Our Gamified World
Life sometimes feels like a big game; should it?
Big news: my fitness score has never been higher on Strava!
I’ve been running a lot this summer, so I felt pretty proud of getting my fitness score up on the social network for athletes — until I realized that I had no idea what a “fitness score” is, or how it’s calculated. So I looked it up. Here’s Strava’s explanation of what my precious number means:
Your Fitness score is calculated using Training Load (based on factors including power and duration) and/or Relative Effort (based on heart rate or Perceived Exertion input), to produce a score for your daily training. A so-called impulse-response model is used to quantify its effect over time.
Well, that’s clear as mud. So I googled around to see how my fitness score compared to averages and found threads full of people talking about how useless and misleading the number is. Nowhere could I find a clear explanation of how Strava arrived at the number. Though the fitness score purports to provide me with meaningful analysis, it tells me less, less clearly, than simpler metrics like number of miles traveled or average speed.
So why does Strava promote this meaningless number to its members? Well, Strava is a game, and games need a score.
