Skip to main content

Strava launches Athlete Posts, a blogging platform for fitness fanatics

heatmap
Strava
There’s a social network for just about every niche, these days. Fishing enthusiasts link up on Fishbrain. Farming fanatics in Australia exchange ideas on Farmz. But one global community — athletes — has long lacked something comparable. Sure, budding Olympians have been able to post jogging times on Facebook or Twitter, but that’s not quite the same as a network of like-minded internet folks. Fitness platform Strava, luckily, has the remedy.

On Monday, Strava launched Athlete Posts, a “new way to create and share content” for the one million new users who, on average, join Strava every 45 days. More than 36 Strava users from around the world — including marathoner Kelly Roberts, former American track and field athlete Lauren Fleshman, and triathlete James Lawrence — will be able share stories, photos, questions, gear tips, race reports, recommendations, and workouts with other Strava users.

Strava’s curated list of bloggers will publish posts, tips, articles, and discussion topics that “inspire” and “motivate” other users. It’s a way for athletes to share more about their active lives, said Strava product officer Aaron Forth.

“Strava is a place where athletes come to connect with each other, share their experiences and learn from one another,” Forth said in a statement. “And until now, those connections have been based entirely on athletic activities. Our opportunity is to help athletes have conversations beyond their daily activities, sharing everything from favorite gear, to injury recovery tips, to travel recommendations.”

But Athlete Posts is about more than just bragging. According to a recent MIT study published in the journal Natural Communications, social sharing is a major exercise motivator — if you see that one of your friends ran a certain distance at a certain speed, you’re likely to run farther and faster than you otherwise would yourself.

To that end, Athlete Posts is a prong in Strava’s broader social effort. The recently introduced Club Events feature, which aims to make coordinating meetups easier, lets like-minded Strava users join clubs from Strava’s smartphone app. Once they do, they can see recent rides and runs logged by other members, a comment section, and a widget that shows your recent rides and runs. Beacon, meanwhile, lets users share distance, caloric expenditure, and speed in real time.

“Strava is the ideal place for athletic storytelling and resource sharing among like-minded people,” Fleshman said in a statement. “My sporty friends are hard to keep up with socially, and I’m looking forward to Strava being the place I binge on the sporting life. I’m especially excited to share a mixture of snippets into my post-retirement, evolving athletic life, and revive some of my most honest and relevant written pieces from the past that can serve the goal-oriented athletic community.”

Athlete Posts launches this summer, when it will roll out to Strava’s broader community.

Editors' Recommendations

Kyle Wiggers
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Kyle Wiggers is a writer, Web designer, and podcaster with an acute interest in all things tech. When not reviewing gadgets…
YouTube Stories are going away starting June 26
The Digital Trends YouTube channel on an iPhone.

YouTube today announced that it's going to kill off its Story feature — like the similarly named Instagram Stories, basically its answer to Snapchat — starting June 26. That's the last day you'll be able to post a new YouTube Story. And seven days after that, any story that already was live will die an unceremonious death.

That doesn't mean there won't be an alternative to a full-blown YouTube video or a smaller YouTube Short. (Which is, in and of itself, YouTube's answer to Tiktok.) YouTube is pointing creators to "YouTube Community posts" instead, which it says "are a great choice if you want to share lightweight updates, start conversations, or promote your YouTube content to your audience." Community posts essentially are ephemeral updates that also allow for text, polls, quizzes, filters, and stickers.  It added that "amongst creators who use both posts and Stories, posts on average drive many times more comments and likes compared to Stories."

Read more
iPhone 15: release date and price predictions, leaks, rumors, and more
iPhone 15 render by 4RMD

As great as the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro are, they're both already a few months old at this point, and the rumors about the iPhone 15 are well underway. We still have several months before the iPhone 15 models drop, though, as Apple usually makes iPhone announcements in the fall. In other words, there's still a lot of time for more rumors to make the rounds -- and make the rounds they will.

We're keeping all of the reports and rumors of the iPhone 15 here in a single place for your convenience, but do remember to keep in mind that these are all still just speculation. Nothing is final until Apple confirms it during an official announcement. Still, a lot of the rumors give us an idea of what to expect each year, which is unfortunate if you like surprises. Here's everything we know about the iPhone 15 so far!
iPhone 15: models

Read more
Apple Watch Ultra just got a big price cut for Memorial Day
The yellow circle shows the Apple Watch Ultra is in Low Power Mode.

The Memorial Day weekend has brought with it some great Apple Watch deals including being able to buy the Apple Watch Ultra for $749 instead of $799 at Amazon. That's a pretty hefty price cut on the popular high-end smartwatch and if you've been waiting to snap one up, this is an excellent time to do so. We can't say how long it'll stay this price but we do know that delivery dates are bound to be pushed back the longer you wait. Don't delay and hit that buy button.

Why you should buy the Apple Watch Ultra
The Apple Watch Ultra is a truly premium smartwatch. It makes up for any issues or qualms you may have about the Apple Watch Series 8 and adds some great features. Designed to be robust, rugged, and capable of following you on all your adventures, the watch has a 49mm corrosion-resistant titanium case, a larger Digital Crown, and more accessible buttons. It's also 100m water resistant so it can handle all your diving plans.

Read more