Sports addiction on Strava: Faster, further, cooler
Her pulse shoots up far too quickly. Kira Gerlach keeps looking at her running watch; the excitement from the start has passed, but her heart is racing. 190 beats per minute after five kilometers, that's unusual. It's far too warm for early April in Berlin; it was 25 degrees on this half marathon Sunday last year. Gerlach suspects that it will be tough. She wanted to run a new personal best today.
There are different ways to approach 21.1 kilometers. The main thing is to finish, to be faster than last year, or to really go for it, like Gerlach. She plans to reach the finish in under an hour and a half. Sub 1:30, as the pros say. A mark that only about five percent of the approximately 38,000 runners will beat that day.
Gerlach keeps doing the math, she needs an average of 4:20 minutes for one kilometer, that's not going to work. Her pulse keeps racing. After an hour and 31 minutes, Gerlach crosses the finish line. "That was my worst run," she says immediately afterwards. But "PR" flashes in her Strava app. PR stands for personal record, a personal best time. Next to it glows a small gold medal, the currency in the digital world of sports.
Strava is the most successful app for tracking sporting activities and sharing them with the world. When and how long you ran, swam or cycled, whether you did yoga or lifted weights and how many calories you burned - all of this can be uploaded to Strava. Friends can give you kudos for this, as a like is called here.
Strava is derived from the Swedish word sträva, to strive. And that's a bit how this app feels, always on the hunt for the next record. The unofficial slogan is: "Strava or it didn't happen" - if you didn't upload it, you didn't do any sport.
Getting yourself to go for a run because your friend has already run 10 kilometers today - in the best case scenario, this will make you healthier. At the same time, recreational sports, which are supposed to provide balance, are becoming more competitive through constant comparison . Strava is just one part of the trend that is spreading in recreational sports: keep pushing, even when your body says stop. Faster, longer, harder. Does it always have to be like this?
Anyone who meets Kira Gerlach may underestimate her. The 29-year-old is petite, blonde, and quite pretty. Her gaze is steadfast. This shows her determination, which is enough for a football team. Running a half marathon in under an hour and a half - would she dare to do that again? "Yes," she grins, "it's like women after giving birth. Immediately afterwards they say they'll never do it again, and then they have another child." Gerlach knows herself well and has high confidence in herself. But there will be a day when her ambition pushes her too far.
Kira Gerlach's real name is different. She will remain anonymous here because she does not want to see her name in the newspaper or on the Internet. She still talks to me because the pressure to perform in amateur sports is increasing. We are friends.
Gerlach did competitive sports in her youth, eventing, and she competed in competitions. Perhaps that's why she's always looking for new challenges to this day. In spring 2024, she will be about to graduate with a degree in architecture, and master's theses in this subject often take months. Nevertheless, she still wants to achieve something in terms of sport: run the Berlin Marathon in September. 42.2 kilometers in three hours and fifteen minutes. So Gerlach has been preparing for it for months .
"I've heard that we humans are foxes or hedgehogs," she says. Foxes are enthusiastic about lots of things and can do a bit of everything. Hedgehogs get into a subject and are totally focused. "I'm definitely a hedgehog." So she tests new training methods, creates a training plan online and finds out where her thresholds are so she can improve her performance.
She likes to feel how her performance is developing. That her body is adapting, that she can run longer distances faster. Strenuous interval sessions, where she alternates between running as fast as she can and then walking, have a cleansing effect. There is a deep happiness in the exhaustion. Similar to when she is standing on the dance floor with her friends, the music is really good and there is nowhere else she would rather be.
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Competence is one of the basic needs that is deeply rooted in us, says Jens Kleinert. He conducts research at the Sport University in Cologne into emotions and motivation in sport. "Even babies try to build a tower with building blocks that is as tall as possible," he says. "They do this not for others, but for themselves." They test whether they can do it or not. How far can they get? "That means that people have an innate need to experience themselves as competent." When we achieve something, it can be very satisfying. Just as babies are happy about a tall tower, as adults we find satisfaction in lifting this weight or running that distance. The need to perform is therefore something that is fundamentally human.
