Strava Guide: Giving Your Best Effort

Multi-Sport

October 17, 2024

Everyone loves hitting a PR, and with Best Efforts you can track your progress and see when you are performing at your best.

It’s pretty cool to be better than you’ve ever been before. More than pretty cool actually – in my opinion, it’s underappreciated just how cool it is. Too often you hear professional athletes getting interviewed post-race and they’ll say something like, “I’m glad I PR’d but I really wanted more..”. It’s frustrating to hear as I truly believe that there’s something quite incredible about being better than you’ve ever been before. I mean, how many areas outside sports can you say that so definitively? That’s why I love Best Efforts on Strava.

I know what you’re thinking, they’re not “proper” PRs from races, so what am I so excited about? You’re right – they’re not PRs, and we’ve all benefited from a bit of generous GPS now and again, but Best Efforts are a great proxy for progress. And we’re not all pro athletes. Why not celebrate a new best with enthusiasm?

On Strava, Best Efforts are simply personal records over benchmark distances, but to most of us they’re a lot more than that. They’re memories of a particularly epic race, they’re funny stories, they’re the feeling of elation mixed with exhaustion that accompanies an all-out effort. My half marathon Best Effort is probably my most memorable. I’ve never actually raced an official half marathon, but I still remember the long run when I clocked that half marathon time. And every time I see that Best Effort, it brings back the memories, the feeling of crushing a fast long run, college teammates by my side.

By now you’ve probably gathered, I’m a fan of Best Efforts. And by the end of today’s article, I hope you are too. I’ll show you how to find Best Efforts in the app; why they can help you get faster; and how you can train to achieve breakthrough Best Efforts. Let’s get into it.

Find Your Best Efforts

To find your current Best Efforts in the app, tap on the “You” tab from the bottom menu, and then make sure you’re in the “Progress” section. Scroll down until you see the option to “View all your Best Efforts.” Tap on that and you’ll be able to see your progress at benchmark distances in both running and cycling.

For running, Strava will track your Best Efforts in distances from 400m to 50K. In cycling, you get even more options. As well as distance, you can also look at elevation and your best power outputs (although you’ll need a power meter for this). The Best Efforts Power Curve shows your best average power for periods of 1 second up to the length of your longest ride from the time shown.

But the data doesn’t stop there! Seriously, there’s a tonne of good stuff hiding in this section. If you pick a distance, say 1 mile, and tap “View 1 Mile Analysis”, Strava will show you your top-five performances by year, and a graph that plots these over time, so it’s easy to spot trends. There’s also the option to just view a list of your top-ten all-time performances – click on “Your Top 10” in the top-right corner to see this.

Now you know where to find all your data – let’s get into how you can improve your Best Efforts.

Achieve Your Best Efforts

Mix It Up

The proverb “variety is the spice of life” does a very good job of summarizing my advice on training. Of course, there are entire books about the science of training and it’s a lot more complicated than just throwing a mix of things at the wall – there are different philosophies, double-threshold training, debates over volume and so much more but, while I am a total nerd who loves reading about all the finer details of training, I still believe that the majority of amateur athletes would benefit from just adding some variety into their training.

For example, rather than running three 5K runs each week at a moderate effort, try running longer on a Sunday, keeping one day shorter and super easy, and then adding in something higher intensity. That might be a tempo run, some 2-minute intervals or some hills. The exact combination isn’t important at this stage, just introducing new stimulus to your training will power breakthroughs.

One of my favorite features on Strava is the Training Log and it’s especially helpful for keeping track of your different workouts. You’ll get the most from the Training Log if you label your activities. From the Edit Activity screen, navigate to the dropdown menu labeled “Type of Run”. Choose between “Long Run”, “Workout” and “Race”. When you then go on your Training Log, which you can find under the progress tab, you’ll see that your long runs have a darker color and your workouts are shaded.

Set A Goal

If you read the above about mixing up your workouts and thought, “but how do I even know where to start?”, it all starts with goals. In fact, I think goals are so important that I wrote an entire article a few weeks back about them.

It’s hard to know whether to do more speed work or more tempo running, more race practice or more volume, without knowing what your goal is. When it comes to achieving new Best Efforts, I’d encourage you to not just set a time goal, like breaking 45 minutes in the 10K, but to set process goals that’ll help you get there. That might mean running more volume, being more consistent or just spending more time exercising.

And the great thing about having clear goals is that it might also encourage other habits that’ll improve your performance, like getting more sleep, prioritizing nutrition or, to take us to my final piece of advice, improving your recovery.

Rest Hard

In Peak Performance by Brad Stulberg, one simple equation stands out:

Stress + Rest = Growth

The Growth Equation, as Brad calls it, emphasizes that improvement, in any walk of life, doesn’t come without adequate rest. Push too hard and you’ll get injured. Push not enough and you won’t improve. The key is finding the perfect balance, which is a lot harder than it sounds.

One tool that can help you find the right balance is Strava’s Relative Effort Graph. It plots all your individual efforts, based on heart rate date, to provide a picture of your cumulative training load. The “Relative Effort range” gives you a target based on your three-week average. Pushing above that range can help you build fitness and make big breakthroughs, but you can’t train above the range for too long without risking burnout or injury.

How to Use Best Efforts

I think there’s a place in training for Best Efforts. Just like going for a segment crown can be a fresh, low-pressure challenge, having a go at a Best Effort is a fun excuse to rip a hard effort without the expectations of a race. They’re not replacements for racing, but think of them as another tool in your training mix. I like to use them like time-trials and build them into training to check on my progress. And pushing yourself when there’s no race atmosphere or other people to compete against, is a great way to build mental resilience too.

Written by

Katherine Turner

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