Always has been that way; that's the whole idea of Strava (or Komoot, RideWithGPS, etc). These platforms are for casuals.
> Ironically some of the highest performing endurance athletes I know don't even use it anymore. TrainingPeaks + Garmin is where it's
Always been this way as well (TrainingPeaks/TrainerRoads). These platforms are for training and improving performance. Garmin is Garmin... majority of endurance athletes wear Garmin devices (or Suntoo).
Having said that, it's easy to upload to multiple platforms so they all treat Strava or other social media as brand awareness.
For training, sure, but a significant proportion of Olympic calibre athletes use the social elements of these tools.
At least in road and trail running, this doesn't line up with my observation. There are plenty of elite athletes, at least in the US, who are posting their training on Strava (Jim Walmsley, CJ Albertson, Molly Seidel, etc.) At the fast amateur level (e.g. those chasing the Olympic Trials Qualifier time), Strava adoption is pretty ubiquitous.
Out of the the athletes who are active on social media in the first place, those who don't post on Strava are usually doing it either for privacy reasons, or because they do not want to share their training plans for their competitors to copy.
Yup, (personal) brand awareness. Strava is for casuals but the training results will be posted there regardless who you are (except as you mentioned, for privacy). As I stated above: Strava is for casuals, those Amateur->Pro level posted there "just because" it's easy to do it not because they rely Strava for Data Analysis.
Those athletes will rely on other platforms to analyze their training data (Garmin offers more insight for example).
Setting up Strava to link with Garmin is easy right? Things will sync from that point onward.
TP is obviously even better as a product if you’re working with a coach hence why so many triathletes favour it.
Strava’s a fantastic social platform but I don’t use it for anything more than that.
I suspect the new training status stuff that’s been rolled out would likely be a good fit for cyclists, even those who haven’t purchased a power meter.
Generally Garmin has much better features than Strava for setting up and executing a structured training plan, then analyzing your performance. But Strava has better social features. Many endurance athletes use both platforms. It's easy to create a free tier Strava account and automatically sync activities from Garmin to show your friends.
If you know that you're going to be running in challenging conditions like snow that reduce your pace then use the Trail Run activity profile and set "Record VO2 Max.” to Off. That should prevent it from changing your fitness metrics.