End of the year – you know what that means! Now’s a great chance for every athlete to look back, tally up annual totals and set a few crazy goals for 2018. Strava athletes showed up every second (literally 16 uploads a second) of every day this year, rain or shine, hot or cold, and left us with a boatload of impressive data and fun stats. Here’s a small collection the data that defined an inspiring 2017 on Strava.
2017 in Stats
Sports Unite
More than ever, athletes on Strava were a force for unity in 2017. Across oceans, borders and language barriers, millions were united in divisive times by the simple act of breaking a sweat. Through sport, we pushed ourselves to new heights – and found a reason to lighten up and have some fun together.
The number of athlete kudos given in 2017, an all-time high!
110 million comments this year, another record. 22% of them contained “thanks” or “thank you.” Athletes have manners!
180,539 cyclists uploaded their ride for our second annual Global Bike to Work Day. This offset an estimated 1,580 tons of carbon — so take a deep breath of fresh air, because that’s enough to run about a million cars for 15 minutes.
More than 22,000 athletes gave Romain Bardet kudos for his mountain-top win at the Tour de France, the most kudoed activity of 2017. (No doubt he’s equally proud of the 8 KOMs he earned along the way.)
The number of cyclists who rode together for this year’s Ride London, the biggest group activity in Strava history. Our favorite recurring nightmare, Ride London’s massive surge has crashed strava.com annually since 2013. The Strava infrastructure team said, “enough!” and kept the site up 24/7 this year.
Last, the updated heatmap redrew global borders in a way we can get behind – one athlete playground to the next!
The Year of the Runner
Running has always been hip (plus feet, legs, and well, the whole body really) … but from the Strava Mile to the beer mile to the most marathons we’ve ever recorded, runners stepped forward in 2017 and made huge leaps on Strava.
627,239 marathons on Strava, another record.
28 miles after hitting “start,” these two Brits, Martyn and Alan, ran this impressive Welsh dragon! A big jump in Strava Art on foot this year is a sure a sign as any that runners are here to stay.
2 ladies ran across their nations on Strava this year – both world records.
Kate Driskell crushed a top to bottom run of the UK.
Sandra Vi raced across the US.
Kate Driskell crushed a top to bottom run of the UK.
Sandra Vi raced across the US.
Less Curation, More Perspiration
Alright, we’ve been saying it almost all year long, but it was all of you who really showed us what #AthletesUnfiltered is about. Trading selfie sticks for fogged up, sweaty photos, and uploading every activity, whether you set a PR or stopped halfway through to desperately find a toilet. Negativity, political rants, curation, only presenting a perfect you – who’s got time for that?
26,000 athletes gave us their best “real you” sweaty selfies, skinned knees and greased-up hands with the #AthletesUnfiltered hashtag on Instagram this summer. We asked for anti-curation, and we got it!
37 trips around the sun inspired Chris Moser to write this killer post about his journey to becoming a leader of the transgender athlete community. The introduction of our posts feature this year inspired some touching, hilarious, authentic, heart-breaking and crazy stories from the Strava community.
149,055 activity titles contained the word “coffee” this year, 2017’s most popular food group, at least in English. Some athletes eat to train, some train to eat, all come home very hungry. Here’s the rest of the top 10.
Oh, and one more thing happened this year…
