Strava shows women prefer running, men prefer cycling

Strava unveiled its year-end report today, and it reveals some interesting gender differences in sporting activity. Strava is still much more popular among men than women, and the report does not reveal whether this is changing, or at what rate. What it does show is that among female Strava users, running is the preferred activity, with 90 million uploads, vs. 50 million uploads for cycling. But for men, running takes a backseat to cycling. Men posted 382 million uploads for cycling and 234 million uploads for running.

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For women, the third most popular sport (after running and cycling) was walking, with nine million uploads. For men, it was swimming, with 20 million uploads. 

For both genders, the half-marathon was the most popular race distance, followed by the marathon and the 10K, but the half-marathon still accounted for less than 40 per cent of all races, for both men and women. 

Of course, Strava does not claim to be representative of the running population as a whole. According to The Statistics Portal, in the general population, walking for fitness is much more popular than running, with 110 million people walking vs. just under 60 million people running. But relatively few walkers currently use Strava.