Of course military personnel use Strava to map their rides, runs, workouts. And of course a number of these people - like the rest of us - don't go into the settings of the app and really figure out what information they should and should not be sharing. Though, at the same time, you would have figured that some military officer who uses Strava him or herself would have thought about this in the past, as he looked at the map of his daily run on the Strava site, and realized that it showed the exact distance around the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan (here's a good version of the story from the BBC).
In active transportation circles, the Strava heat maps are a tool used when talking to cities / municipalities about streets and routes that need safety upgrades. You can use the heat maps to tell what the popular routes are through your town. Fairly often, you'll see a stretch of road that is legitimately dangerous for cyclists, but also pretty much the only choice to get through that part of town. So, the Strava heat maps get placed in front of the noses of city council as you describe the need for improvements and alternatives in cycling infrastructure.
More personally, Strava is just awesome. And I'm not even really a data geek like all the other cycling data geeks out there.
I had a fairly lazy and slothful fall 2017, and have hit 2018 very keen to get some fitness back. And Strava let's me compare lots of things, including Jan 2018 to Jan 2017, and I can tell that I'm totally blowing both Jan 2017 AND Feb 2017 away right now (thanks to cycling on Zwift).
And, Strava being as easy to use as it is, I like seeing ride data like this below for a Jan 21 ride. I'm getting to be a bit of an old guy now, and it tickles me pink so see that I can still hang out pretty much at my maximum heart-rate for 3 or 4 minutes.
Anyway - Strava is an amazing trove of data about your life as an athlete, or your quest for an active lifestyle. I wish I'd been using Strava back in 2006/2007 when I started this blog, and was doing the downtown Toronto to north Oshawa bike commute!
