Following my thought on the global bike to work day thread, that the Strava challenge leader boards are populated by bots or IT literate fantasists,

May distance challenge leader,
da ernstl, 9140km. Hours so far in May, 253 giving an average speed of 36.1kmh, 22.3mph if he’d ridden solidly for the whole month so far.

I’m putting a ton of cash on him to wrap up the Tour de France this year.

There is nothing to win so people are only cheating themselves, I only bother with the people I’m following list these days.

Don’t do challenges really or care much, but just did the simple maths (took me a while) and realised you were being literal about riding solidly for the whole of May so far without pause!

I’m not sure what people get out of it to be honest. Obviously it’s not right, and Strava should monitor, but they likely don’t have time or resource to do this.

Whilst it’s nice getting a top 10 or KOM every now and then on a ride, I pay little attention because it’s so inaccurate. I only use Strava to give me an idea of distance and climbing i’ve done in a year.

There’s always something weird about the top of the leaderboards on Strava challenges, sometimes it’s a genuine unit error – there was a guy last year on a climbing challenge who’d managed to climb 8000 metres on his 20Km commute! A look at the profile of his one ride and there was this blip where the altitude went from 200 metres to over 8000.

Looking at this month’s distance challenge then Steve Abrahams who’s in 3rd place and attempting the Year record has 6000 Km. Looking at the profile of the leader, it seems as if he’s only done just under 3000Km for the whole of 2017. I suspect a blip in Strava somewhere for this one.

Thats quite impressive. Clocked up more miles than the two people doing the most miles in the year put together.
Not sure they are cheating though since looking at their profile page it looks a tad more sensible mileage so far this year. So perhaps a bug of some sort.

Also moderation comes from the users, it’s up to others to flag the rides. Part of the social thing.