It’s not on Strava, but it’s still happening

Strava recently announced that it was changing the terms of service for the API that third party services like Training Peaks and my favourite Intervals.icu use to fetch training data into their platforms. Although it is not fully clear just how tight the controls and conditions imposed on the use of the data retrieved in this way are, it would appear that the change is part of a larger long term strategy that strava has to monopolise the mass analysis and use of the data that we provide them with.

I object to this move. In my view the data is mine and I should control who can use it and under what conditions. I have provided Strava with every moment of my athletic activity since 2015. Every route ridden, every hike on the mountain, every watt put through the pedals and every heartbeat. Over and above this I have paid them an annual fee for severl yers now to unlock access to their pool of aggregated route and segment data. This has enabled me to compete with friends and acquaintances on segments and to learn about good riding routes in my city and its hinterland.

But this latest move on their part really annoys me. It feels greedy and to my mind places Strava in the same class as those other monetisers of our emotion and time, Google, Meta, Twitter and Tiktok.

They have pushed me too far. I am no longer going to upload my training data to the site. Initially I thought I might delete my account altogether but I have decided against that. I will keep my account up and running but I have isolated it from the rest of the services I use. My Garmin devices will upload to the connect website and from there my data will feed through to intervals.icu.

For races and big rides that I write about here I will will manually upload a gpx file of the event minus the physiological metrics – Strava, you can have the route information of selected rides but I am not handing over my other metrics for you to monetise and exercise a monopoly over.

Strava’s route planner is, to my mind, its best feature. More user friendly and with more effectively rendered route popularity data that Garmin connect and more usable and flexible than Komoot. I might keep paying an annual sub for that, but as I say, I’m not giving you any more than the bare minimum of my data for Strava to take control of. My heartbeat belongs to me MOFOs.

What this means is that the feed of Strava activity on the blog will only show races from this point on – if you want to see more of what I’m up to, you are welcome to follow me on Garmin connect and Intervals.

Rubber side down.