It’s not just music streaming services that offer yearly round-ups nowadays – Strava’s Year in Sport report, which dropped today, also provides an annual deep dive into the trends and attitudes of its users. Naturally, its ‘Year in Gear’ segment, which uncovers the most popular activewear and gear of the year, and looks ahead to the hottest wardrobe kit predictions for 2025, peaked our interest.
Coros Pace Pro: More than just a pretty face running shoes, Nike Half marathon 85 Pegasus From Runners World for On. Hoka’s Clifton took second, perhaps signalling the increasing shift towards max-cushioning, while the long-standing Asics Gel-Nimbus Demo run: On Cloudrunner 2.
Best wireless headphones
The best Nike running shoes for every runner
Meanwhile, when it came to tracking devices, Apple took first and second place with the
Super shoes continued to democratise races, too. According to the report, 44% of uploaded marathons listed a carbon-plated shoe as the gear type, and there was a 14% year-on-year increase in the number of races completed in carbon shoes across all distances.
Once again, the Swoosh absolutely dominated the rankings here, with the Nike Vaporfly taking the top spot across the 5K, 10K and half marathon distances, subbing out for the Alphafly Nike Pegasus 41.
Best in tech
ruled the metaphorical runway in 2024, with the ever reliable Watch Series and Watch SE respectively. The Garmin Forerunner 245 – which is now discontinued – was third. However, Strava noted that it was 5K runners who tended to opt for an Apple Watch, while the Forerunner was favoured for longer distances.
The best Nike running shoes for every runner GPS watches over smartphones, with 47% of Strava users overall using a separate device to upload at least some of their activities. And as the distance increased, more users ditched their phones for a GPS device:
- 5K – 76%
- 10K – 83%
- Half marathon – 85%
- Marathon – 92%
Style divides
More broadly, Strava’s report confirmed what we’ve already been seeing: running gear is increasingly becoming as much about style as much as it is about performance.
In fact, all ages agreed that coordinated outfits were the workout wardrobe item of choice and a trend to watch for 2024. Black remained the most popular colour for workout apparel (practicality first, obviously), although the colour blue is predicted to be the new black for 2025.
Gen-Zs were also big fans of a scrunchie or a headband, as well as wearing jewellery while working out (37% Gen-Z, 26% millennials, 12% Gen-X).
Perhaps our favourite finding, though, was that generational divides split opinion on sock length: while Gen-Zs favoured a crew sock, Gen-X voted for no-show. Millennial, it seemed, fell somewhere in the middle.
The question remains: which camp are you in?
