Apps that track runs and bicycle rides are a dime a dozen, but Strava has a unique hook: competition. When you run or bicycle with Strava, you're competing against other Strava members who have pounded or biked the same routes. If you're fast enough, your name might just appear at the top of a leaderboard. You can also use the app for more traditional tracking, because it records your distance, time, speed, and so forth. And while you can't bring your phone in the pool to track swims, you can log them manually in Strava, completing the triathlete's trifecta. Strava is one of the best fitness apps there is. One word of caution, though: Most of the information Strava collects, such as your name, profile photo, and mapped routes, are publicly available by default. For safety reasons, many users will want to make this data private. There are good in-app controls to restrict what information is public, but new members could easily overlook them.

Premium vs. Free
Strava is free to download for iOS and Android. I used the iPhone app in testing for this review. Like many fitness apps, Strava has a Premium subscription model. You can use the app for free, but if you pay a membership fee, you get more features—a lot of them.

Strava Premium costs $6 per month or $59 if you pay for a year in advance. Premium adds personalized coaching, live feedback, and advanced analysis. The coaching features alone add a lot of value. With personalized goals, for example, you can enter the number of miles or kilometers you want to run or cycle each week, and the app will keep track of your progress. That's one feature that I feel should be included with the free tier of service, but it's not.

Streaming videos, another aspect of the personalized coaching, talk you through indoor cycling workouts for increasing stamina or preparing for races. Detailed race-training plans are also available, if you're working up to running a marathon or other race. You'll need to visit the Strava website to find those training plans and customize them, as they aren't available from the mobile app. In fact, a good number of Premium features are also restricted to the website.

The advanced analysis features are critical for anyone who uses Strava in conjunction with third-party fitness trackers, such as heart rate monitors or bike power meters. And Strava works with a lot of them, supporting both Bluetooth and ANT+. Premium members get to see their data from these devices summarized in unique charts and scores. For instance, when you train with a heart rate meter, Strava computes a Suffer Score. It's a score based on your heart rate zones and how long you worked out in them.

Strava's Hook
Whether you use the Premium or free version of Strava, the app still has a unique hook. The app uses the phone's GPS to map your route and track your speed. When you finish a workout, Strava looks at your route and finds legs that other Strava users have also covered. You'll see the segments marked on a map in the app. Strava ranks you against all the other users who have completed the same lengths. It's especially neat because the Strava community is huge and quite international. I've been using it in India, and I follow some friends who have been using it in Colombia and Norway. In all these locations, there are plenty of existing segments and some serious competitors topping the charts.

The app also displays data you'd expect to see in any run-tracking app, such as calories burned, total miles, elevation gain, total time, speed plotted over distance, average speed, max speed, and heart rate if you wear a compatible heart rate monitor. That kind of information is standard in most GPS apps for running and cycling, including Runtastic PRO, an Editors' Choice, and Map My Run.

Strava also has an auto-stop feature that pauses recording when it detects that you're standing still. That's helpful for road runs and rides, when stoplights and traffic can slow you down. It's also useful when you forget to end the recording until an hour later, as I did once. After I finished cursing under my breath, I was pleasantly surprised to see the suspended state. Neither my total time nor pace time were compromised.

One feature that Strava doesn't have is a delayed-start option for recording that gives runners and cyclist a few seconds to put their phone away secure after they hit the start button. This feature is available in the cycling-only app Cyclemeter (iOS only), which is an Editors' Choice, as well as in Runtastic PRO. The popular app Endomondo, which tracks all kinds of outdoor activity beyond running and cycling, has it, too.

Strava makes it easy to find both the standard information and the leaderboard analysis. Below the summary of your pace, distance, and so on, is a list of all the segments analyzed for that route. You see the name of the segment, your all-time placement on the leaderboard (by default, it will rank you among same-sex competitors only), and your time for that leg. Premium members can see leaderboards filtered by other data points, too, such as age group. If you use the app a lot while running or cycling along the same route, Strava also tells you when you achieve a personal record.

As you explore the leaderboards, you'll notice a lot of full names and photos. If you follow any of these people, summaries of all their activities will show up in a feed in your app, including their maps. However, if you see a first name with only an anonymized last initial, it means the user has enabled the enhanced privacy feature and some of their data will remain protected. If you try to follow private users, they have to approve the request first.

Privacy
I recommend Strava users turn on the enhanced privacy features. There's a toggle for it in the mobile app that enables a good baseline of security. The website has more detailed privacy settings that you can customize and explore. My favorite privacy setting lets you hide all activity that occurs within a certain radius of your home or work address, anything from one eighth to five-eighths of a mile. Because many people start and end their runs and bike rides at their home, it would be extremely easy for another Strava user to quickly figure out where you live without this feature enabled. With the privacy setting on, however, there won't be any activity on your maps within the set radius.

When new Strava users sign up, there is no mention of the privacy options. I think it's important enough that the app should bring them to users' attention by default, either with a pop-up screen or on-screen tutorial. I worry that not enough Strava users realize how much of their information is being made publicly available.

Compete With Strava
Strava can be a lot of fun, especially if you're motivated by competition. It gives more meaning to logging your runs and bicycle rides in the first place, and it can be invigorating to see yourself do well on the leaderboards. The community is huge. The competition is tough. You can find Strava users all over the world; through their routes, you might even find new places to get some exercise. It's a phenomenal app, as long as you understand the privacy options.

If competition isn't your thing and you'd rather keep your activities truly private, don't waste your time customizing Strava. Instead, just go for another app entirely, as you can get the same basic data analysis from Runtastic PRO or Cyclemeter, two Editors' Choice apps.