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news
London cyclists at traffic lights (copyright Britishcycling.org_.uk).jpgStrava’s Year in Sport report reveals UK gender divide in cycling
The gender divide in cycling is worse in the UK compared to the other European countries and is below the global average, according to Strava’s latest annual Year in Sport report, which also finds that women are more likely to run and cycle in groups due to safety concerns.
The report tracks trends in activity from 48 million people in 195 countries, with Strava – now in its 10th year – still recruiting members at the rate of 1 million a month. Its reach is underlined by the fact that one in three riders at the Tour de France this year are on Strava, while half of the entrants to the London Marathon shared their data from the event on the social network.
Here are some of the key findings from the report:
For both runs and rides, women are more likely to exercise with other people than men. In the UK, 27 per cent of rides by men are grouped vs. 37 per cent of rides by women and 22 per cent of runs by men are grouped vs. 32% by women
As platforms like Zwift and TrainerRoad continue to grow, virtual cycle rides are up 4.7 per cent in June and 9.7 per cent in January (2015-2019) - helping athletes to train in all seasons.
Data from the Year in Sport report demonstrates how adverse weather conditions impact athlete activity. As the world sees more frequent extreme weather events, technology is helping athletes to train in whatever the season or weather.
In the UK, women are 12 per cent less likely to cycle than men when commuting, compared to a global average of 6.7 per cent. In London, however, it is more equal with women just 2.7 per cent less likely than men.
France, Germany and Spain are all much closer to equal likelihood – suggesting that Britain should learn from its European counterparts when it comes to cycle infrastructure.
Gareth Mills, Strava’s UK country manager said:“There’s so much to celebrate in the Year in Sport this year. The growth of distance running on Strava is mind-blowing, and something I don’t believe has been captured effectively in the past.
“As we are living increasingly sedentary lifestyles, particularly in developed countries, perhaps the call of the marathon or ultramarathon distance becomes a way of combating this trend for many of our community.
“At the same time, we are clearly engaging a broader range of athletes than ever before - from 50 percent of the pro peloton at the Tour de France to almost a third of parkrunners in the UK.
“The data also spotlights areas for improvement. It is disappointing to see that British women are much less likely to commute by bike than men compared to the global average, and we should refocus on the root causes.
“Organisations around the world, including TfL, are working with Strava Metro to find insights in our data which can support better infrastructure planning - and it’s great to see that London performs far better than the UK average in this area.”
Other findings of the report include:
Most people get their workout in before work
6am was the most popular start time for runners, whilst cyclists started later - with 8am the most popular time.
Earlier activities are more likely to be done with friends - with activities starting at 5am seeing the highest proportion of group participants.
Rise of the all rounder
Single-sport athletes have been on a steady decline year-on-year
Marathoners who improved their PRs increased their non-run activity by 13 per cent.
Goal-setters more likely to stay active
95 per cent of people who set a goal on Strava in January were still active by September, as opposed to 87 per cent of people who did not.
Cycle commuting on the rise
British athletes cycle shorter distances than the global average (17.7km vs. 26.1km) and their US counterparts (21.5km) as increasing numbers of people take to their bikes to commute.
Strava members offset 28,270 metric tons of CO2 by commuting over 112.6m km in the UK last year. The median cycle commute was 8.3km in the UK last year.
Hottest gear in 2019
Most popular shoe for the London Marathon (by percentage of runners): Nike Pegasus
By year-on-year growth, the following gear was the fastest growing:
Shoes: Hoka One One Carbon X, Adidas Solar Glide, New Balance Fresh Foam Beacon
Bikes: Trek Checkpoint, Orbea Oiz, Canyon Neuron
New running devices: Polar Vantage M, Garmin Forerunner 945, Garmin Instinct
New cycling devices: Garmin Edge 530, Garmin Edge 830, Wahoo Elemnt Roam
Workout apps: Aaptiv, Wattbike, Digme
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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Thanks – I hope road.cc never acts against random posts that are irrelevant to the topic on these message boards, it would become a ghost town! I...