Kira Gerlach puts kilometer after kilometer and Strava counts:
April 17: 13.33 km, 4:57/km, 1h 6min
April 22: 14.39 km, 5:00/km – intervals 400-600-800-1000-1200-1000-800-600-400
April 23: 7.06 km, 5:27/km – pick up bike
April 26: 18.05 km – through Zurich
April 27: 10.19 km, 325 meters of elevation
May 1st: 13.26km, 5:45/km
May 3rd: 16.33km, 369 meters of elevation, 1h 31min
May 5th: 21.49 km, 5:26/km – crew run
May 6th: 10.12km, 4:58/km – 6x800 meter intervals
May 10th: 33.34 km, 5:22/km – let off some steam today
May 12th: 21.09 km, 5:02/km – Sunday routine
176 kilometers in a month. Is that still a hobby? "Yes," says sports psychologist Oliver Stoll, "I would call it an ambitious hobby sport." He is researching the effects of sporting activity on the psyche at the University of Halle and runs seven or eight kilometers every day. But Stoll also says that if you train as much as Kira Gerlach and also have ambitions in your job, it's quite a lot of stress.
"Emotionally, a lot happens when we run. Especially for performance-oriented people," says Stoll. "Many of the athletes in the ambitious area are perfectionists." If they cannot meet their own high standards, this triggers negative emotions. Self-esteem depends heavily on the results of training. On the positive side, perfectionists can actually work towards a larger goal without receiving a reward every day. They have a goal in mind and follow through with the training plan.
May 16: 8.05km, 4:00/km, 8x600
May 18: 20.11 km – through the forest
May 20: 11.04 km, 4:49/km, 53min
May 21st: 11.04 km, 5:17/km, 58min
"Running is my outlet," says Gerlach. She works a lot on her master's thesis, and to clear her head she goes running. She plans to run one long run a week. Long, that's 17 kilometers or more. So sometimes in the evenings after university she jogs home in long, zigzag lines.
Oliver Stoll has an explanation for the feeling of running around clearing your head. The prefrontal cortex is located behind the forehead. This area of the brain is active when we solve problems, ponder, and analyze. But the more we exert ourselves physically, the more this area is downregulated, says Stoll.
When jogging casually with a pulse of 130, you can still think, but the more effort you put in, the less able you are to consciously solve rational problems. "You get into what is known as flow ." In this state, the perception of time and space shifts. For many, it feels as if they are merging with their surroundings.
May 30th: 10 kilometers, 3x8min @ ~4:15
A workout during which Gerlach's prefrontal cortex was probably silent. She runs in circles on a tartan track, three times for eight minutes at a time at a pace of 4:15 minutes per kilometer. She writes "new VO2max unlocked". VO2max is another Strava phenomenon. Amateur athletes fall in love with medical and statistical values through constant tracking. The value describes the maximum amount of oxygen the body can use per minute. The ability to absorb oxygen can be trained, and the higher this value, the better, because performance increases.
If you sit down for dinner with Strava users after a bike ride, you'll often find yourself throwing values back and forth like you're playing quartet.
“What was your maximum heart rate?” “182” – “185” “Top speed?” “54” – “60” “FTP” – What? – “How many watts can you pedal?” – “3.8” – “4.2!”
It's funny and often not meant too seriously. It's fun to share your successes, motivate others and look at photos that friends upload from their hikes on holiday. Strava also seems purer than Instagram, where everything is polished. Instead, users share sweaty faces and high-calorie snacks that they have consumed along the way. Nevertheless, the question remains as to what effect the constant comparison has in the long run. If, for example, you always run slower than the rest of the community and are served up this in numbers and bar charts after every run.
If you want to analyze your training in more depth, you can take out a subscription for 75 euros a year, which is how the San Francisco-based company makes money. In 2020, the company's value was reported at 1.5 billion dollars. More than 135 million athletes in over 190 countries now track their activities with Strava, meaning the number of users has almost doubled in the last five years - the app claims to have grown into the largest sports club in the world.
And with it an ocean of sensitive data, because users give Strava access to a lot of information, from where they live to their heart rate to the equipment they use. There are repeated warnings about data gaps because supposedly anonymized information can still be assigned to individuals. Brands like Nike, Garmin and, more recently, Apple connect their apps with Strava to be part of this sports universe.
It is noticeable that many users explain their achievements like this: “Back after the cold” (I can’t run that well yet), “shake out run” (I’m running easy because I have a competition tomorrow), or “out and about with Marco” (Marco is a beginner, we ran at his pace).
