Strava partners with Snapchat for new augmented reality experience for athletes

If you are like me and sick of taking pictures of your GPS watch to flex your long runs to friends, the popular social media app Snapchat is partnering with Strava to launch a new photo Lens, letting users share their training data.

This partnership is a first-of-its-kind augmented reality experience that lets Snapchatters and Strava users share their fitness journey with friends and family via their cameras. Snapchat has 363 million daily active users and sees over six billion AR Lens pictures taken daily.

“Between Strava’s 100 million registered athletes and Snapchat’s user reach, we cannot wait to see how our communities share their fitness journeys together,” says Tonya Johnson of Snapchat.

Snapchat’s new Strava Activity Lens works by connecting it to your Strava profile, giving you access to stats and activity maps from your recent workouts. Each time you finish a workout, it will be automatically loaded into a Snapchat filter.

The new Lens will show your run distance in miles, a sketched heatmap, the pace and the time. To share your activity from Strava to Snapchat, open the Strava app and find your profile. Select the “Activities” tab and scroll to the workout you want to share. Shareable activities must be marked as visible to “everyone” or “followers-only,” and include a visible Strava map.

On Snapchat, you can find the Strava Lens in the app’s Lens Explorer or on Strava’s public profile. Your most recent workout should automatically appear first, but you can also toggle through different activities to pick one to share. The post also includes a link back to your Strava workout, so your friends and family can toss you a follow (or get addicted to Strava themselves).

As of Nov. 3, the new Lens is available globally to all Strava and Snapchat users on iOS and Android.

This is a giant partnership for every millennial or Gen-Z runner who needs ideas of what to share to keep their Snapchat streaks.