Strava: the Year in Data

We love this time of year. Not because it’s Christmas but because Strava send us their annual stats! So while you’re putting in all those extra runs to round your annual Strava mileage up to a nice round figure, we’re taking a look through the Strava annual report. Here are a few headlines from the report.

• Globally there are 20 uploads per second and 15m activities per week
• In the UK and Ireland 42.1m runs were logged, which is a 35% increase on 2017
• This is an average of 32 runs per athlete
• The average length of their runs was 7.6km
• The average pace for women in the UK/Ireland was 6.33 per km
• For men it was 5.40 per km
• One stat which didn’t surprise us was that the fastest day of the week is Saturday! It’s got to be parkrun!
• One which did is that only 6% of Strava activities are uploaded with photos. Not on my feed!

Here’s a few stats which might help you to keep running consistently in 2019:

Runners in a club uploaded 3 times more activities than non-club members. And they went 26% further with a group. Whether it’s an online club or a place to go and run with others, it seems that being part of a community can make a big difference to your motivation and consistency. Maybe that’s something to try if you struggle to get out of the door sometimes.

Runners who set a goal on Strava logged 14% more runs than those who didn’t. Setting a goal seems like a good way to stay focussed and keep motivated.

Run commuting is on the increase. 56% more runs were flagged as run commutes in 2018. Run commuters ran to or from work an average of 1.55 times per week. Many more of us could run commute, even if it’s just once or twice per week, or just part of our commute.

And if you want to avoid making a major Strava faux pas, you should read our top tips for Strava etiquette. This will help you make sure you don’t end up on HERE in 2019.