Strava Deletes Millions of Workouts After Cheating Cleanup

Strava has removed millions of workouts from its platform after identifying widespread misuse of its activity tracking and leaderboard features.

The company confirmed it deleted between 3.5 million and 3.9 million “anomalous” activities in a global cleanup. Many of those workouts were flagged after users logged runs that were actually completed on bikes or in cars, or recorded e-bike rides as standard cycling workouts.

Strava, which has more than 180 million users worldwide, ranks athletes on virtual leaderboards for specific stretches of road or trail, known as segments. While there is no prize money attached, those rankings play a central role in how many users engage with the app.

A significant portion of the removed activities involved e-bikes. Strava said roughly 2.3 million deleted workouts were e-bike rides that had been uploaded as regular cycling sessions. Another 1.5 million activities were logged as runs but were completed using other forms of transport, including cars.

Those entries allowed users to post unusually fast times and appear higher on leaderboards than athletes completing the segments on foot or on traditional bikes.

Why Leaderboards Matter

Tom Davidson, a senior reporter at Cycling Weekly, told The Times that virtual titles on Strava can carry real meaning for amateur athletes.

“For a lot of people, it’s the best title they can go for,” he said, referring to the app’s “King of the Mountain” and “Queen of the Mountain” designations. Davidson said he has held a single KOM during his riding career and described it as “sacred,” despite its lack of any material reward.

Strava leaderboards also provide visibility. Athletes ranked at the top of a segment are displayed to others who complete it, making unusually fast times difficult to ignore.

What Strava Changed

In a statement posted on Reddit, Strava said it reprocessed the top 100 activities on every global ride segment using improved detection systems.

“This wasn’t a small tweak,” the company said. “It was a full global backfill.”

An engineer who said he works at Strava added that the company has introduced a new machine-learning model designed to identify e-bike rides that were uploaded incorrectly as standard cycling workouts. Activities suspected of being recorded in vehicles were also reviewed.

Past Abuse and Ongoing Questions

The cleanup follows earlier reports of so-called “Strava mules,” people who complete workouts on behalf of others so the data can be uploaded to a different account. One runner previously said clients paid him to carry their phone or watch while he ran.

Strava offers three subscription tiers, including a free option and a paid plan costing about €60 per year. Founded in 2009 by Michael Horvath and Mark Gainey, the San Francisco–based company has grown into a social network for endurance athletes and was most recently valued at more than $2 billion.

Strava did not say whether additional deletions are planned, but said the changes were aimed at restoring confidence in leaderboard results.