Create your account

Once you have either downloaded the App or gone on to the website follow the instructions on how to set up your account. You can use your Facebook or Google account, but if you'd rather keep things separate for privacy or security reasons, you can create an account with your email.

Remember, your profile and your account are two separate things, as with all similar online services. Your account includes everything on Strava related to you as an individual, while your profile is simply the information (name, photo, location, etc.) that other users will see on the platform.

Customise your settings

As with most platforms you need to consider how much you want to reveal on Strava, whether it’s allowing the company access to your information or deciding what your followers or any random user can see, it's about a balance between security and convenience. But the specific decisions are up to you.

As a new user, Strava will prompt you to immediately fill out some basic information for your profile: upload a photo, confirm your name, and provide your birthday and gender. Most Strava users have profile photos of them on a walk, run or ride, but more privacy-inclined users often choose something more impersonal. Your birthday and gender can be used to put on categorised leaderboards (but they are not mandatory). You can skip the other initial prompts with as little action as possible -there’s nothing Strava will ask you up front that you won’t be able to change later, and it’s more worthwhile to make those decisions while learning to navigate the platform.

To do that on desktop, hover over your profile picture in the top corner, then click Settings. On mobile, tap your profile then click the gear icon in the top corner. Here you can fill in as many missing pieces as you’d like.

To further customize your profile, thoroughly browse all the settings options. Set what notifications you want, or add what shoes you wear.

Recording Activity

Strava offers three ways to record an activity: entering the data manually, recording your run with the Strava app on your phone as you do your activity, or syncing the data recorded by a fitness tracker, likely a GPS watch.

Manual entry: On both platforms, choose the plus sign (upper right on desktop, for example) then select the manual entry option. From there, you can fill in as many details as you know.

Strava app: Tap the Record tab. You can change any settings you need to, such as toggling auto-pause or audio cues on or off, then hit Start. The GPS on your smartphone will record the data from there, and once you’re done with your workout it will be uploaded to your activities when you hit save.

Fitness tracker: you can link your Strava account with the watch so that activities recorded on it will automatically sync and upload to Strava.

Another way to see updates from your walking/running friends is by searching out their profiles to follow, after which you’ll see their activities in your feed, just like on Instagram or Twitter.

Be sure to give them “kudos” on their runs, the Strava equivalent of a like. To find them, tap the symbol of two torsos in the upper right corner, and you’ll reach the Find Friends screen. You can scroll through lists of possibilities based on prior Strava connections, Facebook friends, or your phone’s contacts list.

Once you start logging activity, you’ll start to notice your performance on certain “segments” are recorded. These are stretches of road or trail so popular with runners that Strava has created a leaderboard for them (or a user has created it as a segment). If you walk/run the same routes often, you may start to notice certain names popping up again and again and you may find yourself competing for a top position on the leaderboard. Strava has two different leaderboards—one is based on the fastest times, while “Local Legends” ranks people who have run the segment the most times in the past 90 days.