One of my favourite local descents has a certain Mr Samuel Hill as the Strava KOM.

He was 20 seconds ahead of me but I’ve chipped it down to something like seven or nine seconds now by riding it dozens of times on different bikes.

He probably only rode it once… on sight.

GPS errors, straight lining all the bends, dEPO or they are just properly quick.

I’m really fast. Tell me where it is and I’ll come down and benchmark it for you – at least then you’ll know if it’s humanly possible

It’s not the San Marino and it is Sam Hill (I’ve just been stalking him again now).

You’re right though, the descent I’m referring to is a bit blown out and it would have been riding much faster when he set that time. Otherwise I’d have had him by now. Honest.

There’s a set of steps we do where my best time (all guns blazing) was something like 20 seconds. The KOM is 3 or 4 seconds..there is no way, on god’s green earth, it’s been done in that time..

That’ll be GPS errors, anything under a minute or so is always going to be a struggle to get accurate leader board times, not every time is inaccurate, but the top places are likely going to be the fastest riders on quick runs, with added errors.

As for knocking 15-20 seconds off your time on a minute of trail, it’s possible, after thinking more about technique I can now get down some trails at Swinely as fast on a rigid bike (which was probably a gap of 10 seconds or so to start with) as I did on the FS bike, and at the time I thought I was bordering on the edge of control on the FS, barely feels dangerous on the rigid so there’s obviously more in there. And that’s with only small changes (exiting berms earlier to help set up for the next one mostly).

gps error and if you or he has auto pause set for a certain speed it will auto pause giving you a boost when, if you drop below that speed.

There are two jumps on the last bit of Cwmcarn DH, must be 5m or so apart. Or at least I thought it was two jumps, until I saw someone demonstrate that if you go fast enough it’s actually a double 😯

As others have said there is probably an element of GPS error in it.
However, quick riders really are stupidly quick.
A couple of years ago I was in second place,on Strava, for the descent to Achnashellach in Torridon with a time of 5.28 and I was sure I could make up the time on a good run and get the KOM. The next month Greg Williamson’s name appeared at the top of the leaderboard and he had taken a minute out of me! It was the first time he had ridden the descent so I reckon he could probably go a fair bit quicker.
Certainly puts you in your rightful place 🙂

I’ve recorded a time at FOD that I cannot get within 10 seconds of. Happy with 7th out of 5000. 😉

I think it depends where your phone was, and where the GPS is. I get perfect tracks out of my phone which lives in a pocket at the top of my bag, with about as perfect a view of the sky as it possible. The garmin on my bars on the other hand get’s a perfect view of my moobs and gives more jagged tracks. Back when strava was all new and shiny and no one had a biking GPS someone did a comparison between an edge and a forerunner and found similar, the more exposed watch gave much better results.

So it’s less the phone, and more where you put it (IME, although some phones might just have crap GPS)

I’ve been lucky enough to ride with a few quick pro riders and they are truly astounding to watch. Not just quick, but blisteringly quick.

Oh, and they don’t ride the same trail that we ride. Where we’re bumping over the rocks, thinking we’re doing just great, they take off here

…touch once here…

…and land in this corner down there and shoot out of the corner.

I rode a tricky dry riverbed crossing in Downieville – it was a tricky rocky descent into a flat dry riverbed and then a technical, steppy climb out that I nearly made, but dabbed just at the top. I reckoned I could ride it in one next time.

Then I looked behind to see Peaty and Minnaar (no really, it was the 5010 launch last year) using my ‘technical climb’ simply as a launchpad to air off as they laughed at each other.
Fast is simply fast.
I am neither, I have realised.

Even top XC guys have ninja skills. If you’ve ever been passed by them at a race on a line that wasn’t until they nipped passed you on it then it’s best to think hard before attempting it yourself later on. And as for thinking “I’ll close that gap on the downhill” when they go by you at the top of a hill…

Once saw a video dirt did with Steve Jones and Sam Hill, they’d stooped halfway down a trail to do a bit of interviewing and were setting off, both men set off at the same time, pretty much together, and within a couple of hundred feet, Hill was several bike lengths ahead of Jones. Thing is, Hill hadn’t put any pedal strokes in, and Jones swears blind he didn’t brake.

Marginal gains, everywhere. How many corners does this 60 second section have? If you went through each of them a second faster, how much would you improve by? Could the top man be 10-20% more powerful than you? That combine with inaccuracies in the tech ( sounds like an excuse to me but WE) could easily explain it.

Simple one he’s faster 😉
Plus a combination of GPS Error and the rest. Even if you are on a 1s count the point at which you enter or leave the segment can be a significant distance apart from another rider or your next go.
On one of my faster segments I’m 40s behind KOM he did it in 1:44 so 20s in a minute isn’t that hard to imagine and I know I could carry more speed in a few places. In contrast there is one where I’m top 10 and the gap is 52s(KOM) – 1:04(Me) not sure where the 12s comes from in that one 😉 Thankfully thats getting replaced so the time will last a while 🙂

Last 12 months has seen every almost every segment in riding distance of me be annihilated.
Had a couple of WC XC pros stopping in the next town over most weeks in the spring and autumn. (Parents of one of them have recently moved into the area.)
And then during the summer a recently ex protour rider was living with a lass in another local town. They’ve now moved to Italy.

So those almost achievable segments are now so far out of reach it’s almost funny. Even our local MTB superhero is a minute down on anything over 5 minutes, though he has improved his absolute times significantly.
And some of the local road bits have had 10+% taken off them.

I’m fat and slow these days so i don’t really care that much. I was never going to get into the top 50% anyway.

My local trails have been Sam Hilled. Well they are his local trails as well, and he was here first but still. Brutally fast. I have absolutely no idea how.