| I really hate Strava. Strava (and anything that replaces it in the same function) exists as a pointless social media layer on top of what Garmin/Suunto/Polar provide. There is really no reason to use it, and I've seen so many new runners come and go, because they treat Strava the same way people treat social media in general. They see others doing high mileage, and hard intervals, they try to emulate it (from many people) and they end up with stress injuries or burn out. There's no guidance, and it shows you a display of performances from people of all sorts of ability (I see two literal Olympians on my regular run route) who took time to get where they are. Newcomers can see that and try to emulate it too quickly and injure themselves. There's no warning for somebody going from 10k a week straight to 30k the next week, 40 the week after, 50, so on. But any runner would tell you to follow a 10% rule. Strava doesn't even give a warning. My local running route is plagued with cyclists causing disturbances and near-misses for the sake of Strava segments (small parts of routes with leaderboards), despite being pedestrian priority. I just can't think of anything Strava offers besides the utility to like somebody's bike ride or run, which is probably something you could already do elsewhere. It trims tons of the data that Garmin provides, puts up leaderboards (apps with leaderboards almost always incentivise the wrong method of doing something), and they promote competition to people brand new to running, usually in the guise of runners who have built up properly over a longer timespan. |