Strava – Not a Jogger

Maybe don’t show me the strava stats

I’ve always been a late adopter when it comes to tech. The last person in my friendship group to get a mobile phone, I held out until the day I had to spend an hour and twenty minutes waiting in the car park of Balham Sainsburys because everyone was running late, but had no way of telling me.

When I started running in 1993 I wore a casio stopwatch that went up to one hour, before starting again at 00:00:00. I still have it, it still works, and I’ve never changed the battery. I just looked up when GPS watches were invented, and the first garmin went on sale 20 years ago. I bought one in 2014.

Why did I need a watch to tell me how fast I was running? I worried it would stop me from “running on feel” and listening to my body. Now I can’t imagine running without it. If I want to test whether I’m still running on feel, I just don’t look at my watch during the run, and check the data later. That way I can still run on feel, but also find out if my feelings are accurate.

I’m on my third garmin now, but still a fairly basic version (Forerunner 55) with all the alerts and suggestions switched off. I don’t want my watch to tell me what to do, or nag me to do more. The best thing about using a GPS watch is not having to do sums. Racing used to be a maths test: dividing your goal time by 26.2, writing down key splits on your hand, and re-calculating your pace at every mile marker.

Uploading my runs to strava, I love seeing my routes, and other people’s, to get ideas of where to run. Back in the pre map-my-run days, when I wanted to plan out a long run I genuinely had to get a piece of string and measure out a run on the A-Z or an ordnance survey map. Now I do an online version of this with the amazing OS app. But instead of writing the directions on my hand (hands were very important in the past), I can just look at the route on my phone in the middle of the run, and it tells me where I am.

Technology really is magic, and we’re lucky to have it. It has changed so much about running, it’s hard to remember what it used to be like. But last month, my free strava account was automatically upgraded to a subscription for a month, and I remembered that tech isn’t always good for you. At first, I was excited. What’s not to love about viewing our fitness trends over time, and training progress week by week?

What’s not to love? For me, this kind of analysis was de-motivating, and anxiety-inducing. When all my numbers are going up, I feel pressure to keep them there. When they’re going down, I feel depressed and frustrated I’m not making them go up again. This is what losing “running on feel” looks like to me. An overload of analysis which controls my feelings about running. I didn’t feel bad about my training before, but now that I can see the stats, I do.

Strava has tried not to make its language all about monster weeks, and to frame rest weeks as positive. But the colours, the numbers, the charts, they paint more of a picture than the words. If you’re a runner like me who is self-critical, and over-competitive, this is risky.

The month’s subscription just came to an end, and my account is back to normal, just in time for me to pick up a knee injury. So whatever happens now, at least not having to look at my declining fitness trend is a light in the darkness.

Is it a training race, or a race race?

It’s that time of year. You’ve just finished a long marathon training run. Your face is salty, your thighs are throbbing, but you’re buzzing. You did it! It’s in the bank. You upload your run to strava, and while you’re waiting, you scroll through other people’s runs. You look at the distances, the times, the comments. You tap “view analysis” and look at your elapsed time. It doesn’t look as good. The buzz starts wearing off.

“I could have gone faster”, you think.

Yes. You could have gone faster. But *should* you have? The answer is no, and you know it. Long slow runs are called LSRs for a reason. They’re not long tempo runs, or long steady runs, or long fast runs. Being slow is the point.

While we’re out running further, our bodies are getting stronger. The stress of the increased mileage is overloading our muscles, and triggering adaptation. By running slowly, we’re reducing the impact of this overload on our bodies, recovering more quickly, and protecting ourselves from injury. There are no strava crowns for being slow and sensible, so we just have to remember that the benefits are invisible, but real.

This is easy to say, but harder to stick to. Last weekend I ran a 20 mile race- the Tarpley 20 – as part of my marathon training. Before I joined a running club, I had never heard of anyone doing a race as a training run. Don’t these people realise that running is free? I would have said. But long races make for brilliant marathon training. They are locally run, reasonably priced and well supported. If you’re struggling to motivate yourself to cover 30k or 20 miles by yourself, pinning on a race number alongside 300 people who probably feel the same really helps.

The challenge with a training race, though, for anyone with a shred of competitiveness in their veins, is that it’s still a race. It’s really hard not to race a race. I should know, I’ve done it. At the Stamford 30k in 2022 I went too hard in driving rain and picked up a calf strain that ended my chances of running Brighton marathon. At the Oundle 20 in 2019, I got carried away with it being a club championship race and, looking back, put in a much better performance than I managed at Boston marathon four weeks later.

At the start line last Sunday, I could still feel the temptation. Before the race, to guard against this, I had told anyone who’d listen that I was going to take it slow. Even so, I found myself finishing my first mile in 8 minutes 17 seconds (AKA, this year’s goal marathon pace). Luckily, my brother in law caught up with me in mile two and asked me (in the nicest way) what the hell I was doing. Slowing down, I replied.

I did, and as a result, I really enjoyed the run, especially the last few miles. When I got to the finish, I not only felt I could run another 6.2 miles, I actually wanted to. I can honestly say I have never felt like that at the end of any race, ever.

I am not a coach, and I can only talk from my own experience, but I wouldn’t race – as in, properly race – anything longer than 10km in the run up to a marathon. If we’re tempted to push it harder for longer, we need to ask ourselves: what is the main goal? Is it to perform really well in the marathon, and get to it on top form and uninjured? Is it to perform really well in the club champs? Is it to boss the cross country season? Because we cannot do them all.

