The Strava platform has a bunch of monthly challenges that makes things fun for users. For example, run 100, 200, or 300 km, or walk 50 km, or cycle numerous distances.  These are great! However, I am surprised they are missing some that are not only beneficial for users, popular from science backings in at least Western culture, and just systematically to be comparable across activities. I have listed some below and hope Strava will add them as I don’t think they would be hard to add, considering there are already algorithms for some similar challenges in place, so it should just a matter of switching the limits. For other challenges, there is other data available from fitness apps that Strava takes into account for other calculations, like # of steps for average stride length calculations, so it’s a matter of the new data totals and a limit, or two changes, to existing algorithms, to create new challenges that would be fun and beneficial beyond fun for users!

New Monthly Walking Challenges

There is currently only one Strava monthly walking challenge, and that is for 50 km. Lots of people can easily accomplish this just walking their dogs, never mind errands, possibly work, and such. New challenges for 100 km and 150 km or even 161 km (100 miles) would not just be useful and fun, it would treat walking as seriously as running with its multi-tiered monthly challenges of 100, 200, and 300 km of monthly running. There is also one there of “how far can you run”, that would also be nice to have a walking equivalent challenge.

New Month Average Daily Steps Challenges

Most of you have probably heard about the 10,000 steps a day for general good health. Well, the truth for that is actually only 7,000 steps per day. Regardless, given the popularity and strong influence this is on general health, I am surprised Strava doesn’t have these as challenges! They could be the most useful of all challenges, and invite users who many not consider themselves athletes, but walk to stay healthy, to the platform. Ideally, this would be measured for how many days they are accomplished per month, rather than an average that could be distorted by huge walking days and next to no walking days, but if it kept the algorithms simpler to create and install, having something half decent is better than having nothing. Besides, figuring out how many days a month the steps goals should be reached is more debatable, but challenges using a total created from the average should work well because achieving them will depend on consistency, rather than constantly falling behind and having to do huge step numbers to catch up.

• Create a challenge for 210,000 or 300,000 steps a month, for averages of 7,000 or 10,000 steps per day, for a generic challenge. A slightly smarter one would actually do the math for number of days in a month and set the goal for that month accordingly (e.g. 300,000 or 310,000 or 280,000 steps per month). Track progress by percentage of that total like how running, cycling, and other such mobile activities are tracked. The difference between this and the walking challenge would be that no GPS would be needed, meaning those without GPS on their watches, but pedometer, could engage in them, expanding the potential audience compared to the walking distance challenges.
• Have several tiers for steps as well, whether 7, 10 and 15 thousand steps per day average (measured by respective monthly total steps), or 10, 15, and 20 thousand steps. Also have a “how many steps can you take?” challenge like the “how far can you run?” current challenge available.

Can you think of other useful monthly challenges for Strava?

In the same vision I had for identifying new monthly challenges for Strava that could be useful, can you think of any? That is, equivalent tiers of challenges across other sports like 1 walking vs 3 running, or useful health indicators Strava can measure like steps per day. I am only familiar with the running and walking monthly challenges, and only had a glimpse into the cycling ones, so I am sure there challenges in other sports that could be found. If you think of something, please contact Strava. They seem at least willing to listen via customer support. We’ll see how they respond.