As runners, we tend to be creatures of habit. We take comfort in knowing a particular route or distance where we can get a five, ten, fifteen mile run in. Often, it starts from home, work or a common meet up location. It might even be a favorite destination trail, lake loop or run up a mountain. But have you ever thought – how many times have I done that same run?
At Strava, we asked ourselves this very question and confirmed that we aren’t the only ones running similar loops. We ran some initial numbers and found that our Run Marketing Manager, Larissa Rivers, has completed her 17 mile run commute over 50 times and our Mobile Engineer, Evelyn Cordner, has run her 11.9 mile headlands loop 13 times. Until now there was no simple way to keep track of these activities and compare them to each other.
Matched Runs pulls together all the activities you’ve completed on the same route and shows your progress over time. You can compare your pace and see your fastest, slowest and all-time averages.
How it Works
You’ll see a “teaser” section on the activity overview that you can click-through to get to the analysis chart. You can scroll through the graph and look back at past runs on the same route. (Don’t worry, no one else can see this graph – it’s just for you to be able to visualize your running patterns and improvements.)
I love the feature and spent a lot of time analyzing how my lunchtime run had slowly trended up and back down over time. – Blair Coffman
Blair also said, “I was surprised to see that my fastest run was over two years ago! So yesterday I went out and tried to beat my fastest time and while I didn’t quite make it, I had my fastest run around the Lake Merritt loop in over 18 months. Super cool that this feature is rolling out.”
What’s Your Go-to Route?
In New York, thousands of athletes run the Central Park loop and in Melbourne, they run laps around the Tan. Athletes around the world that participate in parkruns are also likely to have done the same course numerous times, if not hundreds. Mark Malone is a great example – he’s completed the Lower hutt parkrun in New Zealand 117 times.
I like the idea of doing the same route so I can compare performances and hopefully see improvement over time. – Mark Malone, NZ
Matched Runs can turn your routine route into a motivating personal experience. Think about what your local loop or route is and take a look back at what you’ve accomplished. Why not set a goal to run it again (and again) before the end of the year?