When it comes to your marathon, so many things about race day are uncertain. Focus on what you can control. Focus on the goal.

Don’t risk leaving your best race in training.

Is it wrong to compare your running to other people’s?

“Comparison is the thief of joy. Run your own race. Don’t compare yourself to others, compare yourself to the person you were yesterday.”

Every fitness programme, every inspirational quote on instagram, every ‘brand ambassador’ for every sport agrees: if you want to be happy, stop judging yourself by others’ progress, and keep your mind on yourself (#runhappy!).

To which I say, I have tried. I really have tried. But it’s impossible. And, maybe, it’s not healthy.

It’s important to have role models

Deena Kastor said of Paula Radcliffe in 2009 that “She makes great decisions. I don’t feel bad comparing myself to her as I believe all marathon athletes do because she’s the ultimate woman in the sport. She’s got the world record by an extraordinary amount and so it’s safe and healthy for all of us to compare ourselves in this sport to look up to her. ”

We know how fast Mo Farah or Paula Radcliffe can run. And if we run ourselves, we know where we rank compared to them, i.e. in a galaxy far, far away. We will never be the fastest in the world. And this is not depressing, because we also know that we will never be the slowest.

Every runner was once a worse runner

Unless you started competing at running aged 5, you probably once struggled to run down the street without coughing up a lung. No matter how many breaks from running you take through injury or apathy, you will (hopefully) never find running that hard again.

I know we’re all getting older, and looking at my dad panting through a parkrun at 73, running into old age doesn’t look exactly easy. But I still think it will never be as hard as it was at the start, because we will already know we can do it.

Running is a physical struggle that takes place in your head. Every run is a battle of When Can I Stop? versus I Will Keep Going. And every time I Will wins, it makes it a tiny bit easier for I Will to win again.

Running with others is more fun

When I started running, I did it by myself. I wanted to huff and puff and huff and walk a bit and run a bit and walk a bit and then die alone. All alone. Smartphones did not exist in 1994, so there was no thought of sharing my progress with others.

I am a selfish runner. I run to give myself time to think, time not to think, time to be outside and enjoy the seasons, to see birds and flowers and trees and views. To get fit and stay healthy, to stay sane. To have time away from my family (sorry).

I ran alone for 22 years. At the Great Eastern Run in 2016, I watched all the other women in the queue for the loo laughing and chatting to each other while I waited, dealing with my pre-race nerves alone. They were all wearing club vests. I knew I was missing out on something.

Before I joined a running club, I had never entered a race just for fun. I would never have signed up for a 5-mile cross country race, let alone 6 of them in one season. And if I hadn’t, I would never have known how my post-race low could be totally eclipsed by the high of finding out the team triumphed, despite my performance.

Running your own race is a myth

Running with – and against – other people isn’t just more fun. It makes us better runners. According to research carried out in 1968 at the University of California-Berkeley, running your own race is a myth. We run faster in a pack, and are “fooling ourselves” if we think that we can run as hard alone as we would against others.

Competition does not have to be unhealthy. This profile of Shalane Flanagan, winner of the 2017 New York Marathon, shows that it is possible to be both competitive with and supportive of other runners.

“We usually see competitive women, particularly athletically excellent women, only in one of two ways: either competing to defeat one another, or all about team over self. But that’s a flawed, limiting paradigm. The Shalane Effect dismantles it: She is extraordinarily competitive, but not petty; team-oriented, but not deferential. Elevating other women is actually an act of self-interest: It’s not so lonely at the top if you bring others along.”

The Strava Effect

So if comparing your running to others’ gives you something to aim for, is more fun than running alone and makes you faster, why am I writing this? And why are there so many internet memes telling us to stop comparing ourselves to others?

Because of the internet!

It has never been so easy to track your performance, and compare it to your friend’s, that guy who always beats you, and your nearest Olympian’s. You don’t have to go to the track and study the split times, or wait for race results to come out in the newspaper. If you choose to, and most of us do, you can record your every move, upload it to Strava and share it on facebook before you’ve even finished stretching.

If it’s easy to share your own running, it’s almost impossible to avoid other people’s. Fitness boasts are everywhere, and I should know, I make them every week on my instagram. They make me feel good, but what if they make any other people feel bad?

One Sunday, I had just got back from one of those brilliant runs – where the sun is shining, you feel good and every step is a delight. It wasn’t a fast one – a proper long slow run that I really enjoyed. I was feeling on top of the world, logged the run on Strava and then up popped an almost identical run by a runner who is a similar speed to me – but she had run it 1 minute per mile faster.

Immediately I felt deflated. I could have run faster. Should I have run faster?

Know your limits

I should not have run faster! And I should not have felt deflated, looking at Strava that day. I should have been proud of my run, acknowledged that it was slower for a good reason, and felt happy for my friend. In a moment of strength, I would have done that. But I was feeling weak, so instead I unfollowed her on Strava and felt doubly bad – both for comparing myself to her and for not being able to ‘cope’ with how it made me feel.

Sometimes, you eat the bar, and sometimes the bar eats you. If you’re feeling good, and want to be inspired by others’ running, find new routes or just see what your friends are up to, pick up your phone and knock yourself out (not literally).

If you’re not, switch it off for a bit.

There are not two ideal approaches when it comes to comparing yourself to others: one zen like state where you only care about your own performance and don’t notice other people; and one where you know exactly where you fit but it only brings you joy. There is only one, human, approach: which one day brings you joy and the next day brings you down.

It is not wrong to compare your running to other people’s. It is just natural. Embrace it.