Whether you’re chasing KOMs (aka “King of the Mountain” leaderboard titles), training for your first race, or just trying to out-walk your coworkers in a monthly challenge, Strava is the social network for people who enjoy suffering outdoors. But beyond the basic “record activity, get kudos, repeat” cycle, there’s a whole world of features and tricks to enhance your Strava experience.
Use heatmaps to find the best routes anywhere
Strava’s global heatmap—controversial as she may be—shows the most popular routes based on millions of activities from users worldwide. The bright orange lines reveal where locals actually run and ride, helping you avoid sketchy areas, find the scenic paths, and discover running routes that wouldn’t stand out to you on a standard map.
Once you identify the popular segments from the heatmap, you can use Strava’s route builder to create your own custom version, adding or removing sections based on how much time or distance you want to cover. It’s like having local knowledge without actually knowing any locals. This combo of heatmap research plus custom route building means you’ll never waste a workout on a terrible route again.
Create your own segments, and be strategic
You don’t have to wait for someone else to create the perfect segment. If there’s a particular hill, sprint section, or loop you want to own, create your own segment after completing it. Head to the Strava website, open your activity, and use the segment creation tool to define your custom stretch. Pro tip: Make it just obscure or specific enough that you’ll probably be the only person who regularly rides or runs it. Instant KOM or QOM status, and you get to name it something fun, like “Why Did I Think This Was A Good Idea Road.”
Use the Beacon feature and Flybys (when you’re feeling social)
Strava’s live location sharing, called Beacon, is somewhat buried in the app but incredibly useful for solo adventurers. Before heading out on a long ride or run in unfamiliar territory, you can share your real-time location with up to three safety contacts. They’ll receive a link to track your progress without needing a Strava account. It’s like having a support crew without actually having to convince anyone to wake up at 5 a.m. and follow you around in a car.
Then there’s Flybys, one of Strava’s more interesting and slightly creepy features. After recording an activity, you can view an animated playback showing everyone else who was recording a Strava activity in the same area at the same time. Note that you have to opt into this feature in privacy settings. And since this became the default, the feature has been pretty buggy and unreliable. Maybe common consensus lately has been that the idea of strangers seeing when and where you exercise makes people uncomfortable. That’s where Strava’s privacy zones come in.
Set your privacy zone radius with intention
This feature hides the start and end points of your activities, which is great for keeping your home address private. But here’s the hack: Set your privacy zone radius strategically. Make it large enough to obscure your actual home but centered on a nearby landmark or intersection. This way, your activities still show the area you’re running or riding in (useful for finding local training partners or groups) without broadcasting your exact address. It’s privacy without going full secret agent.
Create GPS art (and post on Reddit)
Strava art involves planning routes that draw pictures, words, or shapes on the map. With a bit of route planning beforehand using the Strava route builder or other mapping tools, you can spell out messages, draw holiday-themed images (running turkeys at Thanksgiving is a tradition for some), or create elaborate designs.
Peruse the “Strava Art” flair in r/Strava for inspiration. People have created everything from marriage proposals to detailed portraits of animals across their cities. It requires some advance mapping work and willingness to take some inefficient turns, but the result is infinitely more shareable than another standard 5K loop. Plus, it’s a great way to explore new streets in your neighborhood while having a specific goal beyond just logging miles.
Clean up your feed
Love your friends, but don’t need to see all 47 of their treadmill walks per week? You can mute specific athletes without unfollowing them. Their activities won’t clog your feed, but you’ll still be connected for challenges and can check their profile anytime.
In the same vein, I recommend use the “hide stats” feature for your own mental health. This one’s counterintuitive on a platform designed to quantify everything, but sometimes the healthiest thing you can do is hide certain stats from public view. You can selectively hide metrics like pace, heart rate, or power on specific activities. Going for an easy recovery run but don’t want to explain why you’re going so slow? Even though you’re supposed to be going that slow? Just hide the pace and move on. It lets you keep the activity log and route data for your own records while avoiding the weird pressure to perform for an audience that probably isn’t paying that much attention anyway.
Leverage your relative effort and matched runs/rides
I love seeing if I’m actually getting faster or just feeling faster because I bought new shoes. For this purpose, use Strava’s route-matching feature to compare performances on the same course over time. The app will automatically detect when you’ve repeated a route, or you can manually compare efforts. It’s either highly motivating when you see progress or a humbling reality check when you realize that six months of training has made you exactly 12 seconds faster.
And if you don’t want to obsess over pace and distance, Strava’s Relative Effort score (for subscribers only) attempts to offer another way to think about things. It accounts for heart rate data, distance, and duration to give you a single number representing how hard a workout was on your body. A hilly 5K might generate the same Relative Effort as a flat 10K, helping you understand true training load better than just looking at miles logged. It’s especially useful for preventing the stress “I feel tired but my training looks light.”
Screenshot your activities before sharing
Strava’s built-in photo features are fine, but if you want to share your stats in a more visually appealing way, I recommend screenshotting the activity page right after you finish. You can then edit the screenshot to highlight specific metrics, add text, or crop it before posting to other social media.
Turn off auto-pause
The auto-pause feature seems helpful, automatically stopping your timer at red lights or when you’re catching your breath. But it’s also why your “moving time” looks great while your actual elapsed time reveals you spent 40% of your run standing around. For a more honest assessment of your fitness, especially if you’re training for a race, turn off auto-pause. You’ll get more accurate pacing data and learn to keep moving through transitions. Plus, your average pace might look worse, but at least it’s the truth.
Export your data
Let’s face it: Strava has changed its privacy policies and features several times over the years. If you’ve been using the platform for a while, you have years of valuable training data sitting in their servers, and not a lot of confidence in the company that owns it. Use the “Download Your Data” feature in account settings to get a complete archive of all your activities. You’ll receive a zip file with GPX files, photos, and other data that you can import into other platforms or just keep as a backup.
The bottom line
The beauty of Strava is that it’s simultaneously a serious training tool and a game you can play with yourself and others. These hacks help you use the platform more effectively while avoiding some of the common pitfalls that turn what should be a fun tracking system into a source of stress or comparison anxiety. Now get out there, collect some data, and remember: The person you’re really competing against is the you from yesterday. Unless someone just stole your KOM, in which case, go get it back.
