How Hard Is It To Make Strava Art?

Multidesporto

October 4, 2024

You may have seen Strava Art in your feed, on Strava Stories, or even in the news, but have you ever wondered how hard it is to create a Strava masterpiece? Howard Calvert decided to find out...

You’ve no doubt seen some Strava art, if not on your own Strava feed, in our Strava Stories section, or even in the news.

If you haven’t, Strava art is the term given to an activity on Strava that creates a piece of art using the GPS map of the activity.

Sometimes it may happen inadvertently, for example when someone comments that your 10K run route looks “a bit like an arrow”, but usually it’s a finely tuned and intricately planned masterpiece, sometimes months in the making.

Over the past few years, these Strava art designs have become so impressive they deserve to be framed and displayed in a gallery. Recent jaw-dropping examples include Nicolas Georgiou’s koi carp in London, Lenny Maughan's Road Runner and BigBird DPS Art’s mind-bending Impossible (Penrose) Triangle.

So I decided to take up the challenge of creating my own Strava art. How hard could it be?

Strava Art: The Hard Miles

As it turns out, it’s exceedingly difficult and I tip my cap to the athletes out there creating artwork that simply astounds in its design. How do they do it?

I asked Nico Georgiou for his advice on how he creates work like his koi carp, Mark Cavendish for the TdF, and his seriously impressive, 237 mile / 383km-long ‘Something for the Olympics’. Based in London, his day job is as a designer, something he says helps inform his Strava artwork.

“With any Strava art design, I start by looking at a map,” he says. “Then I just go for it. I throw my first navigation point down, second point, third point, and then I expand lines and move them around on the map.

“For me, the drawing itself isn’t the problem — it’s trying to find the infrastructure in the roads and how to navigate things like rivers and train tracks.”

If Nico’s design needs to cross a river — and he regularly crosses the Thames in his art — he pauses the recording, rides to the nearest bridge, crosses, and then rides to where the drawing will continue before unpausing, meaning Strava’s GPS will draw a straight line across the river to that point. This results in him cycling farther than the distance shown on the final artwork — sometimes up to 70km more.

Other big challenges are one-way systems, getting over footbridges, London parks closing at night, even unexpected police cordons or roads closed due to roadworks.

“There’s a lot of problem-solving,” he says. “The first problem is the planning and drawing stage.” This usually takes him five or six hours of initial drawing which are then intricately refined over the course of a month. “I start with a point A and point B, and fill in the space between. For the koi carp, there were 666 navigation points.”

The next problem is the actual drawing of it on his bike. “Study the map and work out exactly what you need to make it work when riding it,” he advises. “If there’s a one-way street, for example, I know I’ll have to hop off my bike and walk along the sidewalk, or put my bike over my shoulder and cross a footbridge.”

He also warns that having fully-charged batteries is of paramount importance, for both your GPS systems and your bike lights. The koi carp took him around 20 hours in total, starting at 3.30 am. “I navigate via my phone, and record the ride on my Garmin.”

But, for Nico, it’s this combined challenge of designing the artwork and then completing it, that draws him back in time and time again. “That and the headspace it provides,” he says, “even though my wife thinks I’m mad!”

For me, the drawing itself isn’t the problem — it’s trying to find the infrastructure in the roads and how to navigate things like rivers and train tracks.

Strava Art: Expert Advice

Nico’s tips for beginners wanting to have a go at their own Strava art include:

Stick to freeform ideas. Try not to do anything too regimented.
Avoid circles. You need to go a huge distance to create a decent circle.
“Planning is an important part of creating a successful piece of art,” says Nico. “If you’re on a bike, do it in a town with plenty of roads to make it work. If you’re running, my suggestion is to use a large empty field and prep the route with markers as reference points.”
Use a route-building website, such as Strava’s route planner.
Start drawing! As Nico says, begin with two navigation points and take it from there. Be as creative as you like, or keep it simple, with something like a heart or a star if you want to build confidence.
Save and export your ride to your device, whether it’s a watch or bike computer.
Start riding or running, following the route you designed.
Try not to take any wrong turns, as that could ruin the end product.
Enjoy your activity, soak up the new sights. At the end, it’s the moment of truth — view the final art in Strava, and publish it on your feed.

Art Attack

With that advice in mind, I head out on my own art-based expedition. I know I want to keep it local, and to start with run rather than cycle. But what to design? I experiment with something basic — a heart on a large, open field — but quickly give up when I figure it will inevitably end up resembling a large blob.

Then, it hits me: what would be more appropriate than the kudos sign? A thumbs up for all Strava users. I scan my local area for anything that might string together to form the symbol… eventually, I draw what I think is a good enough thumbs up using the Strava route planner.

GET PLANNING: Strava Routes and Heatmap: Find New Places to Go

But while I’m there I get a little more ambitious. These grids of new housing could easily form eyes… with a nose, mouth, whiskers… it’s a cat! But I can’t get the ears to work due to a canal and roads inaccessible due to military use. Maybe it looks more like the Grinch? When I attempt to run it, I suddenly change my mind and realize it could be Mario, so I have to adjust parts of it on the fly, keeping Nico’s advice to “not do anything too regimented” at the forefront of my mind.

The end result is, well, let’s just say my old art teacher would give me a strong ‘fail’. But, alongside the thumbs up, it was undeniably a riveting and involving challenge. I ran along streets I’d never been down before, and seeing what the final result looked like was pretty exhilarating.

The thought of doing anything bigger seems unthinkable and, frankly, exhausting, but Nico is keen for me to expand my art horizons. “I’m more than happy to have the company on my next art ride,” he laughs.

Written by

Howard Calvert

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