If you're thinking of running a Virtual or Hybrid event, allowing your participants to connect Strava to their fundraising pages allows them to log their activities, giving a tangible way to show what they've been doing, both to you and to their supporters. If you're not already familiar with Strava, here's a guide to some of the things you need to know.
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What is Strava?
Strava is an online social platform that allows athletes to post their activities and connect with others.
Logging Strava activities
When connected to Strava, users can log all kinds of activities such as cycling, running, walking and swimming. This is logged usually with a smart device such as Garmin, Fitbit, apple watch, or even a smartphone.
Activities can also be created in Strava using manual activities.
Uploading activity to Strava
Many smart devices can connect to a smartphone via Bluetooth and will automatically upload your activity to Strava.
If your device has USB connectivity, this can allow activities to be uploaded from your computer.
Strava Support has an article for this here
Manual activities
This allows activities to be added to Strava by inputting the details of where the activity took place. You don't get all of the data that you would from recording the activity, but it means that participants don't have to have a GPS device or smartphone to take part.
Manual activities can also be used to recreate an activity that gets lost or corrupted for whatever reason. (or maybe the battery ran out before the end - it happens!)
You'll notice that we allow manual activities to be turned on and off in Enthuse Events. The reason we've done that is to allow you to limit your event to GPS recordings if you'd prefer that
Event dates
Once your participants have connected Strava to their page and set their privacy settings (see below), any activities that they record within the event dates that match the allowed activity types for your event will be shown on their fundraising page.
Any activity recorded outside of the event dates won't show on fundraising pages
Top tips
Make sure that the event dates you select reflect the date range within which you want your participants to be able to complete their activities, and make sure that these are clear to your participants
Be careful with changing the event dates or allowed activity types once the event's started - this could cause participants' activities not to upload to their pages
If you're excluding some activity types, make sure your participants are aware of which activities they can and can't do - eg. if running's allowed but not walking
Troubleshooting
There are a few things that participants can run into difficulty with, but don't worry - these are pretty easy to fix. Here are the most common ones:
Connecting Strava
If a participant has a Strava account already, they just need to log in and confirm the connection when they register for your event. However, if they choose to do this after registering, they just need to log in to Enthuse, which makes the Connect to Strava option appear on their page
Privacy settings
Strava users can decide who is able to see their activities, but if this is set to private, we won't be able to add their activities to their Enthuse fundraising page (including retrospectively after the settings are changed). Strava allows users to set Privacy Zones if they're concerned about activity maps.
Connected wrong account
The Strava login page allows a new Strava account to be created. If a participant does this accidentally and they have an account already - or they have multiple accounts and connect the wrong one - all they need to do is disconnect the wrong Strava account so that they can connect the right one.