How Social Media Burnout Led Me to Strava
As many of you may know, I am not a fan of most modern day social media websites. Strava, however, is one of the few social media apps that I still use and find many of it’s features useful and fun.
I find the stat tracking is great for setting and maintaining personal workout goals and, most importantly, I only see efforts from my friends – no ads, AI meme, or crazy algorithms showing me top athletes that I have never met.
As I move away from Instagram, I’ve been using Strava more and find that it’s even better than I realized!
Here is an example from a recent bike ride that I went on in South Lake Tahoe. The route was on the Powerline trail from Ski Run to Cold Creek to High Meadow to Railroad Grade to Columbine up Incense Cedar to Sidewinder down Corral back to Powerline and then home on Pioneer Trail.
I often take pictures while on rides or hikes and add them to the post but I just found that out today if you upload photos it automatically knows where on your route the photos were taken!
I like this feature because now I can take a picture in while on a ride and then easily know exactly where it was taken without spending a ton of time looking at a map and trying to guess if it’s the right spot.
Strava supports itself with paid memberships that provide additional value to users in the form of advanced metrics about your workouts and enhanced data presentation.
In hindsight it seems quite naive to expect large social media apps like facebook, instagram, and youtube to remain reasonably credible while providing amazing services and value, all for free. It definitely makes me weary of the other apps that I/we have committed to that are currently free (whatsapp comes to mind) or of joining new apps that offer services for free.
Here’s to hoping (or pleading?) that Strava sees the value that it is providing and doesn’t ruin itself for the sake of making higher profits.
If you want to see more pictures from my rides and learn more about the trails you can find more information on my Strava: https://www.strava.com/athletes/jeffroeder
And if you’re already on Strava feel free to add me!