35: Another missing feature in Strava

Posted on 1000 Ideas

I have previously posted an idea about a missing feature in Strava. Lately I have been feeling another feature missing there. Today I read a news about Strava has its CEO changed, hence I decided to post this new idea here.

For people are not familiar with it, Strave has a feature called Suffer Score, which is used to measure how hard you have been working out relatively. I never use it, as I am not a premium user.

First, I still don’t get why they only allow certain features in Premium users. If I were their product manager, I will open all premium features to all users. I understand Strava is a subscription model business. The difference between paid and free user will be: free user will only have their premium-level data for up to a month. Something like Suffer Score, if I don’t pay, I will not be able to see them next month.

Second, I will appreciate if Strava can motivate me more to work out next day. For example, two weeks ago, Seattle was continuously raining, I still decided to run in 2 consecutive days. The rain still didn’t stop in the next day. However, I did not have enough motivation to run in the rain again, not only because I didn’t have dry shoes to run, but also I felt I had enough. In this case, it will be great if Strava can detects that I have been running 2 days in a row with rain, the 3rd day running with rain will be a very high boost to my Suffer Score.

Extending from there, we can do a lot of similar other motivations.

  • Haven’t run 3 days in a row for a while, 4th day run will be a boost.
  • Haven’t run a trail for a while, a fresh trail run will be a boost.
  • Running in a snowy day will be a big boost.
  • Running and biking in the same day will be a big boost.
  • Running in a different location will be a big boost.

I can name more.

Finally, why do I care about Suffer Score? I don’t know about how Strava is planning to use and retain its users. If I were in charge, I would invest Strava to integrate with some health monitoring using Suffer Score and other metrics, which could potentially benefit athletes a lot. Maybe Strava should hire me and get all my ideas, or maybe they have already tried and failed all those ideas. 😀