Last month, I came off Strava. It was the last man standing for a while. The only social media platform that I was still on, if you ignore my YouTube channel, where I share the occasional video. You see, as someone who long identified himself as a runner, a part of me felt like I couldn’t let go of Strava. What I thought of as a central component to my identity, that being running, was so intertwined into the whole Strava business. It was a place where I felt like I could show the world just how good I was at something. And because I do that something nearly every day, my ego loved being fed like this. However, what started as way to log my workouts nearly ten years ago slowly evolved into the same time-sapping, comparison breeding platform as any other social media.

This is a post discussing some of the reasons as to why I came off Strava. However, I’d like to make it clear from the start that much of my reasoning applies generally to fitness tracking apps. I am also in no way telling everyone to ditch Strava either. I’m simply sharing my experience in the hope that it might resonate with someone reading it.

A sea of statistics

I can’t recollect too well, but I’m sure that when I started using Strava back in 2015 that there weren’t as many statistics being thrown at me after an activity. I started using Strava when I was a keen cyclist. I saw it as a good way of tracking my rides and my training and saw some usefulness in knowing stats like distance, speed etc. However, over time, I moved away from the stats as, not only was I realising the stupidity in racing flat out for a segment on a busy coastal road, I was also becoming so immersed in the stats that I was being distracted from the beauty of my surroundings. I’m not the first person to comment on this, with a popular cycling YouTuber also expressing similar views. It’s about the opportunity cost of being so engulfed in the metrics. The opportunity might be to gain some insight into one’s training and development as an ‘athlete’, but the cost is manifold.

Moving away from cycling, when I started running during the Covid pandemic, I remember my first runs. I would go out the front door wearing shoes and a pair of old shorts, and I’d blast around my town. I didn’t record these runs at first. I would sometimes wear my old Casio to log my time, but I didn’t track them. I loved the feeling of my body working hard, of the blood pumping through my legs and my heart pounding at the end of a run. I loved looking at the colours in the sky, hearing the birds singing in the trees, and watching people doing their thing around town. But then things changed. I started recording my runs and soon bought a watch that would make things ‘easier’. I then decided to try a challenge of running one mile on day 1 of the month, building up to running 30 on the 30th day. In hindsight, I think this almost entirely derived from the egocentric part of me - which was being fed by the delusional social acceptance and validation provided through Strava. This is where I began realising that a sea of statistics hides the truth. I was doing ‘well’, but dropped out with a knee problem on day 15. However, I vividly remember fixating on what the metrics would look like on Strava during these runs. I remember playing every trick and using every excuse in the book to justify why my pace was slower than usual, why my heart rate was drifting, why the distance was slightly shorter or longer. And, finally, why my knee gave in. On the outside, things may have looked fairly plain sailing, but on the inside, this was my first taste of the soullessness developed from fixating over statistics.

Let’s take a slight sidestep. By way of analogy, I’ll consider another pastime for a second - cooking. I love cooking. I love using new ingredients, the smell of food, the different textures, the social aspect of it, sharing with others, tasting different dishes. The list goes on. Most people would agree that it’s the process of cooking and then sharing the food that provides nourishment - both for the body and the soul. But imagine after every time you cooked, your ‘meal’ was automatically uploaded to an app for people to see. Oh, and not only this, but when uploaded, a load of stats come alongside it - the time it took you to cook, your rate of chopping, your heart rate, the number of mistakes you made, the number of ingredients that you used and their exact quantities and, finally, a curated picture of the dish. It might just be me, but this would be ludicrous. Why? Because these things don’t matter. The things that bring joy and happiness when cooking cannot be quantified nor reduced to metrics. They’ve too much depth to do so. Running is no different. I truly believe that once one realises what’s truly important and why they actually run, then the statistics seem entirely meaningless. Nature doesn’t care if my cadence is 150 or 200, it offers unconditional, persistent beauty - so long as we tune into it. The soul doesn’t care what your fastest split was. In fact, it would likely prefer if you slowed down, to really tune into your mind and body.

Fun is unquantifiable. When riding along with the sea of statistics, we’re simply staying at the surface level. We see the peaks and troughs of the waves, as each one forms and then dies. However, we miss the depth and expansiveness of the deep blue ocean. We fixate over the superficial at the expense of depth - of true joy. If someone were to ask how much fun one had during their run, instead of how far or how quick they went, we’d all be better off. To me, apps like Strava try to convince us that the statistics are what truly matter. But, they hide the important stuff. The body knows how to run. It knows what feels easy or hard. It knows when to slow down or speed up. For me, a statistic doesn’t help justify a single why for my running. They simply distract me from life. From connecting to myself, others, and nature.

