by 
culture
While I was busy pursuing “fitness,” I lost sight of the more important things.
Finding gems like this track is so much more satisfying than being a slave to an arbitrary metric.
I roll into the driveway and stop. I’m sweating profusely and exhausted – I’ve only been riding for about an hour, but I’ve been riding hard.
I save my ride to the Strava iPhone app and wait impatiently for it to upload. I’m excited about the progress I’ve made. I open the ride and scroll down. There it is: My “Fitness Score” has increased by two points. A small but nonetheless satisfying and affirming improvement.
The satisfaction is fleeting. Within a few days my improvement has dropped by two points and my fitness score is back to the same level as before. And then it keeps slipping. A lingering cold turns a few days without cycling into several weeks without cycling. Any progress I made in the weeks prior is quickly erased as if it never happened.
Having this fitness data on hand – and looking at it after every ride – is both a blessing and a curse.
***
My obsession started innocently enough. One day I was scrolling through my stats after a ride when I stumbled upon the fitness graph. As I saw the graph tilt upwards, I felt a sense of satisfaction that I had been missing from cycling for some time. I’ve been addicted ever since.
The pattern is the same. Complete a ride and immediately check my fitness score for improvements. An increase feels great; A lack of improvements feels like the ride was almost pointless. I now realize that I was relying on an almost arbitrary metric to make sense of my riding style.
What exactly is Strava’s fitness score? “Although fitness is a complicated concept, it can be simplified into an accumulation of workouts,” a glossary page on the Strava website tells me. Essentially, Strava uses heart rate or power meter data to calculate the training pulse of a particular ride, and then uses that and data from other rides to calculate your training load over time. If you’re familiar with Chronic Training Load (CTL), used by platforms like TrainingPeaks, Strava’s Fitness Score is pretty much the same thing – a metric that reflects the intensity and consistency of your riding.
Unfortunately, “consistent” isn’t a word I could use to describe my driving behavior over the last few years. Instead, my current fitness score graph looked more like a rugged mountain range than the steady incline I’d much rather see.
When I was released in November 2022, a promising fitness run ended and I had to step off the bike for more than a month. In November 2023, a frustrating bout of chronic fatigue/post-viral fatigue left me unable to ride the way I wanted for more than four months. More recently, a hip injury and a bout with illness meant I was limited to driving for a few more months.
It’s disheartening to see the fitness score keep dropping. And even more so when I look back at my numbers from five, eight, eleven years ago and realize that I will probably never reach those heights again.
And yet, for whatever reason, I can’t stop checking the fitness score after every ride.
Maybe I can’t stop looking because this silly score gives my riding meaning when I can’t ride as much as I’d like. I may not have the time to go on long rides in the mountains like I used to, or even go on short rides as often as I would like. But with Strava’s fitness score, I have the opportunity to see progress after just an hour of riding; to feel like I’m accomplishing something. Assuming I drive hard enough.
But it’s a stupid game. As cycling metrics go, Strava’s fitness score just isn’t that meaningful. It might give me an idea of how much and how hard I’ve been riding lately, but it doesn’t tell me how strong I am. Not really. And in order for this fitness score to continue to increase – for the graph to continue to point upwards – I would also have to ride more often, probably for longer and with ever higher intensity. That’s not realistic; If I believe otherwise, I’m just setting myself up for failure.
Ultimately, there is a bigger question here that I need to answer. Instead of searching for meaning in a meaningless number – and fiendishly checking it after every ride – I need to figure out what I actually am want from my cycling. If I feel like going for a hard ride, maybe I should just aim for the highest normalized power I can achieve that day and ignore what the fitness score says about all my training over the last few weeks. Maybe I’ll do more exploring again and use tools like Wanderer to motivate myself to discover new roads? Maybe I just need a real fitness goal to work towards.
Or maybe I just need to be happy to get on the bike when I can, ride it for a while and come back with a clearer, happier head? Instead of obsessing over numbers, maybe I need to find satisfaction in just being capable Driving the way I want – something that hasn’t always been the case in recent years.
***
After I’m over my last illness and my hip feels good, I set off for an exciting hour on the bike. Nothing groundbreaking – just a simple out and back ride on the same bike route I ride all the time. But this time my attitude is different. I want to enjoy it as it is.
An hour later, I roll back into the driveway and slow down. I save my ride in the Strava app and then immediately turn off my phone. I have no idea if my fitness score has changed, or by how much, and I’m resisting the urge to check. It’s a strange feeling not knowing; strange but liberating.
I may not have been riding hard or really training for anything, but that’s okay. The last hour gave me exactly what I needed – a bit of exercise and a chance to clear my head. And I’m glad that’s enough. For the first time in a long time, I don’t need numbers on a screen to tell me that the ride I took was worth it.
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