Only a mild brag, as it's downhill (no chance of me getting a proper one), isn't particularly technical and was back in the day of triple chainrings
However, was just browsing Strava last night and noticed I've got one from 2014 with circa 7.5k attempts from 2.5k people - was surprised
I'm 50 now and break easily, so stopped chasing Strava KOM's a while ago
Genuinely no idea. I had a few of those auto-generated ones that Strava was doing - on routes no one else had recorded anything - and now I'm not a subscriber so I can't even look.
I might still have one on the road up to Cairngorm. I set it when the road was closed and did it the "wrong" way round the one-way system 🙂
About 8 years, descent in Burgundy, I'm a fair bit clear of anyone and it's more a roadie area.
The person I expect to beat it is my lad next time we're there lol
My best is a 1/286 from 2015 on a short, steep downhill bit where timing is notoriously fickle because it's a relatively short segment. Took me a few goes to get it back when I cared about such things, and I was swapping KOMs with a mate every other week. Three days after I got my best time, they put bollards half way down making it almost impossible to beat, so that one is set in stone.
Also have one on the canal in Leeds before they demolished the old path and built another. Unless you're on a speedboat, that one's safe too.
I appreciate that these are both ridiculous, but the whole concept behind Strava segments is too, so I feel quite proud to wear these medals.
I've got a few from 2013 / 2014.
One of them, I used to get regular notifications that it had been not just beaten but absolutely smashed. It turned out that MTBers were parking at the pub (where the KOM started) and then at the end of their ride, they'd stop there for a while for post-ride beers, put the bikes in/on cars and drive off down the road - always a bit of a giveaway when a MTB ride with an average speed of 8mph suddenly averages 22mph up a slight climb!
I was joint first place with Ian Stannard (yes, the former Team Sky pro) on a descent for a long time following a tailwind assisted descent for me. It was beaten a while ago by another pro rider but having me sit there 3rd underneath two WorldTour pros isn't bad going. You do need a massive tailwind (or a motorbike!) as well as a full on sprint to come close to the time that's set and most people won't ever give it full gas down there.
A 15 second one descending some hairpins on tarmac. 26K attempts from 6.5K people. And that wasn't even my best time on it, which got flagged by some jealous roadie, just because I was apparently going at 70mph on it. 🙂
A 4km flat haul through the Lee Valley Park from 10 years ago.
Closely followed by a 7km descent (with 700m drop) into Chatel from 2013. I suspect that might have been a special section from the Passportes that was closed afterwards though.
I worked on getting a KOM for years and finally got it in 2018, a 5 minute climb (well, 4m24 actually 🙂 ). It went last summer, some actual good rider knocked 20s of that time. I'm not sure if I'll get it back this year.
28th May 2011 - Welsh Ride Thing.
A487 Climb
Ride Segment Dolgellau, Gwynedd, United Kingdom
Distance 1.02mi
Avg Grade 8.5%
Lowest Elev 766ft
Highest Elev 1,224ft
Elev Difference 458ft
Climb Category 4
The one I accidentaly got while driving the car.
Haha, just looking at my KOM page again and five of my 12 are just variations on the same descent.
At least it's one of the best at Rivington though - and I got most of them last month on my new bike.
In 2018, when I was ride leading on a LEJOG, someone set that entire day as a segment which (somehow!) I got KOM on. The segment is 113 miles and that exact route is not used any more by the ride. It would take an absolute miracle for anyone to ever find that full segment and ride it so that one is safe.
I've got one along a new road before it was opened to traffic as well so that one is safe. Cyclists can't ride it now; there's a cycle lane just off to one side but far enough away that the GPS knows it's not the same route.
Godlingston/9 barrow down descent on the Purbecks, had it since 2013 though recently updated my fastest time, currently 1st out of 6034 people.
May 13 2012, uphill too. Not sure I could do it again 10 years on!
Have just noticed I lost the random road segment KOM near Ullapool that I earned whilst being chased by a large group at the front of the Ullapool Sportive (I had set off first as had to get home early and all the fast boys must have set off five minutes later and mercilessly chased me down).
