Why Backing Up Strava Matters Even More in 2026
Pricing changes, API limits, and surprise deprecations hit endurance athletes every year. You do not want your training history locked behind someone else's roadmap. A durable backup gives you:
Account resilience
Locked-out accounts or expired tokens won't wipe your history.
Analytics freedom
Run deeper analysis (TSB, fatigue, weather overlays) without API rate anxiety.
Vendor independence
Move to TrainingPeaks, Today's Plan, or your own stack without losing fidelity.
Automation leverage
Trigger PR alerts, gear wear rules, and weekly rollups without manual exports.
Export & Backup Options Compared
There are four workable paths in 2026. Choose based on how often you need fresh data and how technical you want to get.
Good for annual archives. You download a ZIP from Strava settings and stash it in Drive or Dropbox.
Pros: Free, simple. Cons: Stale within a week, messy file names.
You build a cron job to hit the Strava API and push activities to a bucket or database.
Pros: Flexible. Cons: Token refresh, webhooks, and rate limits are brittle for side projects.
Strava data lands in Google Sheets where you can version CSVs, pivot, or sync onward to Excel.
Pros: Accessible, fast insights. Cons: Needs automation to stay fresh.
Purpose-built automation that syncs Strava to Sheets, CSV, S3, or BigQuery with zero scripting.
Pros: Fresh daily/near-real-time data, retry logic, and webhooks handled for you.
Manual Export Steps (Good for One-Time Archives)
- Open Strava on desktop → Settings → "My Account" → "Get Started" under Download or Delete Your Account.
- Request your archive. Strava emails a link (can take a few minutes).
- Download the ZIP and store it in a dated folder like
strava-archive-2026-01. - Unzip to a cloud folder (Drive, Dropbox, or S3) and check the
activities.csvfor completeness. - Optional: import the CSV to a Google Sheet so you can pivot, chart, and compare to prior years.
This is fine for annual snapshots. If you want weekly updates, automate it so you are not repeating these steps.
Automated Backup with StrideSync (Sheets, CSV, S3, BigQuery)
StrideSync handles authentication, webhooks, and retries so your exports never fall behind. Typical setup takes under five minutes:
Connect Strava and Google Sheets
OAuth once; StrideSync creates a live sheet with all historical activities and fields (distance, time, HR, power, weather if available).
Pick destinations
Enable CSV exports to S3/Drive, BigQuery syncs, or keep everything inside Sheets. You can mirror data to multiple stores.
Set freshness rules
Choose daily pulls or near-real-time webhook updates. Failed attempts retry automatically so nothing is dropped.
Add automations
Layer gear tracking, PR alerts, and weekly recaps directly in Sheets. No scripts or Apps Script needed.
Storage Best Practices That Keep You Organized
- Folder hygiene: Use
year/monthfolders in S3/Drive (e.g.,strava/2026/01/) so exports stay queryable. - Schema consistency: Keep the same column order across Sheets/CSV/database tables to avoid broken charts.
- Retention policy: Save raw FIT/GPX files plus a normalized CSV. Raw files let you rebuild if fields change.
- Versioning: Enable bucket versioning or keep weekly CSV snapshots. If an activity is edited, you keep history.
- Access control: Restrict write access and rotate API keys/tokens quarterly to avoid silent failures.
Migration Playbook: TrainingPeaks, Garmin, Apple, or Your Own App
A solid backup makes platform changes painless. Here is how to move fast:
TrainingPeaks or Today's Plan
Export CSVs per month and import. Keep FIT files handy for workouts with power/HR to preserve laps.
Garmin Connect / Apple Health bridges
Use your normalized CSV as the single source, then map columns to each platform's importer or Shortcuts/Connect IQ tooling.
Your own app or dashboard
Point your warehouse (BigQuery/S3) at a BI tool or notebook. StrideSync can mirror data there automatically.
The short version: once the data lives in your storage, every downstream move gets easier.
Never lose a workout again
StrideSync keeps your Strava data fresh in Sheets, CSV, S3, and BigQuery—without scripts, cron jobs, or broken tokens.