Strava can help you avoid running on those long runs

There’s nothing quite like running 45 minutes on a new road, far from civilization, and feeling the telltale gurgle in your gut signaling the dreaded runner’s trots. Sometimes Google can help you out, but searching for public restrooms while trying not to publicly poop your pants is, needless to say, incredibly stressful. So it’s nice to see that Strava has quietly added a new feature called Points of Interest that will help users find useful locations along a given route.

According to a Strava Helpdesk, Points of Interest is a feature that adds “community-powered local hotspots” to make outdoor activities like running, biking, and hiking more enjoyable. These hotspots can include obvious items, such as public restrooms and water fountains, as well as cafes, bike shops, photo spots, and other landmarks. The company says the points are created from areas popular with Strava athletes from OpenStreetMap.

“Most of the maps have been optimized for cars, so we wanted to create a map focused on athletes rather than vehicles,” said Will Meyer, senior product manager for the Strava’s Places team. The edge.

The idea is to help athletes determine the best part of an area to start an activity, as well as see where useful areas are. Depending on whether you need a snack, a toilet break, or a place to refill a bottle of water, you can now redirect to a relevant area. While all Strava users will be able to see the Points of Interest map layer, subscribers can also create their own routes based on the hotspots using the Routebuilder tool on the website or via the app’s Maps tab. There are also suggested starting points, or popular areas from which Strava users begin their activities.

Using Points of Interest is pretty straightforward – although personally it’s been more useful when planning a route ahead of time. (I try not to stare at my phone while running for fear of running headfirst into a lamppost.) We’ll have to see how useful it will be in a pinch. That said, it’s good to see fitness services adding handy navigation and security tools for users. Aside from a case of runner trotting, dehydration and “hitting the wall” are also major concerns that can leave runners, cyclists or hikers in the lurch. This is especially true for beginners, who may not have invested in a fitness watch with preloaded maps and rely primarily on smartphones. Besides Strava, Garmin also recently announced that its new Fenix ​​7 smartwatches will also include a similar feature called Up Ahead which highlights aid stations, water and ascents on a given route.

“POIs have been in development for over five months, and more ways to interact with dynamic POIs will be available later this year, along with a suite of features that complement interest,” Meyer added. “We’re just beginning to understand how athletes can interact with POIs and start points on Strava and are working to create the best athlete-centric map.”