Have few local ones that are actually decent segments in their own right that I'm quite proud of, but they all trend towards obscure gravel or twisty unpleasant minor roads that nobody else appears willing to risk the punctures on 😁
Longest standing is my favourite though as it's a reasonable segment very close to Edinburgh, slight downhill so I guess doesn't count but it's still a good length lumpy farm track, requires full commitment on the pedals, and the only reason I got it was because of a big old tailwind and *just* the right bike setup (XC 29er with fast gravel tyres). I didn't even stop when a big dip in the track bounced my phone out of my pocket, had to go back for it after. That's stood for 3 years now and I can see some of local luminaries have tried and fallen short so it could stand for a while longer, or until the next big easterly at least 😎
Running: I have a joint first for a segment on a parkrun course I got in 2015 that has 117,758 attempts by 5,600 people. It's not because I'm very fast (I'm not), I must have just paced that particular part of the run spectacularly optimistically 😀 !
Cycling: nothing very long-standing, but I poached a few busy road descents in Covid with zero traffic that I think will stand the test of time unless someone goes out at 2am.
This isn't in the traffic-dependent category, but I do have a road descent KOM from 2020 that has had 59,964 attempts by 10,682 people.
That time in August 2020 when I beat Sepp Kuss up Mount Lemmon.
Had one from my commuting days, a 44s sprint on a 0.1% downhill. Didn't even know it existed until Strava mentioned it.
The bit that made me smile about it was, I'd done it on my CX bike with 35mm semi slicks and a pannier on the back. The road was frequented by quite a few local club riders, one of which eventually took the KOM by 1 second. I was genuinely surprised it took them so long
That time in August 2020 when I beat Sepp Kuss up Mount Lemmon
Hahaha 🤣
n 2018, when I was ride leading on a LEJOG, someone set that entire day as a segment which (somehow!) I got KOM on.
Ah - pretty sure I also have the KOM on NCN78.
I've still got the KOM for the 2011 Mayhem lap. I think that one is pretty safe.
Oldest is from June 2012, a road segment near me with 6,000 individual attempts on it.
I can't see the Veloviewer stats right now but I'm sure I still have one at Penmachno from about 2014 which has 20,000+ attempts.
No way I'd ever get either nowadays although I still pick up the odd obscure MTB KOM.
July 2018, and I'm really chuffed about it*. Fair enough it's only had 60 attempts by 52 folk as it's an off-piste/unmarked trail in Les Arcs starting between Arcs 1800 and 1600, ending towards the valley floor, but it's an absolute belter of a trail. 4.2km with 629m of descent, 14m 11s and nobody within a minute of me. I'm not even that good a rider and certainly didn't expect a KOM riding out there, especially as I've only ridden it a few times.
* really chuffed as, until I checked 5 mins ago, I didn't know I had any KOMs other than a few climbs locally on my commute 🙂
My proudest one I suppose it's a segment named after me - jawbreaker. I came off and faceplanted a rock, chasing a KOM 🤣
Didn't realise until last night, I have the KOM on the E-bike too (different segment name, as it's an ebike segment)
most of the long-standing KOMs around here are short, in the woods, and obvious GPS glitches. on some its really hard to figure out where the bogus results stop and the proper ones start (singletrack near-ish to fireroads for example) so its hard to get a feel for how quick you really are
Didn’t even know I had any until I checked. I’ve got a few very local gravel ones which don’t really have people chasing dating back to 2015 when I first got my gravel bike and Strava and went record hunting. I’m sure I could beat them now but too much walker / dog traffic to really bother. On Mtb and road I’ve got no chance round here, most segments usually run into the 10s of thousands of riders (Richmond Park, Surrey Hills, Swinley etc) and there’s loads of very fast riders around and I’m happy with top 10-20%.
I’ve got a mate who is a decent level roadie who sometime looks for segments to KOM, but says most of the road ones are done by club riders chain ganging.
'Sir William Hill to Hathersage Station', 4.02km
1 / 13301 riders from 2013,
Along with 'Calver Sough to Hathersage', 6.93km
1 / 9596 riders from same ride in 2013
Regularly beaten by car drivers who ride from Calver I guess and leave Strava on.
Not used Strava in years but Just had a quick look - I still hold 38 from around 2012/13 when I was actually quite good.
