Strava

If you have been reading this blog (and my prior blogs) for a while you realize I like to document things. The smallest, boringest bits of my life and garden get written up, pictures attached, and posted.

But I'm not a Facebook or Twitter user. The tracking format and interactions of social media don't do anything for me. Until now. Unlikely as it is, I'm on Strava and I kind of like it. It's a social media / phone tracking app for bikers and runners. No, really, stay with me here.

Walkers can use it too, and even the modest 2 mile ambles of a 71 year old woman around her neighborhood can be mapped on the phone, documented and shared with followers, just as a 100 mile competitive bike tour can be shared with fitness fans.

Here's a walk I took earlier in October up to our community park. 

On the app you can zoom in, see the pictures attached to the map at the actual locations where they were taken and check out the topography. A further page in the app records all my impressive stats for this walk -- altitude, pace, temperature, wind, etc. And then it gets shared with my followers (I have one, my son) so they know where I've been and how I'm progressing on keeping fit and getting out. 

Followers comment, and like (kudos), and interact about each event.

My son is the one who convinced me to try this. He bikes 70 mile routes into the mountains for fun, hikes 14,000 foot peaks because they're there, and is into a whole group of biking and climbing friends who are competitive. His Strava posts are rich with minute details of each leg, each lap, times and paces achieved and the records set each time he goes out, milestones reached. His friend group keeps track of each other's achievements. It's his social community. 

Here's a typical Strava post from him:

I don't have a group. It's just me doing an occasional short walk and my son following it. But the act of documenting my walks makes them purposeful and gives me -- gasp -- motivation. No more excuses to stay in and eat cookies, I have a walk to do and it needs to be recorded. Pictures to upload, notes to attach, achievements to post.

Yes, I like to document the boringest bits of my life, and Strava is perfect for that. 

There are privacy concerns. Your every movement around your environment is tracked in detail, and available for others to see, although you can control who sees it with privacy settings. Military personnel are banned from using Strava on bases; it recorded too much specific location information. Stalkers could use it. Eeesh.

But for my limited use, and with privacy settings allowing only family to see where I am, I'm okay with tracking my walks. And I'm surprised at how the simple act of recording and posting gives me a purpose and some motivation to walk more. 

So I'm on social media now. I'm active, I'm walking, I'm accountable to my fitness fans. Send kudos.