Strava is a social fitness tool that allows you to log your workouts, similar to Garmin Connect or TrainingPeaks, but with two additional features. The first is that you are able to compare your performance on routes and segments to other people you follow and therefore you can compete against them to run the best time on a route. The second feature is a list of leader boards that show how you compare to everyone who has ever run a certain route or segment (and logged it on Strava) and place your performance in the context of other athletes. It's a great idea and can help to make an often solitary sport like running a little more fun and competitive. Strava explains the idea here.
I joined Strava at the beginning of the year to test it out and see if it could be a useful and fun training tool. I've uploaded some of my runs from January and so far I like the site. Strava has a simple, clean format and it clearly displays the routes and segments of a run. It's a great dashboard of information and fantastic to see where my friends around Santiago have been running.
I haven't uploaded all my training as some of my training sessions are easy, recovery runs that are close to home (and therefore not that interesting). I have included most of the more exciting routes, my more challenging training sessions and any climbs on routes where I've seen friends' segments on Strava. My profile on Strava is available at strava.com/athletes/dwrowland. When I post runs here on my blog I'll also try to include the Strava link so you can see the route and details of each run.
Two of my highlights from January are now uploaded on Strava:
An epic run in Vilches Alto with Patrick
A long run, walk, scramble on the 2011 Ultramaraton de Los Andes route
I'm looking forward to testing out all the features and challenging the fastest times on a few segments after my next race.
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