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<\/a>An ancient Strava-art tableaux depicting dinosaur of fun in battle with the tiger of addictive UX design\nFun vs fitness?<\/p>\n
Strava should be fun. There\u2019s literally no point to sharing your exercises with friends online than fun (the sites training metrics are shoddy, at best). But lately, it\u2019s not feeling like much fun.<\/p>\n
It might just be me. I have less time to ride than I used to. And I definitely have less time that a lot of the people I follow.<\/p>\n
Or it could be the rapid expansion of frustrating \u201cfeatures.\u201d Some features are just annoying, some seem counter productive, and some feel more like shaming than encouraging. (Maybe if there was an option to turn any of these off, it wouldn\u2019t bug me so much.)<\/p>\n
Strava\u2019s features have always been a balance of helping performance and making sure users open the app more times and spend more time looking at it. But, lately,\u00a0the balance seems skewed towards getting people to use the app more, not perform better. Fitness score \u2013 which requires an asterisk explaining that higher isn\u2019t better, counter to every human impulse \u2013 seems particularly egregious, as it blindly rewards more time not better training. Then there was the time that, when I was briefly injured, the app sent me a notification that I was about to lose some sort of continuity streak. Despite not knowing I had a streak going, I suddenly felt put out that I was about to lose it.<\/p>\n
Whatever among these offences is the root cause, the result is the same: I\u2019m having less fun. Not just on the app, but maybe on the bike, too.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m also having a hard time quitting. Despite quite effortlessly coming up with a list of grievances that would make any outside observer wonder why I still pay for this, I am also having trouble convincing my self not to track my ride. Or come up with a (maybe) witty title. And add a photo.<\/p>\n But it doesn\u2019t stop there. I then look at the ride stats. That one section of trail felt good, but was I actually going fast? I look. I see a little bronze ribbon there saying it was my third fastest time on the trail. Third fastest isn\u2019t bad, in fact it should be good. My heart still sinks a little, though. But would it actually matter if I\u2019d gone faster? Neither Scott-SRAM nor The Syndicate were going to call if I\u2019d landed a PR, or even hit the top-1o on the leader board. So shouldn\u2019t my marker for success be how much fun I had? And why I\u2019m I letting this little bronze ribbon make me feel worse about a ride I really enjoyed.<\/p>\n Comparison is the thief of joy, as they say. So why do I continue to mediate my riding through this little thief of an app on my phone? There is nothing in its training metrics and feedback that I\u2019d actually consider useful (some, like \u201cFitness,\u201d arguably encourage behaviour that is counter productive).<\/p>\n I\u2019m pretty sure I\u2019m not the only rider who is, or could be, questioning their relationship with Strava. While addiction is probably too strong a word, I clearly am not having good interactions with the app. Here are five of the behaviours I took as signs that Strava and I should probably go on a break.<\/p>\n 1) Scrolling when you haven\u2019t ridden<\/p>\n If you find yourself scrolling through others activities when you haven\u2019t had the time to ride yourself \u2013 and find yourself feeling anything other than joy for the opportunity your friends had to go exercise \u2013 then you\u2019re probably not consuming Strava in a way that is productive.<\/p>\n 2) Being unreasonably frustrated when recording goes wrong<\/p>\n If you\u2019re actually mad when your ride doesn\u2019t record, or your tracking device runs out of batteries mid-ride, you probably care too much about the stats and not enough about the actual activity. \u201cStrava or it didn\u2019t happen\u201d started as a joke, not a maxim. If it doesn\u2019t feel like a joke anymore, maybe you should turn off Strava for a few rides. And your other devices (Garmin, Wahoo, etc) as well.<\/p>\n<\/a>Desperate times call for desperate measures?
\nCutting the cords<\/p>\n<\/a>Photo: Getty Images
\nFive signs you might be addicted to Strava<\/p>\n