Every December, Strava publishes the Year in Sport - a global report of aggregate stats from millions of athletes. Every athlete also gets a personal "Year in Sport" recap video, showing their stats over upbeat music. It's wildly popular. People share it on Instagram. It's a marketing coup.
Baseline's annual review (shipping later in 2026) takes a different approach. This post explains the philosophy, what we're building, and why "analytics" and "recap" aren't the same thing.
What Strava's Year in Sport is
Strava's recap is:
- A 60-second video montage of your stats
- Set to music
- Showing your total distance, time, elevation, top sport, fastest effort
- Designed to be shared on social media
It's well-produced. It's fun. It's free. And it's almost entirely a marketing product - designed to get people sharing the Strava brand during December.
There's nothing wrong with that. But it's not an analysis.
What Strava's recap doesn't do
- Compare your year to previous years
- Show your training load progression (CTL build, peaks, tapers)
- Surface which training blocks produced results
- Cross-reference your performance with recovery/sleep data
- Identify actual performance breakthroughs vs steady accumulation
- Give you a PDF you can send to your coach
It's a highlight reel. Fun for five minutes. Forgotten by January 2nd.
What Baseline's annual review will do
1. Year-over-year comparison
Your 2026 stats laid against 2025. Not just total distance - did you get faster? Did your CTL peak higher? Did your workouts get more structured? The trends are more interesting than the totals.
2. Training block analysis
The annual review automatically detects your training cycles from the data: base periods, build blocks, peak/taper, recovery weeks. It shows you which approach produced results and which didn't.
If you ran a marathon in April and improved your 5K PB in October, the review shows you the CTL ramp that led to each - and how they differed.
3. Performance breakthroughs
Not just "you got faster" - the review identifies specific moments when your fitness meaningfully changed. The workout that broke a plateau. The recovery week that unlocked a PR. The training block that didn't work.
4. Cross-source correlations
If you wear a WHOOP and a Garmin, the review shows you how your recovery metrics correlated with your training. Did higher HRV weeks precede better performance? Did poor sleep consistently undermine your training? These patterns become visible across a full year of data.
5. Geographic year
Every location you trained in, on one map. Countries, states, cities. Total elevation gained. Highest altitude reached. Furthest south you've trained. A genuine travelogue of your training year.
6. Shareable, beautiful, yours
A web page you can share (if you want), a PDF you can download, and an OG card for social media. But the content is analytical depth, not a marketing montage.
Why we're building it
I built Baseline because I wanted to see my own data. The annual review is the logical extension - the report I always wanted at the end of each year but never got.
Strava's Year in Sport is fun. Baseline's annual review will be useful. Both have their place. One gets shared in December. The other gets read in January when you're planning your next season.
When
The annual review ships in the second half of 2026, in time for the December reflection season. It'll be available to Pro and Founder users.
If you have a full year of training data by then - 2026 is the year to start keeping it in one place.