Peloton + Strava Integration Update – Leaderboard ranking + output added to description

Over the past few days, Peloton has made a minor tweak to their Strava integration. For those unaware, if you have the Peloton Bike or Tread, you are able to set up your account so that any workout you do on Peloton gets auto-uploaded to Strava. Full exports of your heart rate, speed, cadence, and power then show up in Strava, where you can browse and see graphs/charts of them like any other workout you would do.

The new tweaks to the integration only impact the text description of the workout. Previously, the text description auto-created was simply the name of the workout, and your Peloton leaderboard name. For example, it would show: “45 min Power Zone Endurance Ride from 7/30/20. Taken by PeloBuddy on Peloton.”

Previous description field uploaded to Strava.
Now, Peloton has changed that up. They no longer show the original date of the class in the description, or your Peloton leaderboard name. These are instead replaced with text showing your total output (power), as well as your ranking on the leaderboard (as of the time you took the class). Note that if you take a class using Peloton Digital, your description will say “Taken on Peloton Digital” – the two lines for Total Output & Leaderboard rank only show for classes taken on Peloton bikes or Tread.

New description field uploaded to Strava.

All of the raw data appears to be exported the same as before – the tweaks made seem to only be impacting the description. Like before, the name of the workout in Strava is still the name of the workout from Peloton. However, there is no longer any way when viewing the workout in Strava to see the original date or time of that workout (i.e. the time shown in the Peloton library). This means if the workout doesn’t have a 100% unique name, you would no longer be able to find the class in Peloton’s system, without cross-referencing your own workout history in the Peloton app. Friends viewing your Strava history wouldn’t be able to tell exactly which class you did based only on the description & workout name as seen in Strava unless you modify it.

The last public-facing change to this integration was in June of 2019. Prior to that point, when a workout was uploaded, it also auto-attached a picture to the Strava workout for you. The picture attached was the preview image for the workout – the same image you would see when previewing a class in the app or on the bike or tread. However, Peloton stopped uploading these images in June with no explanation.

Strava upload from 2019 with photo

Update – As of September 1st, 2020, Peloton quietly re-eanbled the attaching of preview images to the Strava workout as mentioned above. No explanation was given as to why it disappeared for more than a year.

As mentioned earlier, the Strava integration is only possible for Bike or Tread users. This is because the setup screen for Strava is only visible on those hardware devices – it isn’t to be found on the app anywhere (don’t worry Android users, iOS users are left out of this too). There is a workaround for this though. If you have a friend who has a Bike or Tread (or a nearby showroom?), you can temporarily log yourself into their bike/tread. Once logged in, set up the Strava connection. Then, you can log back out and remove your account from their bike! Once the integration is set up that one time, auto-uploads to Strava take place for all workouts – even those on Peloton digital.


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Chris Lewis
Chris Lewis is the creator & founder of Pelo Buddy. He purchased his Peloton in 2018, and uses all the different devices: Peloton Bike, Tread, Row, and Guide. He has been involved in the fitness industry for more than a decade - previously co-founding the websites Mud Run Guide & Ninja Guide. You can find him on the leaderboard at #PeloBuddy.

3 Comments

  • JPJPJP says:

    Did they change this again? I did a ride this morning and it doesn’t show the leaderboard rank. Maybe it didn’t sync correctly? So much for trying to get ahead of everybody!

    • Avatar photo Chris L says:

      So after more time looking at this, it appears the current implementation, as of today, is they are only adding the leaderboard ranking at the end of live rides on Strava uploads.

  • arkitect75 says:

    I’ve only recently started riding a Peloton in the last two months. I’ve got the ride auto exporting to Strava and the name, time/date, etc all look like an exact match except one, max speed.
    After looking at the Strava analysis, my max speed is always 23.9 mph. I found this strange so I specifically made sure to go faster in my last ride and checked the (basic) info in my Peloton results.
    Peloton-25 mph
    Strava-23.9 mph

    No idea why Strava has a ceiling for the max. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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