Strava Premium

If you are considering spending the $59 for one year of Strava premium membership, here is my personal list of reasons to do so.

Note: I am in no way affiliated with Strava, nor have I received any compensation for my opinions. I do, however (as a Premium member) stand to gain by any additional features that Strava may add via financial gains they derive from members I convince to upgrade.

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No Power Meter

If you do not have a power meter, here are the features that I think a cyclist will enjoy most with Premium membership:

Goals. There are two types of goals available: Weekly and Segment. For Weekly Goals, you can set a weekly distance goal (e.g. 150 miles per week) or a weekly time goal (e.g. 6 hours per week) -- but not both. If you achieve your weekly goal a notice is included on the ride that you achieved the goal on, similar to if you had achieved a PR or KOM. You also see a progress bar on your dashboard displaying how close you are to achieving your weekly goal. For Segment Goals, you select any segment you want (or you can create a new segment) and set a time goal for riding that segment (as well as a due date). When you set a segment goal, it notifies everyone who is following you and they are invited to join your goal (if they are Premium too). If you achieve your goal it is again mentioned on the ride like a PR or KOM. Strava will keep track of all your previous goals (whether accomplished or not).

26-minute Segment Goal for Molino Basin

My opinion. 2 / 5 -- I have the distance goal set but don't really pay much attention to it. I have set a couple segment goals (e.g. top of Mt. Lemmon in 2.5 hours), but it didn't really motivate me to go harder than I would have gone anyway. Obtaining a high ranking on the Leaderboard or achieving a Personal Record is sufficient enough motivation for me.

Suffer Score. If you have a heart rate monitor, you can set custom heart rate zones and obtain a value for how much you suffered on a ride. You can also view a chart dispaying how much time you spent in each of your heart rate zones. Additionally, you can sort all of your rides by their Suffer Score to see which ones you suffered most on. There have been some challenges in the past that awarded special prizes for individuals who had the highest Suffer Score on a ride done during the challenge (e.g. Oktoberfest).

My Suffer Score for a ride down to Sonoita

My Opinion. 3 / 5 -- If you don't have a power meter I could see how the Suffer Score could be used to assist in training in lieu of the appropriate value from a power meter: the Total Stress Score (TSS). Additionally, it does feel satisfying to return from a super hard ride and see a nice high Suffer Score with the word "Epic" displayed above it. I suppose one would be motivated to suffer more knowing that it will result in a higher score -- you just need to remember that rest days are important too.

Training Videos. The latest addition to Strava -- the ability to watch Sufferfest videos while training indoors. Currently there are three videos available, but only if you use a smart phone (Android or iPhone). Strava says that it will soon be available on the website, and more videos will be added. The videos that are currently available are:

1. Fight Club -- 58 min, Time Trial
2. Revolver -- 45 min, Speed
3. Rubber Glove -- 58 min, Fitness Test

Strava Sufferfest Training Videos

My Opinion. 2 / 5 -- I haven't used this yet, but will probably try it out. Essentially, you are getting some of the Sufferfest videos for free, but you will have to watch them on your phone (or, in the future, computer). I usually watch recorded stages from professional races or just listen to music when training indoors -- and the majority of my indoor training is Base training, so the Sufferfest videos will likely be completely worthless to me. If you train indoors often, or at least some during a Build period you may find them more useful. I suppose the Fitness Test may be nice, but I would put more stock in a test performed outdoors (like the 30 minute test) than one done indoors on a trainer.

Personal Heatmap. Originally provided by a third-party before Strava closed their API, the personal heatmap provides a map view of your rides with color representing quantity of rides on all the routes you've ridden. Blue indicates a route that you've ridden a couple times and red indicates routes ridden the most. Here is my heatmap from Strava Premium:

Personal Heatmap from Strava (with Premium membership)

My Opinion. 1 / 5 -- This was better before Strava took it over. You had the ability of changing line width, color, and transparency as well as date ranges, activity type, and map display (satellite or map with or without terrain). You can still access this (without Premium membership) with the Strava Multiple Ride Mapper. You'll need to click on "Connect with Strava." It is worth checking out and playing around with, but since it's free the heatmap is not a reason to upgrade to Premium. For comparison, here is my heatmap from the Strava Multiple Ride Mapper:

Strava Multiple Ride Mapper (free)

Filtered Leaderboards. Premium memberships provides the ability to filter leaderboards by age group or weight class. There are six age groups (<24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64, 65+) and six weight classes (<124, 125-149, 150-164, 165-179, 180-199, 200+). You can view any group or class, but if you are not in it, your placing will not be displayed. Obviously, in order to be useful, you must enter your age and weight under your profile settings. The weight class is rider weight and does not include the bicycle weight.