I can't see me ever losing my 3 oldest. Two are random mtb race laps from 2012 and it would be really odd for someone to ride them now. The other is a lap of Newcastle's Town Moor but I think there is a fence in the way so you wouldn't naturally go the same way anymore.
A proper one though, made me smile. Its a climb. Not the KOM that ammused me but the ride title - I was riding gravel before it was a thing.
https://www.strava.com/activities/22774871#406647424
22/09/2012 Bellingham Blast Sort of off road cx sportive thing
I have loads of big uphill offroad KOM's dating back to 10 years ago or circa the dawn of the Strav explosion. It amuses me greatly that mostly the only occasions I seem to get those annoying emails is when an Ebikerist goes quicker...and the reason it amuses me is that I'm in my late 40's and have spent half my life with debilitating health problems, and am nowhere near as fit or fast as I was in my 20's/30's. My younger self would have run circles around my current self, so where's all the young fast riders these days? Certainly not in my local area, have they all gone wet or are kids these days only fast downhill?... Obviously anything fast pre-Strava may as well not count.
col de courtlands | Strava Ride Segment in Tavistock, England, United Kingdom
2013. 8s. lost it for a bit when someone reported me so I did it again and then challenged the report.
although there now appears to be a QKOM...
‘Sir William Hill to Hathersage Station’, 4.02km1 / 13301 riders from 2013
Fair play on that one, some big local hitters in the top 10 there.
September 2013, one of the descents in Swinley (shudder). Still 1st out of 37k people.
I can’t imagine I will ever go back to try and better it 😆
Funnily enough, I Was just looking yesterday.
Haldon red 2nd descent (about 1.5km) - 2012 - joint 1st of about 13.5k.
Before they removed them as too dangerous, I was 13th out of 5,482 for the full descent of Sa Calobra in Mallorca which I was pretty pleased with. Averaged 32.3mph for 6.2 miles which included overtaking 2 tour coaches 🙂
My oldest KOM is from July 2013, but it is only 1/48 for an 8.6 mile route so clearly not the most popular route in South Oxfordshire
This one in the Beacons from 2013.
The whole surface of the descent was absolutely prime back then so there's very little chance of it ever being beaten. I did have the KOM for the top section of the descent too but a few people have beaten that since then stopped to look at the dam!
No way I’d ever get either nowadays although I still pick up the odd obscure MTB KOM.
A lot of the ones I've had over the years have been pretty obscure. They never show up on Segment Explorer, you only ever chance across it by riding it and Strava telling you that you've ridden it. Many years ago, I (quite by chance) did a convoluted road loop and when I uploaded it, got a 2nd on some long figure of 8 segment.
It must have been a local rider's regular training loop because he was the only person who'd ever ridden it and he'd obviously created it for his own records. It would never show up on Explorer as it was too long.
Anyway, I went back the next night and rode it again, getting KOM by about 2 or 3 minutes. Still got it and we remain the only two riders who have ever ridden it. Poor guy.
I've lost most of mine, aprt from three I created on routes I ride regularly. Two of those have only ever been attenpted by me, the third has 119 Attempts By 3 People
I held one for about 6 years on a cable car at Les Arcs 🙂 They must have had a power surge that day or something.
If it’s off-road and named after the nearest road then you know it’s an obscure one. I think early days they had an auto-generation function to increase the number of segments.
One from May 2020,the ground was firm, the bracken was low and the army weren't hassling people about riding on "their" land. Its only got 1 attempt this year and is slowly being reclaimed by the woods, so it might be a keeper.
September 2013, one of the descents in Swinley (shudder). Still 1st out of 37k people
Which segment? Looking at some of the times on the DH sections I struggle to believe that the top ones aren’t gps glitches. Just looking one KOM is around 25s to my 45s, which is clearly glitched.
I held the innerleithen pushup path KOM for an incredibly long time- one day I just absolutely smashed up it on my xc bike without really thinking 🙂 The person who took it off me was properly strava-bagging too.
I have a lucky one: on the segment there are two gates that need to be opened. When I got the KoM there just happened to be pedestrians opening each gate as I approached, which was enough for me to get a great time.
Nobody will beat it unless they:
a) have the same luck, or
b) arrange to have mates keeping the gates open for them as they ride through.
Anyway, it's been mine for about 5 years now.