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Get "rats for LTNs and modal filters" founded immediately or we're doomed!
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They almost never get to experience them... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ngifg--1eW4
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its tricky because there are arguably hundreds, maybe even thousands of "problem areas" on any sportive route, that potentially could result in the...
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47 years ago, as a founder of Cyclebag (7.7.77) and Sustrans I am disappointed by all of this. Our original hopes were to "make Bristol safer for...
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I didn't remove the sound because I didn't think that it mattered - quite clearly the swearing was in reaction to an act of frankly horrid...
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14 comments
It's bad because it is indicative of women being more afraid to be out on the roads, or out on their own. Would it even cross your mind, as a man, that some opportunist might rape you if you run down the wrong back street? No? Well guess what, it occurs to women. That's the problem.
From my experience as a female cyclist, I suspect we are more likely to get shouted "appreciative" comments about our physique which are actually quite intimidating as you don't know what the intention is.
I do tend to cycle on my own mostly and it doesn't bother me. I don't seem to get the abusive comments when riding, but then my rides tend in be in the middle of nowhere with only the odd passing tractor. Get more comments out running.
Why is gender division always considered a bad thing? Its like when London Mayor Khan made out that its a BAD thing that white men are the biggest users of Boris Bikes ...how is that a bad thing!? - what does he want; white men to stop using them!? both genders are different, so it makes sense we do things differently. I'd be more freaked out if there was no difference!
If its not on Strava ...it still happened.
The 'bad thing' is that sizeable portions of the population don't cycle. That means more cars, more crowded public transport and more pollution. May be worth taking note and looking to see what might be deterring them, maybe?
And get over your poor-white-male victimhood complex, it's undignified.
I put every ride on Strava, turbo and all. There's a commute button which for me basically means wasn't trying. Don't want to get sweaty on the way to work.
Same here, I record my commutes on Strava. I do mark them as commutes. Adds up to a fair bit of distance over the year.
They seem to be making very sweeping statements on how all cyclists behave, but surely they can only gather data on those cyclists that subscribe to Strava, a small subset of all cyclists, and I really don't know how truely representative those are to the full group of cyclists.
Exactly. Also, very confusing that it's apparently something to do with 'a year in sport' but then makes rather definitive-sounding claims about commuting. Since when was commuting a sport? How many commuters record their commute on Strava? Just corporate press-release cheap advertising if you ask me.
Isn't it 'Cat 6 racing' or something?
Actually I do record my commutes on Strava though I forget to mark them as commutes and I think alot of strava users who commute by bike do the same, tbf it's a by product of using my Garmin to keep check on speed,the actual time & distance on a commute and its just simpler to let it sync with Strava along with leisure rides, rather than i use it to see if I've smashed a segment time on the way to work.
Does it matter ? Presumably in order to get the publicity they run their years Dec 18-Nov 19 or whatever ? I'm sure it's a full year they are talking about ?
Well yes it does matter it's not a pedantic data analytics gripe of some fun online data mash up service as they say organisations (inc government funded bodies) around the world are using their data to support better infrastructure planning and their 'refocus' on root causes to the disparities the data throws up.
If you dont have the full data set or know when the data starts/stops how can you interpret the data correctly.
And it's not exactly like January is known as a busy month in terms of press coverage,most news outlets are crying out for something to write about post Christmas hangover.
I imagine the organisations they're working with have access to the dataset and can examine the specific periods they're interested in, rather than basing their analysis off of a press release.
I know I mention this every year,but is it too much to ask for an annual report on 2019 to include all of 2019? Theres still 20 days to go Theres plenty of riding left,yes the broad trends wont change ,but only last week they were quoting 19,000 are intending to complete the Rapha 500 on Strava !!! And there are all the annual Turkey runs on boxing day,christmas club runs etc etc