Five days with Strava

In January I ran everyday as part of Janathon and every day I used RunningFreeOnline to log my miles. It's one of the rules that ensures all participants put their mileage in the same palce so each of us - and the organisers - can keep track of progress. The site, alas, rates as one of my least favourite. Not just my least favourite mileage tracking sites but one of my least favourite sites fullstop. I'll not dwell; I just don't like it.

Typically I Use DailyMile to load my mileage. It's a dead easy to use site and fairly social. What it makes up for i sociability it loses in features. You get a map and an elevation graph and can say what the weather was like, how you felt and what shoes you were wearing but not a lot more (at least not for free.) It also managed to lose one of my recent runs and then on another ocassion I tried to save a run and was given a "we're making the site better" screen. An unexpcted outage and another run lost.

With a reasonable amount of competition in the free-mileage-tracking market I decided to check out Strava, a site recommended to me by a tri-athlete and ironman I bump into most weeks. It was originally intended for cyclists but the feature set for runners is pretty damn good and I have to say I am very impressed. It is already making me run faster than I have for a long time and it is far better for analysis - something I need as I start to train for another marathon. So here are how my five days have gone.

Day 1. I upload a run and see how Strava feels to use. It recognised my Garmin, uploaded and mapped the route and showed me my km splits. It also allowed me to view 'segments.' Segments are runs or parts of runs that you can save. An obvious candidate is the harbour Bridge. If you run a segment - any public segment - the site will let you know and present you with your spot on the leaderboard. Navigation is easy, the presentation is unfussy . Nice.

Day 2. Trying to get over the plodding January I decided to set a segment time on Parriwi Rd and then the deck of the Bridge. Knowing that leaderboards exist makes you run faster than you would otherwise. Which is great for training and helped me over the plods.

Day 3. A day when I didn't feel like a morning run and as soon as I got on the bus regretted not runnng. So I ran home, taking it fairly easy and avoiding as much rush hour traffic as possible. Not a lot to say about Strava's influence because on this run it didn't have any.

Day 4. A typical run to work, but I knew a segment of 800m existed between the towers of the Harbour Bridge so I decided to up the pace. Once again Strava had given me a kick and I benefitted from half a mile at maybe 90% effort.

Day 5. Having split times displayed is not just a Strava thing; GarminConnect and many other sites do that. But I'm using Strava and therefore it can take credit for the Military Rd section where I was intending to run at marathon pace. General competitveness saw me run a quicker than usual Parriwi because I overtook a runner soon after getting on the road and for a while could hear him behind me. I didn't fancy getting overtaken again. At the Bridge I wanted to get back on to marathon pace, which I did fairly easily. Then another runner pulled up to my shoulder. Once again, I didn't fancy getting overtaken so I put my foot down and he stuck with me. As I approached a restriction I figured I'd just be able to get through before the guy with the flight case and if I did I could pull away from the guy on my shoulder. Lucky I made it because if my timing had been out I would have jad to slam the brakes on. I got over the bridge with my honour intact, had a brief chat with the guy on the steps and then made my way to work in a new PB of 48:59. I'm looking forward to seeing if I managed to get up the leaderboard for the full or towers segments of the bridge.

So there you have it, Strava, a website that seems to make me run faster.