So is there a problem with comparing achievements? Jens Kleinert starts with self-esteem: "The word sounds so self-oriented, but it is formed by comparing ourselves with others." That means we measure ourselves by what we can do compared to others. That is the crux of the matter.
If we compare ourselves to a professional athlete, their performance can seem unattainable and bring us down. We may be able to keep up with our neighbor, which in turn motivates and encourages us. "Self-esteem is very socially oriented," says Kleinert, "that means that comparing ourselves to others is anchored in us and depends on our relationships with other people."
This is where Instagram, Tiktok and Strava are tripping us up. For the last four or five years, people who make mistakes and don't know how to do things properly have been active on social media. But it's mostly the experts who present themselves, says Kleinert. We automatically compare ourselves with a selection of people who don't reflect reality. The result: We look into a manipulated mirror and feel increasingly inferior in comparison. "The original self-esteem principle no longer works on social media because comparisons are often one-sidedly negative," says Kleinert. "That's a problem for the joy of achievement."
Applied to sports apps, this can mean that we expect utopian best times from ourselves – and feel bad when we don’t achieve them.
Parallel to the hype surrounding the app, running clubs are increasingly being founded in many cities. Running has become a lifestyle, and Strava even writes in its 2024 annual report, quite unironically, that running clubs are the new nightclubs. In theory, jogging is one of the cheapest ways to exercise. A baggy nightshirt, pants don't matter, the shoes should have some bounce and off you go, make some meters. In theory.
In 2024, there was a trend on social media to wear your most expensive outfit. A sports influencer shows himself in a black Nike full-body look, neon pink shoes with carbon soles, a GPS watch, and Prada sports glasses. It seems that it's not just about running fast, far, and often, but also about looking awesome while doing it.
Gerlach also regularly runs with a running club. They jog on Sunday mornings, and then they often drink coffee together. Peter Duran co-founded the group in Berlin around five years ago. He said it wasn't about hyping a lifestyle. He wanted to run with friends, then the coronavirus pandemic came and more and more people joined them. There are now 200 people in the group, some run every week, others rarely.
Why does he think running is in right now? "If I'm pessimistic, I think capitalism has managed to make running look cool." Brands are trying to buy into running clubs, sponsoring shirts for the group, and sometimes running shoes. The sport, which until a few years ago was still led by boomers in neon-bright outfits, is now taking on an elitist look.
But Duran also has another explanation: "Many people feel the need for a group." Socially, we are very disconnected, we spend more time in front of screens than with other people. Many people find community in running. "That's also what makes me happiest about it," he says. The group encourages each other when they train together, at competitions and of course on Strava: "Insane volume," "machine," "wohoo." You want to maintain the level.
Kira Gerlach says she doesn't really mind if others see her times. The fact that she can always see how much the others are training is becoming increasingly stressful for her. When friends with whom she is training for the marathon have uploaded another long run, Gerlach remembers that her weekly long run is still pending.
June 1st: 16.22 km, 5:16/km
June 4th: 10.03 km, 5:08/km – after work
June 6th: 9.03km, 4:37/km – 5x1000m intervals
June 8th: 7.05 km, 5:03/km
She starts canceling Saturday night dates, choosing not to drink, and going to bed early because she has a workout appointment the next morning.
June 9th: 17.11 km, 4:41/km, Sunday 8:49 am
June 11: 6.82km, 4:01/km, 5x800
June 12th: 15.25 km, 5:15/km
June 14: 7.13km, 4:18/km – pace
June 17: 10.13 km, 5:03/km
June 19: 9.17 km, 283 meters of elevation
June 22: 15.24 km, 604 meters of elevation gain – steep, slippery forest paths and two rivers to cross
June 23: 22.03 km, 5:30/km – through Bern
For these 22 kilometers, she posted a photo of the Rhine, which clearly meanders through the Swiss city. What is not visible on Strava: Gerlach was not really keen on this half marathon. Her left leg hurts when she runs, from her hip down to her thigh. She ignores this: "When you run, you always have aches and pains."
We actually need a more pronounced culture of mistakes, says Jens Kleinert. "There is this lovely term 'self-compassion', which translates as something like 'self-feeling'." What it means is that you don't judge yourself too harshly. If you haven't lost three kilos, haven't won, or haven't done any sport for three weeks, you should forgive yourself and instead ask yourself: What does that mean and how do I deal with it?
