We’ve all been there, feeling the satisfaction of completing a 10 kilometer run via your running watch, thinking you’ve achieved a personal record.
You walk home, ready to bask in the glory of Kudos from your Strava friends and gold medals galore for notching up your best time yet. However, Strava has other ideas. It might show that 10K as an excruciating 9.99km. No personal ten thousand metre record for you. No gold medals.
Strava “lovingly” refers to that as the Strava Tax and, after years of complaints and memes, the company is explaining why it often rounds downs the data you see on your running watch. And, after reading the company’s rationale, I’m actually on board with it.
It’s all about accuracy, the company says. Strava says that while it rounds down, everyone else rounds up! So what shows as 10km on your wearable device might not tell the whole story in the first place and might be giving you more credit than you’ve earned.
“Your watch or head unit might say 10.00 miles. But what it actually recorded and sent to Strava might be 9.993. That means when we round it down for display, you’ll see 9.99,” the company said in a blog post.
It says that some companies idea of “improving” the data might be “smoothing it out” to come up with a nice round number. Strava doesn’t do a thing with the raw data it receives other than round it down to the second decimal point to preserve accuracy. It doesn’t “shave distance off your run” because that distance was never completed.
“We have to record each activity as accurately and authentically as possible. We just show what was recorded, down to the second decimal point,” the company says.
That way you’re receiving due credit for the work and effort you’ve actually done.
“The post adds: On some wearable devices, as soon as you go from 990 meters to 991 meters (0.991 km) the device shows 1.00 km. Some devices adjust the mile split slightly—using 1609 meters instead of the precise 1609.344. (One even uses 1609.08!)”
So they’re being sticklers, but at least you’re not getting any false impressions of your personal records.
Opinion
There is, of course, a way to avoid the Strava Tax, which I’ve been doing for a while now after being caught out early on after absolutely killing a Parkrun PB.
You can run through the finish line. Add a tenth of a mile to your jog. Don’t stop the watch until your 5K run reads 3.12 miles instead of 3.13 miles.
“Strava will always aim to be a fair, neutral, and accurate ledger of record for your effort. That’s why – at least for now – death, taxes, and running parking lot circles to hit our mileage are three things that remain certain,” the company explains.
