My Strava Year In Review

Basically a Spotify Year in Review for Running! :)

So as a disclaimer, I am writing this post with still over two weeks to go until the year is over, but since I just saw the feature today and all, it would be pretty cool to post about it and reminisce. The next two weeks will be a bit lighter than the last few months due to the Christmas break, so the stats will not change by too much.

There are promotional details about this cool feature, that reminds me a lot of Spotify, on both the web app and the mobile app. However, the web app will redirect you to the mobile app.

I guess this is also nice promotion to get more mobile downloads for the application. Also it is pretty nice how the free members get this feature as well. Just like Spotify. Platforms where they can track your specific hobby data should have features like this, since the year in review is very nice and cool.

So let’s just get started on each of the screens of my year in review.

So when first opening the app, the profile screen is a bit revamped from before. The photos will show up on the top (I only have one unfortunately). And basically there is a card there saying my 2020 year in sport before all my statistics and stuff. I like going on my own profile sometimes to track my current weekly process and statistics, so putting the ‘ad’ there for the new feature will always catch my attention until the end of the year.

The first thing I see is the time of exercise that Strava tracked, along with the distance (not sure if it is running/walking or other activities, but I assume so), and the total elevation.

From my first impressions, I feel like around 500 hours by the end of the year is alright. I only track my running, biking, and elliptical basically throughout the year. I do not track my strength workouts or all, since I tend to prioritize the cardio activities more, and weight training is sometimes too obscure (though I do it a lot, after every run and all).

After clicking on it, the Strava page will have a nifty animation to load the stats, then there is a spotify review + instagram story sort of layout, where tapping the screen will pause the ‘story’, while it keeps playing all the stats and all if not paused.

Just saying it seems like a lot of work was put into it. The animations and all along with the design of those screens seem very well put and well done, so kudos to the front end team!

The first screen shows the number of days I was active with this cool background dots thing which appears to be showing the weeks in order, and the orange dots representing whether I exercised a lot (7 dots in a line). That is a very cool visualization. It seems nice to know that I exercised 321 days so far (with 13 days to go). I notice some gaps may include reading week, the small injury back in July and August, the few days of rest in September. But overall, it was not too bad. Some days were not really ‘active’ days, such as exercise biking for like half an hour.

But overall I am happy that for the most part, over 90% of my days had some sort of physical activity in it.

What was also very interesting is that Thursday is my most active day of the week. Sundays were usually long run days for the most part (over 50%) of the year, usually over two hours long. Thursdays during my running a lot days in the Spring/Summer were usually easier days, between Friday’s medium tempo runs, and Wednesday’s medium long runs. Weird, but probably the last third of this year propelled it to the top, since I biked a lot and stuff, and had more time on Thursday’s to exercise from September to December. Though not by that much. This is a really interesting stat still. I guess Thursday was like a non-rest day, since it is positioned in the middle-end of the week, where I am very unlikely to take a rest.

The next statistic is my percentage of exercise. It says 61% is running. If you have told me this last year, or earlier in the year, before my knee hurted slightly from the 90+ mile weeks in the summer, it would be crazy. But somehow, someway, I did a lot of biking (usually a good amount) from
August to December. I guess August was a lot of biking every day, and during my ramp up in exercising from late October to November, where biking was more time spent than running during the week, it will make slight sense. Also I was biking a bit more in the beginning of the year for nice exercise and recovery from shin pain from December 2019 marathon. But still very cool to know that it is at 61%. Biking is 35% which is nice to know too. Not sure what the yellow one is, but I assume it can be rowing. And finally, the ‘Other’ 3% is probably elliptical. So not bad. Mostly running still by a good majority.

So now it is total time spent on exercising on Strava. Of course it can be a bit inaccurate, since I do not record a lot of things, such as the hours and hours I played basketball throughout the year, or the strength exercises I do frequently on the side. But whatever, I am mostly tracking cardio based activities that will help my running and all.

