I run most mornings and usually do the same boring loop around the neighborhood every time. But today I found myself in a nearby park, examining a map, and wondering how best to capture the most tiles for my team. I played a game called Striding, and I could see it was addicting.
The app is free (for basic functions) on iOS and Android, and the game mechanics are like this: the world is divided into hexagonal tiles, and wherever you run (or walk or travel in your wheelchair) you can claim a tile. If your route takes you in a closed loop, you will also get the tiles in the middle of that loop. Each tile belongs to whoever visited it most often.
If you love to brag about the KOM (King of Mountains) who brag about Strava, you may appreciate Stride for its different kind of competition. The difference is that Stride tiles are won by the number of visits, not the speed – you can be the slowest runner, but if you hit the same park trail every day it can be yours.
What it’s like to play Stride
The game is new, at least in my area. When I open the map, I see that most of the hexagonal tiles are unused, apart from clusters here and there: County Park, a couple of random neighborhoods. Everyone is on the red team, just like me (you can switch teams anytime, but the app said the red team needs members, so here I am.)
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My first thought was to take the app with me on my usual morning run, but it starts and ends at home. Unlike Strava, which lets you log public or private activity, Stride is all about the public map. So I went to the park instead.
One of my favorite running spots in the park was unclaimed so I made my way there. You will see the tiles that you claim as you run. So instead of just going on autopilot and going through the usual loop, I paid attention to when I was at the edge of a tile. Sometimes I could claim an extra hex by walking down a back road or taking a longer path instead of a shortcut. After a two mile excursion, I was the proud owner of 10 previously unclaimed tiles.
Dissatisfied, I got back into my car and took a large piece of tiles in the sights of a teammate named Mangler. I parked in unclaimed land and jogged to the tiles he owned. I took a few of these, then stood by the curb and finished my run to see the results. I had grabbed five of Mangler’s tiles and got five new ones of my own. The stolen tiles now each had a two-person leaderboard: Mangler and I had each visited once, but I was the winner as I had recently done so. (Mangler has likely received a notification of this, so we’ll see if they leave soon to get them back.)
Determined to protect my new territory, I restarted the app. I had noticed beforehand that I was only credited one visit per tile on a way there and back, even if I had crossed it twice. So I started a new run before returning to my car and as a result logged two visits on some of the tiles. The more visits, the more secure my ranking.
And in the end, even if Mangler recaptures their territory, at least I know I helped my team by winning extra tiles for us.
Technical aspects of playing Stride
If you have a Garmin device, you’re in luck: the Stride app can import runs that you track with the Garmin. It doesn’t sync with other apps or devices (like the Apple Watch) as far as I can tell. So when I went to my runs I had to turn on the Stride app and have it track me.
The map was difficult to see at first – I’m on the red team, but all of the colored tiles were blue or green. It turns out there is one map view for teams (where red team territory is red) and another for individuals (where my tiles are green and everyone else’s is blue).
You can play the game without buying a subscription, but detailed leaderboards and team stats are available to members only (get $ 8.99 / month or $ 44.99 / year if you become one). If the game becomes popular in your area, it could be a fun way to plan your runs and keep in touch with fellow runners by coordinating with your teammates to conquer territory.
