Strava launches Local Legends feature

Strava is reimagining its performance landscape with a new Local Legends feature.

As a core data harvesting resource for many cyclists, Strava is wishing to democratise the hierarchy of its leaderboards.

This new Strava feature alters the competitive basis from outright speed to effort. This means that athletes who possess an outright fitness or gear advantage, won't dominate across the platform anymore.

In a broader sense, this new Local Legends update allows Strava to offer a healthier alternative than pure speed, with regards to its competitive rankings. Pure exertion has its place during training peaks, but for riders who feel beholden to consistently edge up the Strava ranking on their local trail, the lasting trend can be counterproductive.

With the Local Legends feature, you are rewarded for consistency of effort. This is a much healthier and achievable goal, in terms of Strava ranking, especially for riders who are more risk-aware on descents or not possessed of elite level climbing fitness.

• Strava's latest update makes leaderboards a paid-for feature

Whereas elapsed time is everything to regulation Strava users, those users who wish to become Local Legends, simply have to be consistent. The rider who totals more efforts than anyone else on a specific segment earns the Lauren crown and achieves Local Legend status.

Strava is using a rolling 90-day window, for riders to compound their efforts and move up the Local Legend ranking.

In terms of user interface awareness, Strava has been mindful of slickly incorporating this new feature. Navigating to the Local Legends segment on your device is easy. If you are using an iOS operating system, tap ‘settings’ and toggle the ‘View Local Legends Segment Only. Android users can simply tap the bike icon.