social media was designed. You can see other runners or cyclists frequenting your same routes, a group ride starting from where you started your solo rides every Sunday, or just find that a Facebook friend who you hadn’t known was a runner is getting out every day in your neighborhood. We at Mission Multisport have a group on Strava for our members and it allows us to connect and motivate each other with “kudos” or push each other on the weekly leaderboard during this time when we can’t always get together and train.
Goal Setting and Challenging yourself: Tracking your training with Strava will quickly change the game. Strava allows you to compare your effort over time, seeing weekly mileage, what days are “harder”, and other metrics you can pay extra for. You can even compare one day’s effort on a particular route, or “segment”, to all your efforts on that segment. There are segments I have run/ridden 1000s of times at this point so there is no shortage of data. When the time is right for you attempting to PR on your favorite is a great way to challenge yourself and push to a new level. This is a perfect way to give yourself the motivation that a race situation would simulate and go as fast as you can!
FInding new routes: I live in the same area where I grew up and have been riding and running there for 15+ years at this point. Since I started using Strava, I find a new favorite road almost annually. I see where other people ride or even if they ride the same road in a different direction it allows me to look at where I train from someone else’s perspective. Just recently I found my new favorite climb only a few hundred yards from where I ride my time trial bike. I hang a left rather than a right and for the next 1.5 miles I am riding uphill. Without looking at a friend’s ride on Strava I would have never known that existed.

KOM hunting: Strava segments, as mentioned above, track your efforts over time. They also, for better or for worse, compare you against everyone else who has attempted that segment and rank you. The person with the best time on a segment is the “King of the Mountain” or “Queen of the Mountain” (KOM,QOM). If you are the kind of person easily swayed by a gold crown and glory, KOM hunting might be for you, but there are risks for those rewards. This game always starts with the best intentions. Personally I just wanted to start by having more KOMs than my girlfriend (I don’t) and then it morphed into “I want to take my friends KOMs” (I did - sorry Steve) but then it became an obsession for me. I had a Strava notebook with the KOMs I wanted to get that included all the data; the distance, the time, who had it, what their power was, what their watts per kilo was, what my previous PR was on that segment, if I should use my road bike, my TT bike or my aero road bike, etc. I thought to myself, hunched over my unabomber-esque cycling notebook... this is perfect.... I will spend the summer competing with myself and others virtually on these roads and it will fuel my fire to train and race. Well, within about two weeks I had got all the segments on my list (not so humble brag) and everytime I got one I’d come home and be excited and show my girlfriend the data and she would try her best to be impressed and care about me getting a Strava segment. More damaging than her lack of obvious, overwhelming enthusiasm, was the fact that I was so focused on hunting KOM’s I couldn’t enjoy a ride unless I got one. I would over analyze the data, critique the rider who kept the segment, blame the wind, etc I sucked all of the joy and all of the rationality out of the sport, I wasn’t able to look past the competition, and non-stop competition is counterproductive to real training and recovery cycles.
Your excuse is in the title… We see this all too often. Someone goes out and runs or rides at a pace that is slower than usual and rather than “Morning Run” the title of that workout changes to “Had a hard day yesterday, still feeling it this morning” or “Could only push 200 watts today, legs were jelly”. That translates to “my fragile ego can’t handle people seeing me run at pace that is NORMAL!”. I am extremely guilty of this by the way, my ego is as fragile as anyones when it comes to competing. In fact this has had such a negative impact on my training that I frequently choose to be private on Strava. I felt like if I posted a run slower than 7 minute mile pace I had to let the world know that it was just a “recovery run” or I would push way too hard on runs that needed to be easy just to keep the average pace down. To make yourself feel shame and regret for not always having a social media worthy performance isn’t a healthy mindset. More importantly (to me), this was terrible for my training and for my legs!
Strava or it didn’t happen … Similar to the above, the Strava addiction can force overtraining and over-documenting our lives. For most of us, the data and competition aren’t what first drew us to cycling and running, the intangible joy of the sport is our underlying love. The constant need to record our experiences has us putting off the real enjoyment until we’re home on the couch, looking at the data and Strava ride map. “Strava or it didn’t happen” makes us feel like, if a ride isn’t recorded, photographed, blogged about…. We didn’t do it right. Last year, training for Ironman Louisville I decided to stop running with data for long runs. Just being able to get out there on a gorgeous morning, alone with my thoughts, seeing sunrise over the mountains and run on feel was one of the best experiences of my athletic life. Being present in the moment is paramount.

Ultimately, like any social media platform, there are benefits and drawbacks to Strava. It can be a great resource for training, competing, pushing yourself, and connecting with other athletes, but if you ever find yourself trying to edit your life or your workouts to be “kudos”-worthy for your followers, you’ve missed the mark. See when you get a Strava KOM or a good race result for that matter, no one really cares. I mean sure your partner or family care (for like a day) and your team/club will care and celebrate (during the post race party only) but outside of that no one takes your hobby that seriously. And if you care about their opinions more than your own, you won’t be able to enjoy any of it.

Click HERE to see what our athletes have to say about being coached by Mission Multisport!

-Ben Rotherham

Head Coach, MIssion Multisport

Training without races: You vs Strava

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