Sapping stories

When I stopped using my GPS watch and uploading to Strava, before finally deleting it. I noticed something interesting happen. I realised clearly that the quality and depth of stories from our runs is lost. Why do I think this is? Well, when we go running with a GPS watch that automatically uploads our run to a social media platform once we’re done, we essentially short-cut an important step in the storytelling process. We might add a caption and a description to the run, with a few photos from the run, but I think that these precise actions are what short-circuit our brains into feeling like we’ve already told a story. It’s out there for my followers and maybe even the world to see.

So what’s the need for me to tell anyone directly about my run? That’s simply a waste of time, right? No. Not at all. When I stepped away from recording my runs and using Strava, I noticed something strange. When I’d ask someone who had been for a run how it was, I’d more often than not either be directed to look at their Strava or they’d show me their Strava themselves. I was perplexed. Instead of describing how it felt, what they saw and heard, if they’d explored a new place, what the weather was like, or who they were with, they’d direct me to the online ‘evidence’ of their run. I believe that this saps stories, turning our experiences from ones where the joy can be shared with others, to ones that lack depth and authenticity.

Even when I’ve been on some runs recently, running without a watch has resulted in me telling better stories. Take one run, for example, where I found some new paths in the woods behind my house, one of which was this super steep kick-up that then led into a pine forest, where the sun was beaming through the trees’ needles and the wind blowing in my face before I got lost and happened upon a gigantic den in the woods. So much depth and detail, which we often gloss over as we’re preoccupied with other things that we think are more important, like analysing our post run data and making sure we can explain what the world sees on Strava. I wish for runners to go back to the old ways, before technology did all the talking for us, and to enjoy telling stories about our outings.

Losing touch with what matters

Like many social media platforms that promise connection and community, Strava rides a fine line between connecting and disconnecting us with what truly matters. Connection is such an important part of life. Without connecting to oneself, one cannot begin to understand why they’re here and what brings them joy. Without connecting to others, we cannot share the joys of life and collectively experience such joys. Without connecting to nature at the deepest level, we cannot experience the joys it has to offer. Disconnection feeds the narrative of separation from one another, of separation from nature. Unfortunately, I think that tracking our runs is moving us further away from connection and oneness and closer towards fragmentation.

Instead of paying attention to the nature around us, we’re persistently checking our watches, be it habitually, or because it’s buzzing at us to tell us something. In doing so, we take away from the present moment, that being the only moment that there ever is, and subconsciously start looking into the past or future. If the split is slower, or the heart rate higher than usual, negative energy starts building up inside us as we’re conditioned to think we should be better. We might also start thinking about what these metrics will look like on our Strava profiles, or how they will affect our training. After our run, when we click pause and save - yes, I’m sure I want to end my run - we’re told that our performance was either good or bad. The primitive act of running reduced down to one metric quantifying our performance. Cmon, this seems ridiculous even when writing it. Countless times I’ve seen runners have an incredible run, where they seemed full of joy, only to become deflated after their run because their watch tells them that they underperformed. Their psychology shifts merely because of one metric. This is non-sensical. The mind and body have far more wisdom than an embedded algorithm in our watch or on our running app. We should listen to our own internal feedback, not let these reductionist metrics define our running.

Regarding connecting with others, instead of socialising and talking to others during our runs, joining running clubs and going to the local parkrun, we’re getting lost in the metrics. We’re worried about how going on a slower club run will look to our followers, or how a subpar parkrun compared to our usual standard will come across. We become embedded in a collective hustle culture where the statistics matter more than the joy that we’re experiencing. Simply moving our bodies through our environment with others is no longer enough. We think that this is pointless unless attributed a metric.

I digress. Running is on the rise, and I’m all for this. However, I am a little concerned that through gamifying such a primitive act like running, we lose touch with what truly matters. Gamification is a concept used in fitness apps to try to help people build lasting positive habits over time. It refers to adding game-like elements to non-game activities so as to encourage participation. By introducing comparison metrics, be it with oneself or someone else, and concepts such as awards, badges, achievements, leaderboards and so on, these companies claim that they’re trying to help us make the habit stick. So what’s the issue? This sounds good, right? Well I think that if we gamify things that are simple at their core, then we risk taking away from the experience itself. We must also remember that these companies have vested interests. Ultimately, if they can increase the reliance and dependence on their app or product for our satisfaction, then their profits will continue to rise. Consequently, I think that over time, this motive results in the initial objective and value proposition of the company offering the app to be distorted.