The same applies to a social culture of mistakes. "We rarely see a trainer in the fitness industry who says 'it's okay if you don't feel like it today'," says Kleinert. "Most of the time it's just push, push, push." Very rarely do you see runs on Strava that are abandoned, "I don't feel like it today," writes one woman. Instead of flames, hug emojis are commented on.
Oliver Stoll, sports psychologist
Looking back, Gerlach says of the run in Bern: "That was the moment when I should have just listened to my body." There were always days when she didn't feel like running, but the fun came when she was running. In June, however, she had to force herself through training sessions and the joy was gone. "Everything felt more strenuous," says Gerlach, and she notices that her performance curve is no longer increasing.
Sports psychologist Oliver Stoll says there is a danger of pushing yourself too hard. Many people don't eat properly, have a full-time job and want to perform at their best in sport at the same time. Juggling everything is difficult. What is the most common mistake? "Taking the wrong breaks," Stoll answers directly. "Going for a bike ride is not a break." The strain on the muscles and bones is different to running, but the cardiopulmonary system is still challenged. "And the strain is just as high."
If you train too intensively with too much workload, you can end up overtraining. "And it's hard to get out of that," says Stoll. Symptoms include permanent fatigue, even though you sleep a lot, and a higher resting heart rate than usual. "This condition isn't as bad as a cruciate ligament tear, but it throws you off your season plan." Stoll has already seen runners who were stuck in an energy slump for three or four months. What helps is to reduce the load, eat, gain weight - and not start again too soon.
June 25: 5.41km, 3:59/km – 5x800
June 27: 13.25 km, 5:23/km
June 28th: 11.11 km, 4:44/km – ran home at 9:30 am
June 30th: 18.06 km, 5:14/km, 8:30 pm
Gerlach's leg hurts. No longer just at the end of a run, but always a little bit. On evenings when she has free time and could meet friends, she is too exhausted and doesn't feel like going out.
Running develops from a leisure activity to an additional to-do on the already long list. In the training plan, colored fields indicate which day Gerlach should run for how long: Tuesdays are a slow endurance run, Thursdays she should run fast. The days on which she should run a half marathon are bright red. The training takes six hours or more per week.
She needs running for her head, for the flow, so that her thoughts are quiet and the stress subsides. But running takes a lot of energy, which she then lacks at work.
July 2nd: 6.33 km, 5:52/km
July 3: 11.05 km, 5:17/km
July 5th: 21.21 km, 5:03/km
July 7: 20.01 km, 5:28/km
Despite lots of stretching exercises and using a fascia roll, the pain in his leg doesn't subside. It sometimes stings even when he walks. Gerlach goes to a physiotherapist, who says it's not necessary, but it could be something wrong with the bone.
July 9: 10.40 km, 5:13/km
July 10: 9.44 km, 5:07/km
and then
July 13th: 30.07 km, 5:19/km, 2h 41min – getting lost in the forest with myself
"A really stupid thing to do," says Gerlach. She is going to a house by the lake for the weekend. She wants to challenge herself, so she gets off the train early and walks the rest of the way through dense forest, past hay fields, and across meadows. On the way, she takes out her headphones to listen to nature. Beforehand, she has swallowed a painkiller.
When she arrives and jumps into the lake, kicking her legs, she is in excruciating pain. It's as if her body is screaming: Stop it! The MRI a few days later shows: stress fracture, grade 3 of 5. In the left thigh near the hip, hairline cracks in the bone have developed due to the intensive running, and fluid has penetrated into them. She has bruises in both hip joints, where the thigh meets the hip.
If you run so much that your bones give way, is that related to addiction? Oliver Stoll lists the factors that contribute to addiction. You increase the dose, isolate yourself, focus on the activity that maintains your addiction, have withdrawal symptoms. And, crucially, you suffer from doing it. "Addicts don't want to carry on, but it's the only way to get rid of the feeling of tension. They have blisters on their feet that are so big that the flesh is exposed down to the bone, and they carry on running anyway," says Stoll. Sports addiction, which cannot even be officially diagnosed, is very rare. Less than one percent of people who do sports are affected by it.
An ambitious goal includes days when you don't feel like it. "That's normal in sport," says Stoll, "I don't think that's a bad thing." But if you don't feel like it every day, or you're injured and still go running, "then you have a problem." For Oliver Stoll, Gerlach's case sounds like passion. This comes in two forms, harmonious or compulsive. Compulsive passion is a precursor to what could become an addiction.
