If a man runs through a forest but doesn’t post it on Strava, it didn’t happen. I won’t believe it, anyway: the athletic tracker app is my new addiction. The name is borrowed from the Swedish word meaning ‘to strive’. Users document their sporting activities – walking, kayaking, surfing, skiing – and share their adventures with their followers.
Founded in 2009 by two Harvard graduates who met on the rowing team, the app has 150 million users. That’s small fry compared to Facebook’s three billion or TikTok’s 1.3 billion. But Strava is on the up, acquiring Runna, another fitness app, in mid-April. Strava syncs to your smartwatch, if you have one. As well as mapping your distance and tracking your time, it lets you add photos and captions to your posts. Users are sure to feature their exercise equipment (why yes, these are the new On Cloudrunner 2s – thanks for asking).
I mostly use the app for running. I like to share smug, not-that-tired-looking selfies to rack up my ‘kudos’ (the equivalent of ‘likes’) and expose my followers to the niche British rock bands that make up my running playlists. A friend from school has taken to ‘shitposting’ memes on Strava to accompany his runs to and from work. His captions include ‘running away from that bullshit’ and ‘running toward that bullshit’.
Of course, there is still a hierarchy of annoying users. Cyclists are the worst. I’m competitive at the best of times (I am particularly motivated by my boss, who runs a mile a minute faster than my average). But few updates remind me of my inadequacies more than seeing my friend’s fiancée has ridden the equivalent of New York to Philadelphia in an afternoon.
I like to share smug, not-that-tired-looking selfies to rack up my ‘kudos’
It may be a less problematic form of social media – but that doesn’t make it healthy. Fitness has simply become the new fix. We’re all striving for ‘Local Legend’ status, which is awarded to frequent users in a particular area. Everyone is tracking your progress and workout regularity. This means there are no breaks: the mapping function encourages you to stick with your runs and workouts. I might go for a breezy 10k around Washington D.C.’s National Mall – but that won’t top my friend’s jog along an exotic beach. It’s a higher level of bragging than even Instagram can offer: you’re not just seeing the world, you’re living it.
‘What we’re building with all of you is bigger than any sport or type of activity,’ the founders said in a corporate statement last year. ‘It’s about the human condition: to move, to connect.’ I’ve swallowed this jargon whole. The initial idea behind social media was to connect people. Today, Facebook is for your wacky cousin’s viral chainmail. X is for teasing OnlyFans content and seeing Elon Musk’s posts. TikTok is to prop up the Chinese Communist party.
Defeated Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz may have taught his daughter that ‘running is a privilege’ – but he’s been wrong before. Strava has retained most of the innocence of early social media. It tells your audience where you are, where you ran and how long it took you. When you live on a different continent from most of your friends and family, as I do, that’s all you need. That and working out how to outrun your boss without doping.
A version of this article first appeared in the Spectator World edition.
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