What do I mean by this? At the surface, apps like Strava were created to help motivate people to do something. However, as time passes, companies realise that unless intrinsic motivations are high, people need to be given things that extrinsically motivate them. Enter leaderboards, segments, likes, and metrics. Momentarily, this seems to address the problem. Extrinsic motivators work to get people out there running more. All good, right? Well I think that this then kick starts a dangerous feedback loop. Why? I believe that extrinsic motivators detract us from intrinsic ones, ultimately causing us to develop a dependence on extrinsic factors. This changes the character of our running, inturn changing the value derived from it. It perpetuates and breeds comparison, making us feel like the only way to be content is if the stats are are aligned and our extrinsic motivation is sustained. But herein lies the issue. The extrinsic rewards designed to solidify a behaviour that is already intrinsically rewarding, like running, are a ticking time bomb. These motivators don’t last. Therefore, companies in charge of designing these apps then feel like they have no choice but to think of new, clever ways to feed us extrinsic motivators. What happens then is that we become so reliant on these extrinsic motivators that we forget what our true intrinsic ones are. A psychological dependence on these meaningless motivators is created. Worse still, these extrinsic factors perpetuate and breed comparison, acting as a thief of joy.

Comparison drives competition

I’ve touched in the past about how comparison breeds discontentment. Buddhist philosophy talks a lot about this, and I think there’s a deep truth to it. Now, it’s also true that the psyche makes no real distinction about what the comparison is made to. In all cases, it leads to a wastage of energy and a sense of dissatisfaction, or contrarily, an overwhelming sense of elation if one deduces that their current state is ‘better’ than that to which they’re comparing to. However, in both cases, the ultimate result is discontentment and a constant urge for more, better, further etc. Our running is no different. Whenever we draw comparison to something else, our past self, or other runners, we detract from the present moment and shift our psychology towards a competition oriented one.

Looking at Strava specifically, perhaps the main explicit way to compare ourselves to our past selves and others is through segments. Segments are short sections that someone creates over which a runner’s time and distance are recorded. Runners are then ranked on a leaderboard based on the time that it took them to run the segment. They can also compare their own times for a given segment - although I think this is now behind a pay wall. I’m sure that many of you will agree with me in saying that they’ve jumped to compare themselves to others on a segment at some point. The issue with this is that unless we’ve beaten our past best time, then we are likely to feel deflated if we, like many do, assign our self-worth to lifeless metrics. And even if we beat our old time, we’ll subconsciously start comparing ourselves to the rest of the leaderboard - to where we are relative to this or that runner, often constructing excuses and explanations to help ‘justify’ this. What started out being a nice run has now turned into a never-ending competition.

I’m by no means saying that all competition is bad - it’s something ingrained in us; something that’s part of our primitive roots. But, in my opinion, the form in which competition comes in is an important subtlety. You see, going to a local running race creates healthy competition, where it leads to people pushing each other in the moment, meaning that the experience is whole. This is unlike Strava leaderboards, which hides the experience behind times and paces, resulting in a distorted view of reality. Moreover, running races also come with a whole load of other pluses like connecting in person with other runners, cheering them on, and being part of a community. It’s competition by choice.

The truth is, we don’t all need to be the best runner out there. We just need to try our best. And our best is what we can give in the moment. There’s no need for the extra subconscious baggage added by comparing ourselves to others. It achieves nothing useful or constructive in the long run. If we spend too much time in the world of stats and leaderboards, we start re-wiring our brains to think that everything is about competition - how we compare to others. But, from experience, I can assure you that this is entirely counter-productive and unsustainable. The only thing that we can do is to apply ourselves fully in the present moment. Any comparison we draw against others is redundant. Everyone’s life situation at any one moment is constantly changing and evolving. Hence, we should simply be content with where we are now. Strava didn’t help me do this. I used it as an excuse in the name of improving my performance. But there’s more to life that a bunch of numbers and graphs on a screen…

A slave to the Strava curve

There are a few suggestions that we’ve developed an unhealthy relationship with Strava. One of them is the classic ‘if it’s not on Strava, it didn’t happen’. This epitomises our modern view of exercise and leisure. Instead of being things that we enjoy there and then, they’ve become things used for external validation and the pursuit of acceptance. Perhaps some say it jokingly, but I genuinely think that others say it completely seriously, as if to say that if they can’t see evidence of your run, then it didn’t happen. I’d like to change the saying to this: ‘if it’s not on Strava, it happened more’. Dodgy wording, I know. But I truly think that if we strip back our running to the basics, getting rid of this techno-centric mindset, then we’re able to be more present and experience more joy in our running. Consequently, a run that perhaps became a mechanical expression of one’s fitness and status in the running community becomes one where one truly experiences feeling alive. We start reaping the rewards and benefits to our overall wellbeing.