So far there are 480 hours done this year so far. That is over 1 hour 20 minutes per day. Not a huge number or surprising, but I would definitely have wanted a higher number, like 600 by the end of the year. But considering all of my dumb mistakes and setbacks, I am quite happy with this result, and will likely hit 500 by the end of the year. Of course, November was the largest month BY FAR, with a total of 71 hours. I even detailed the reaction here. And of course March-June were huge months too since I ran quite a lot during those months. Overall, this is a cool stat to know.

So now, I ran a total of 2593 miles in 2020 so far. It is an alright number. Keep in mind that my biking is done indoors, and no distance is tracked for that, so this distance number is solely based of of running.

This averages to over 7.5 miles per day. Considering the setbacks I have had like before, with a bunch of very low or zero mile days/weeks, this number is still pretty nice. That is around 12km. Not the best, but hopefully I can hit at least 3000 next year, fingers crossed, since my body is not the best at that.

It also says that is equivalent to over 10k laps around the track which sounds nice.

So the next one talks about my longest run. Of course this was obvious, it was the run where I went through like 3 or 4 cities in one go, and got slightly lost since it was completely new and unplanned. Ended up getting Gatorade from a Dollar Store during the latter half of the run, since it was quite a hot day. I did not even plan to bring any fluids or gels or any nutrition along the way, which sucked a lot.

But overall, not the best pace, but a fun run that shows how far running could take me. My fitness was in nice shape too so that’s how I did not complete die out after this run. This run also topped off a weird 95+ mile week. It was filled with tests, midterms, and bad sleep apparently. But still a nice-ish run. Will be memorable. Not the marathon distance like the last two years, but 23 miles is still nice. Unless the next 2 weeks hmmmm….

So now the total elevation gain. It is over 53k feet, which is decent I guess. But it is over 15k less than last year’s elevation gain. I think this is mostly because the GTA has trash elevation and is mostly flat. I was also rarely in Waterloo, where there seems to be quite a bit more elevation in play. Of course last year, during September to December, there is a lot of elevation from being in Austin and grinding a lot of runs out almost every day. But this year, almost all my runs were in Toronto, since Waterloo winter and the pandemic got me home. But overall not too bad still I guess.

No surprise, the hilliest activity was the same as the longest one. The elevation gain was 792 feet. I remember in some parts of North York there were slight tall hilly parts of the road which made it hard towards the end of that long run.

Also I did not really do any super long runs in Waterloo like last year, so that is why the hilliest activity was one in Toronto.

But overall, I do not really care about elevation for running and stuff too much. Just a small mental note, but not too invested.

So next one is about the Kudos given and taken. I guess I am really disrepectful since I have only given one kudo. I do not remember for what, but I think it was for something big and nice. But overall, I do not really check or care about other people’s activities. I mostly just use Strava as like a cloud backup source for my runs, since it keeps it all on my online account, in case I change phones or devices or something like that in the future. Also Strava sometimes shows better visualizations and stats specifically that I want, like weekly mileage, hence, I use it and it is nice. Also the shoe mileage tracker is also super handy for me.

I received kudos from my friends who follow me on Strava which is nice I guess, not sure what else to say here.

I guess this activity is my most Kudoed one, at a grand total of two. I do not really care, as mentioned above, and this was just some random activity workout. Whatevers.

My top photo was like the only photo that I ever posted on strava which is jokes.

This photo of my bloody toe was from a run in the summer, which was on the zoom fly flyknits which were a nice long run shoe for me, when I wanted some pop and speed in it. Somehow the flyknit upper and socks and stuff was not that nice, hence giving me a bit of discomfort. But still finished the run nicely.

It was like a 30km progression run which was nice overall, nice route and all. Not sure how top photo is calculated, but this was my only one. Good times.

Finally, the last screen of information basically shows a brief recap (which was similar to the card shown on the profile screen which you click to access this #yearinsport).

As you can see, a very nice layout and visualization. Something that deserves huge ups. Super duper cool for me to see, and I think this will be a really really big hit!

Overall, this was my Strava Year in Sport. Not too many big surprises, but I really enjoyed the visualizations, and just knowing some of my year-end statistics so I can plan and see what to strive and improve on for next year. Hopefully next year’s will be just as nice as this one’s!