We’re big fans of all of the ways athletes in our community are inspiring and motivating each other right now. During this challenging time, we believe that being active is good for our mental and physical health in so many ways. It’s tied to our sense of identity and happiness, and is a source of routine and calm when we need it most. Staying connected matters, now as much as ever.

Like many of you, the team at Strava was excited to learn that Ironman launched a Virtual Race series. After looking into it, we noticed that athletes were not linking to Ironman, but rather to Sport Heroes instead. (Sport Heroes is a firm that uses platforms, including the Strava API to create athletic experiences.) In fact, when someone signs up for Ironman VC and connects their Strava data, they are automatically connected to all of Sport Heroes’ apps.

Sport Heroes combines all Strava athlete data into one place, with little transparency about how it is used or shared among its partners. Signing up for Ironman VC and connecting Strava could expose your data to numerous other partners without explicit consent. We were also surprised and disappointed to see Sport Heroes create this experience without saying a word about it to us. Since we learned about it, we’ve been working to help Sport Heroes come into compliance with the terms of use of our API, which are there to protect how your data is used and to protect the hard work that our small API team puts into making great experiences for athletes. We want to find a way to continue to work with Sport Heroes once they’ve fixed this point of exposure.

We also look forward to partnering with Ironman to support our many triathletes. To support athletes whose races have been cancelled due to C19, we’re offering a free-of-charge Virtual Race or Challenge to a number of running events cancelled due to C19. We’re working with numerous race directors globally who have had to cancel their races to help create virtual race options for their participants including UTMF and the Gothenburg half-marathon. Click here for the full set of Challenges and virtual races available on Strava. Click here to learn more about how to take part in the Ironman Virtual Club.