Yes, I selfishly chose a KOM Segment to use for a screenshot

My Opinion. 1 / 5 -- For me, this is completely worthless. When looking at leaderboards I usually only care to see how much power others produced to obtain certain times. By the way, I only consider power values obtained via power meters (not from Strava's power equations, which rely on user-entered rider and bike weights). I suppose if you really want to see how you stack up against others in your age group and/or weight class, this feature is useful -- but I never use it. If Strava added a Race Category sort option, I would probably use that, but only out of curiosity and I wouldn't put much stock in the results. If you really want to know how you compare with other riders, pin a number on your jersey and line up at the start line. It's much more fun than sorting a leaderboard.

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With Power Meter

If you do have a power meter, here are the additional power-related features that I think a cyclist will enjoy most with Premium membership:

Goals. In addition to the Weekly and Segment goals, if you have a power meter you can also set a Power goal. You specify your goal in watts, the time interval for the goal, and a due date. the intervals available are 5, 10, and 30 seconds; 1, 3, 5, 10, 20, and 30 minutes; and 1 hour. Estimated power values calculated by Strava (if you don't have a power meter) do not apply.

Setting a Power Goal

My Opinion. 3 / 5 -- Used in conjunction with the Power Curve (described below), setting Power Goals can be somewhat useful. Of course you can set these goals for yourself without purchasing Premium, but you may work harder to achieve the goals if your Strava page displays it. I have set power goals for 5 seconds, 1 minute, and 1 hour and it did add a little bit of extra motivation when I was doing 1-minute Kilo Intervals.

Power Curve. The power curve displays your maximum power output over a duration of time. You can display power as either watts or watts per kilogram (of body weight). You can have 1 or 2 curves displayed with different time spans. For time spans you can select last 6 weeks, a specific year, or a custom date range. I usually have 2 curves displayed, one showing the current year and one showing the previous year. You can click on the curve at any point to view the values as well as click on a link taking you to the ride that it is associated with. If you have set any Power Goals (described above), they will be indicated with red circles on your curve. You also have the ability to show your estimated FTP (though not necessarily as accurate as the FTP test).

My Opinion. 4 / 5 -- The power curve is a great way to analyze the type of rider you are (sprinter, time trialist, etc.). It is also a great way to determine what areas you should work on. You are able to easily gauge progress over time and the graph assists with both race analysis and race preparation. There are free options available to view your Power Curve (like Golden Cheetah), but the one offered by Strava is quickly accessed and easy to use. It would be nice if they added zone shading, but that isn't a huge deal.

Fitness & Freshness. Also known as the Performance Management Chart (PMC). This chart displays your Fitness (or Chronic Training Load, CTL), Fatigue (or Acute Training Load, ATL), and Form (or Training Stress Balance, TSB) over time. Strava refers to Form as Freshness. I will likely discuss (at length) the PMC in a future blog post. In Strava, the PMC can be displayed for the last 6 months, last year, or all-time. The graph will also display Fitness, with Fatigue and Form display being optional. At the bottom, each days Total Stress Score (TSS) is displayed in bar-graph form with links to the associated rides.

My Opinion. 4 / 5 -- The PMC is one of the better analysis tools to use in training (some may argue it's the best). It gives you the ability to taper and peak for races and helps tremendously by providing a visual representation of how high intensity workouts and rest function together to make you a stronger rider. The graph is easy to use and it is helpful having links to rides in the TSS bar graph portion. The major fault of the Strava PMC is the inability to set date-dependant FTP values. During training, your FTP will increase (hopefully). When you change the value of your FTP it should apply to all future rides in your PMC, but with Strava, it applies to all past rides too. This is incorrect and many have asked Strava to fix it. Their response has been that the fix is in the works but it has already been over 7 months since they added the PMC and they've yet to fix it. Again, there are free alternatives for the PMC (Golden Cheetah), but Strava's version is easier to use (but less customizable). It would be nice if they had a custom date range capability. For advanced Tapering and Peaking methods, the use of an Excel spreadsheet proves very useful -- I'll provide more information on that in a future post.

Conclusion

In my opinion, the only feature worth Premium membership if you don't have a power meter is the Suffer Score and I would say it's a pretty weak feature. If you do have a power meter, the main features you'd benefit from are the Power Curve and Performance Management Chart. Those features, however, are available elsewhere for free so they are pretty weak as well.

But....

I consider Strava the best community-based training website available. Others, like Garmin Connect, Map My Ride, and Ride With GPS fall short. There are many areas of Strava that could be significantly improved -- a club page with the ability to display group ride calendars with meeting times for example -- and from what I've seen, Strava is very much willing to roll out new features and updates, showing that they care about what their users request. By purchasing a Premium membership, you are helping support their efforts and will likely benefit from future added features and updates. It would be a shame if Strava became stagnant due to insufficient revenue.

At just about $1 per week, Premium membership isn't much of a financial burden. If you have a power meter, I would definitely recommend at least trying Premium for a year -- if nothing more than to get a feel for how the Power Curve and Performance Management Chart work. If you don't have a power meter, I would say stick with the Free version unless you simply want to support the website's endeavours. To read more about the features and updates that Strava has come out with, visit their Blog. As always, your thoughts regarding Strava and Premium membership are welcome in the comments below.