Strava!

Strava is the app I use religiously to track my activities. I know a lot of people who do this too. So let me tell you about it:

You can upload runs and rides from GPS devices (in my case my Garmin gadgets) and it lets you keep track of personal records.  Some other features are:

• Segments – these are user-created, user-edited portions of routes where you can compete for time, and compare segment times against those of other users.
• KOM/QOM (king/queen of the mountains) – awards where you are at the top of the leader board for those segments.
• Trophies – awards for 2nd to 10th place on a leader board.
• Medals – awards for your best performances on segments.
• Challenges – you can sign up to join a run or cycling challenge, earn new achievements and see how you rate on the leader board.

You can download the app on your phone and follow people to see their activities.  You can give kudos to other people to say well done on their activities. You can manually add in activities like swimming or classes to record those also. 

It can become addictive – something I never thought I would hear myself say! There is a lady in our cycle club, Sophie, who is nicknamed Queenie as she has so many QOM’s!  For her birthday it was not hard to decide what cake to make for her: 

You will learn to dread the day where you get the email from Strava which very nicely says ‘Uh oh you just lost your QOM to……’.  I am not competitive and yet if I get one of those emails I want to hop straight on my bike and get back out there and win it back! 

I have been signing up for challenges such as running a 10k or recording how many miles are either run or cycled in a month.  It makes you push yourself a bit.  I find I can do a run and it be 9.5k and I run up and down the road to make it to 10k to get the challenge (sad I know and I have also had some builders down the road look at me like a crazy weirdo going yo and down the same road to get to a specific distance). Recently I had to decide whether to or not to run in a loop around my road to make it to 10k or nip home to use the loo – I finished the distance and I’m going to say I didn’t wet myself a little bit in the process. 

So if you are looking for an app to record your activities look no further and download Strava.  Look for me on there – lisa thake RCC FatGirlFit