Another, perhaps more alarming suggestion of our questionable relationship with Strava is our dependence and addiction to the Strava ‘curve’. It’s another tool to helps us stay motivated, providing a visual representation of our weekly milage over time. Despite many elite runners warning against fixating on distance in your training, there’s nothing that many hate more than seeing a dent in their Strava curve. One issue with this is that distance is only one metric. So if you really think the metrics are useful, then by reducing your training to one metric, you ignore ones that are more important, like elevation and, more importantly, time. Going up Everest, you may only cover the same distance as your local 10 km race, but you’ve climbed into the clouds (literally). So distance would be completely unrepresentative of your situation. Also, you will have had to clamber over rocks and navigate glaciers and icefalls along the way, which no metric can capture. On top of this, distance does not say anything about everything else going on in your life. It doesn’t care whether you’re ill, whether you’ve had a tough time at work, or whether you are holistically healthy outside of your running. Little do we know, someone might be eating a whole load of junk and lounging around all day outside of their running. This is why it’s a slippery slope if you become too engulfed in making your Strava graph look good.

I hope that this is enough to convince you that distance is not the most useful thing to judge your training off. So, what do I suggest we base it off? Feel. The body knows how to signal to us and give us feedback about how it feels. It tells us when it’s sore after a long run or tired after a poor nights’ sleep. And if you really want a metric to help guide your training, which I understand, then time is a far better one to go off. If you listen to your body and bare the time spent running in the back of your mind, building it up sensibly, then you’ll be far better off and happier than if you fixated on distance.

Redundant running ‘metrics’

By now, I may have managed to convince you that running metrics and statistics are pretty redundant at the end of the day. If we place joy and happiness at the centre of our running - which I encourage all to do - then we realise that it’s a very simple thing to do. We listen to how our mind and body feels before, during, and after running - this being a far more useful form of feedback than reductionist numbers. We realise that running around in the mud, getting lost, or carving new paths in the local forest doesn’t look as impressive as a quick road race, but know that it provided an abundance of joy and fun. Pushing hard becomes something that we do out of choice, not out of guilt of feeling inadequate. We respect our bodies’ limits and work within them from moment to moment. By running how we were born to, what you’ll see is that, over time, you’ll become a better runner and person.

Data and AI

The final thing that I’d like to touch on is data and AI. Most people know by now that if something is free, then we are the product. It’s no different with Strava. Unless we are a paying member, the time we spend on there means more data for them. Even if we’re a subscriber, they’ll still be extracting and using our data for their benefit. It’s crazy how much data they likely have on where and when and how people run all around the world. OK, some of it may be put to good use, such as helping to improve transport infrastructure like bike lanes. But I doubt that this is the whole picture. Just like any other company that relies on marketing and advertisement as a source of revenue, Strava uses our data to throw things back at us for us to buy. Before I came off there, I started getting fed up with it pushing me to sign up to join Runna, or to take part in a challenge where I get a discount on some new energy bars. It started looking like any other social media platform that’s undergone the process of enshittification (I talk more about this process here). I also realised how strange it was that everyone who followed me knew where I was pretty much every day. There’s no need for this.

Another more recent addition to Strava is the use of AI. I’m not anti-AI, but I think that, like anything, it has its place. I don’t think that running is that place. As I’ve said, we already know how to run, despite what some people might say. We also have lives that are far more complex than what an AI can even begin to comprehend. Hence, any training plan written by AI or metric spat out of its rear end ignores these other important factors. I don’t need Strava’s AI to tell me how my run was or that I should sign up to a new plan if I want to PB. I can make these judgments and decisions myself. We all can. But if we become too reliant on this AI stuff, then we’ll slowly lose our agency and ability to rationalise. Our running will become an activity that’s infiltrated by technology and AI, sapping it of it’s purity.

Ultimately, Strava sucked out the solitude and simplicity from my running. As a result, I’m here to provide an antidote to metric oriented running - to be librated from its shackles and to integrate back into nature. Since getting off Strava, I can only say that my running has become far more enjoyable. It’s helped me rediscover the joy that first drew me to running.

Strava became an extension of an ego based desire to be accepted in the running community. However, I realised that the fruits of life aren’t things that can be quantified and reduced to numbers.