Redesigned Routes and Enhanced Training: Inside Strava's Latest Subscriber Updates
Strava's new features for subscribers include a redesigned Route Builder, advanced training zones, and improved leaderboard integrity to enhance your performance.
Strava is rolling out a suite of new features for its subscribers, focusing on three core areas: easier exploration, smarter training, and fairer competition. These updates, according to Strava's Chief Product Officer Matt Salazar, demonstrate the company's commitment to investing in its global community of cyclists and runners. The most immediate change is an overhaul of the Route Builder on mobile, which received a completely redesigned interface on August 27. This new tool allows for more precise and dynamic planning, powered by billions of activities from the Strava Heatmap to provide users with confidence in their chosen paths. Enhanced features include the ability to see elevation, distance, surface type, and grade by simply tracing a finger along the route, as well as the option to add or adjust waypoints and easily switch between different sport types for seamless planning.
Looking ahead to September, Strava will introduce two major training features: Power Skills and Training Zones. The Power Skills feature, integrated from the recent acquisition of The Breakaway, will provide cyclists using power meters with a visual breakdown of their all-time PRs, offering personalized insights into their strengths and areas for growth. Training Zones will remove the guesswork from training by providing cyclists and runners with a clear view of the time spent in different heart rate, pace, or power zones over various time periods. This helps users balance effort and recovery to achieve peak performance. Finally, to ensure fair competition, Strava has continued to refine its Leaderboard Integrity with new machine learning models. This effort has already resulted in the removal of 4.45 million activities from leaderboards this year. The latest update specifically targets the detection and removal of e-bike rides from standard segment leaderboards, a change that has led to an 85% reduction in e-bike flag reports and a significant decrease in overall flag reports year-over-year.
