The World's Athletic Activity Mapped | Hacker News Reader

The World's Athletic Activity Mapped

blog.strava.com

77 pointsWMCRUN24 comments

Long time strava user here.

I really wish Strava would do a better job helping you discover new routes around you for activities that you do. I'm a long time user who uses it for Mountain biking and short runs but I've never selected a route because Strava told me to. If you are a PM at strava there's so much you can unlock with all the user's activity data you are sitting on.

They aren't doing nothing of course. I can see their product efforts are focused on 1) growing the user base 2) growing paid subs.

They're really not doing much. I just let my premium membership lapse because they have so few extra features.

Trying to make a facebook news feed doesn't do anything with their current data which is their strength.

I really wish they'd up their game.

Exactly this. I recently cancelled my renewal after years of justifying the payment as the best way to support a service I like but I don't miss any of the premium features at all. I think I only ever use one or two and rarely.

i often build my routes utilizing the global heatmap. especially in new places. Yeah, it'd be great to get suggestions based on where I am, but the heat map helps tremendously to discover places to run/bike.

One of my coworkers proposed a better way to utilize Strava's data for finding good routes: https://medium.com/@vovabilonenko/strava-activities-map-6cbc...

Trailforks seems to be working in that direction.

The best way I know to find new routes in my city is to join a local strava club and see where others are running. If I travel, I rely on the Segment Explorer but I agree it is not perfect.

The strava heat map is one of those cases where I really realise the power of data.

I've discovered several amazing cycling routes I never knew about within 10 miles of my house from the heatmap. It was also great when I went on holiday, to get a quick glance at local popular routes.

I would like it if Strava, or someone else, did the following:

1. Associate each GPS data point with a short (say, 10 meters) segment.

2. Collect metadata on each segment. eg incline, weather history, is it a segment of an organized race, etc.

3. Combine segments into proposed routes that match a user’s search criteria.

they have some this in the labs https://labs.strava.com/clusterer/

You can search for yearly/weekly events.

That’s a neat experiment, but not really what I’m thinking of. I want to solve two problems:

1. Find a route that matches a search like “20 mile trail run, with moderate hills, and at least 3 water fountains.”

2. See interesting information about segments of the route, such as “mile 8.7 is the highest point of the End Cancer 50 mile race.”

That said, thanks for the pointer, I hadn’t seen that before.

"Athletic" might be misleading. The heatmap in my area (East Germany) only shows activity on the city golf court, whilst we have plenty of real athletes training here, on the amateur, professional and olympic level. Looks like only golfers use Strava.

*People who let Strave track their every move when running their app, mapped.

Yes, obviously. But there's enough Strava users that that's a pretty good proxy.

Not at all. This is a good proxy for the activities of wealthy people who don't care about privacy. I'd be interested in this map if I wanted to know where to put up ads for overpriced energy bars. But this isn't a map of physical activity.

This is actually a great point about a highly targeted physical marketing opportunity.

I recently saw a small sign nailed to a tree on one of the thousands of back roads in the area that basically turn into a parking lot during rush hour.

I'm sure you would catch some flak for spamming on nature trails but normal streets are less offensive.

to be fair, strava has a free app option, nearly everyone has a smartphone these days (not just the wealthy), and running is pretty much one of the cheapest sports/pastimes/activities one can do.

[edit] I guess the items highlighted in the blog post probably require some coin...

>running is pretty much one of the cheapest sports/pastimes/activities one can do

It is, but I suspect that runners still tend to be affluent. Just why is an interesting question.

http://www.runningguru.com/SM/Demographics.asp

Interesting survey. Though I think the survey demographic is not representative of the general population.

Most people who run, or consider themselves runners or joggers don’t run 4.5 days per week and/or average 29.5 miles per week.

Interesting nonetheless thanks for sharing.

It never claimed to be a map of physical activity. It's a map of athletic activity. i.e. the people who purchase overpriced energy bars.

The title was changed after I posted my rant. Previously it used a term like population or people (can't remember) including everyone which was stupid.

Most of the tracks are not recorded by phones, but by (90% Garmin) sport watches, and the users chose to upload the tracks to Strava because of the useful features they add to that track (like comparing your exercise with others'). And the heatmap is only using the tracks that are public (again, the users chose to make them public). Ok, you don't know what other value Strava is extracting from these, but that was not a shady "we track you everywhere" business like other big names do, it's something the users really chose to publish.

I would love to discover new skate spots in my city. The list of activities seems pretty short...

Where are all those people skiing in southern England? I want to get in on the action.

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