Strava offers new support for gravel and off-road routes

Published June 9, 2022 01:42AM

The route-tracking platform is offering new off-road interface to support gravel, trail running, hiking, and other off-road activities, the company said.

These updates include new trail activity types and an enhanced suite of routing features to help athletes explore and power their next adventure.

Strava is adding four new trail sports as primary experiences: Trail Run, Gravel Ride, Mountain Bike, and e-Mountain Bike.

These new sport classifications join Bike, Run, Hike, Workout, Yoga and many others among the nearly 40 activity types supported on Strava for all athletes.

Strava is also offering subscribers trail routes which highlight popular trail networks and start points. These route recommendations for Strava’s new sports are activity-specific and adjustable based on preference for distance and elevation.

“When you get a trail route from Strava, not only do you get recommendations powered by our community, you also get all the insights you need to make your time exploring as joyful as possible. Know things like how long it will take you, how crowded it might be, and what’s the best route for you before you go so you can explore with confidence. All powered by the community who have been there before,” says Michael Horvath, CEO and co-founder of Strava.

“We have been seeing off-the-charts growth of trail sports over the past several years, outpacing even growth of road running and riding. Our teams are thrilled to be meeting athletes where they are with this release to fuel their joy of exploration.”

A host of new insights and route details including route difficulty, community completion times, historical activity trends by month and time of day, and data visualizations of gradient and difficulty are powered by the trends of the global community.

Strava subscribers can also download trail routes while offline or out of cell coverage.

Strava is also adding its popular 3-D map style to activity uploads, which will appear in athletes’ activity feeds.

The ability to choose a 3-D map for your activity is only available to subscribers, but all athletes on the platform will see the new map style in their feed when it’s used by athletes they follow.