For ten weeks, Gerlach is not allowed to run at all, not even for walks at first, and she is told to avoid stairs. At first she doesn't want to admit to herself that the marathon won't happen. She calms herself down with the thought that it could work without having high ambitions, if she just runs along relaxed. But her workload suddenly drops from around 50 kilometers a week to nothing. What to do with the stress now? Sometimes the tension creeps between her ribs, constricts her chest and panic spreads through it.
"But then there was also a sense of relief," says Gerlach in retrospect, "because it forced me to take a break." After two weeks, she noticed that she was feeling much better physically and that she had energy again. She passed on her marathon place and buried herself in her other major project, her master's thesis.
A few months later, Kira Gerlach admits that she hadn't done herself any favors with all that training. "I was like in a tunnel," she says, "I just carried on and regulated myself." Sometimes she stole her own freedom and lived less in the moment, instead always thinking ahead, always planning the next unit. "Somehow always maximizing."
Kira Gerlach is not the only one in her circle who has run herself to death. She can name nine people straight away who have had a stress fracture. Duran, the founder of the running group, also had them in both feet. Shortly before Christmas, a physiotherapist who runs with the group wrote in the chat: "I think 2024 was the year of stress fractures." To ensure that this does not happen again in the new year, he sent a long list of tips. You have to eat enough calories, enough calcium, protein, vitamin D. Do strength exercises and take breaks. Running is not just about leaving the house and running.
Is there a sign that you are overdoing it? Motivation researcher Jens Kleinert explains: "There is intrinsic and extrinsic motivation." Intrinsic motivation means that I enjoy what I do. "I ride my bike because I like riding my bike. And not because I want to lose weight, because I want to live longer, or because I want to sleep better, but just because I like riding my bike."
If you are extrinsically motivated, you do sports to achieve something else. So, to be slim, to prove something to others, to be cool. "Achieving goals is basically good, but if I only focus on the consequences and the sport itself is not the focus, then at some point I will lose the joy of doing sports. And that is a huge problem."
To prevent this, Kleinert advises asking yourself and a friend: Are we still having fun doing this? Do we enjoy doing it?
Strava doesn't have this feature. The app doesn't want to know how much fun you had.
September 16: 3.58 km – first run after 10 weeks of injury
These include emojis with hearts, emojis with horns, and shooting stars.
Gerlach slowly feels her way back. Her watch tells her that she needs about a minute longer to run a kilometer than before her injury. And her pulse is also higher. "Realizing that was a hard moment," she says. "I would have preferred to just turn off my pulse. But I just have to give myself time."
Sometimes she feels a tingling sensation in her thigh. Then she gets scared and asks herself: "Is there something there again or am I imagining it?"
October 21st: 9.25 km, 5:35/km – never felt so unfit
To protect herself from another injury, she is now doing strength training. Squats with a barbell, squats on one leg, squats with momentum and a kettlebell. She also does plyometrics. These are explosive jumps that are supposed to help to strengthen the bones. She makes sure to eat more - carbohydrates before exercise, protein after - and above all, she no longer goes running on an empty stomach in the morning. If you don't want to lose weight, this is a no-go, especially for women, because the body then draws on reserves and becomes more susceptible to injury. And, perhaps particularly difficult: three days of training are followed by a day of rest.
January 17th: 13.33 km, 5:26 km – with the girls
January 20th: 10.11 km, 4:43/km – set the pace
January 25th: 21.05 km, 5:15/km, 1h 50min
January 28th: 8.4 km, 4:14/km – interval pyramid 400-600-800-1000-800-600-400
This year, Kira Gerlach has three goals in mind: to skip a training session if she doesn't feel like it, to run the marathon in Copenhagen and, before that, in mid-February, the half marathon in Barcelona.
Shortly before the start in Barcelona, she is unsure. She wants to enjoy the race and at the same time know what her body can do after the injury. It would be a boost for her self-confidence if she ran a good time, she says. What is possible?
February 16th: 21.30 km, 4:21/km, 1h 32min – so happy with this one!
A silver medal shines on Strava. That was Gerlach's second fastest half marathon, she was only one minute slower than before the injury. "She's back," a friend writes underneath.
taz
