When someone takes your strava Kom, do you immediately to try to get it back?

There’s a local climb on strava that is quite popular, and the best time up it has been the same for months. Yesterday I managed to get it..only to be notified tonight that the original owner had claimed it back.

Now I recognise the chaps name, and he’s clearly a far stronger rider than me, leagues ahead judging by his times up another local climb where he is top of a leader board containing over 10000 names.

I just find it odd that he’s gone out of his way to win it back the very next day after he’s lost it. Do folks really care that much about this kind of thing to do that?

Seems you do…

Do folks really care that much about this kind of thing to do that?

Apparently so 🙂

Only one way to find out.

Rent an Ebike and see how far he’s prepared to turn himself inside out to keep it!

Flag it to Strava as cheating.

We have a local roadie that does this to everyone who takes a KOM off him, he’s known locally as “Sir Flagalot”

Seems you do

Well clearly I don’t, as I won’t be making any special effort to get it back..

Posting about it on here doesn’t mean I care about losing a Kom, and certainly not to a much better rider. I just posted the thread as I think it’s rather odd people are remotely protective of them. Especially someone who is clearly good enough to be competing properly.

Rent an Ebike and see how far he’s prepared to turn himself inside out to keep it!

Actually tempted to drive up it next time I’m passing, just to see if he tries to get it back again…😁

Well clearly I don’t

It appears that you clearly do

Uh oh! You lost your KOM! 😡 😆

The above notification on Strava itself and the e-mail sent can really upset some people, it took a while to just let them go when I first joined Strava, now I couldn’t care less.

You can really wind some people up by looking up the Strava segment on https://mywindsock.com , checking the leaderboard and letting them know you can see they got the KOM in a 20mph+ tailwind as a storm came through. 😉

Sadly, https://www.segmentninja.com/map stopped working about a year ago, it would show you which segments were ripe to attack due to the wind direction. 😮

are you sure he’s gone out of his way?

For example, one of my KOMs is on my commute, which I seldom bother recording (and not at all this year). I reckon I could easily take 5 seconds off it now on. I like to think I’m above Strava-one-up-manship but if I’m riding it anyway the next day then probably wouldn’t be able to resist having a crack!

Isn’t it sort of part of the fun of strava (yes, I also race at actual races, but it certainly peps up the training)? I’ve got a handful of local KoMs, and love it when I get the email through telling me someone has put a faster time on one of them. Its an opportunity to get out for a spin and turn myself inside out to improve on what was previously my best effort.

Isn’t it sort of part of the fun of strava

For some people it probably is, others not at all. I use it as a way to record my rides and see if I improve. Honestly couldn’t care less about anybody else.

All the really fast people don’t use Strava

This:

For example, one of my KOMs is on my commute,

and this:

Isn’t it sort of part of the fun of strava

Especially when the change in wind direction is beneficial and the person who stole it off you was on an e-bike (they had to be right?)

then this:

turn myself inside out to improve on what was previously my best effort.

Yes, Thibaut Pinot definitely didn’t use strava up the Tournament today!

Did Alaphilippe ? 😉

Yup, I’ll take it back the next day. Or indeed even that same day.

If possible of course.

There’s a segment on my off-road commute, just 200m of gravel road through an industrial estate onto a sustrans trail out the back of it. Didn’t even realise it was a segment until one day it told me I was 4th along it. So the next day I thought I’d have a go and sure enough, KOM. Within a couple of hours of me uploading it, the original owner had gone out just to ride that section.

So a few days later I got it back, same thing happened. I found it very amusing. It changed hands between us another 3 or 4 times but every time I’d upload a new KOM, he’d be out again within 2hrs. No idea why, it wasn’t exactly a glamorous segment. Oh well, if it made him happy…

In my experience of using strava since it first began is that the people who can’t get Kom’s are the only ones to moan about Kom’s. Within my circle of riding friends that race anything from road, cx, tt, triathlon, xc, enduro and dh we are constantly trying to take each other’s kom’s. We actively go out on rides that use multiple segments as intervals and congratulate/commiserate accordingly. Then wait for the email saying you have lost it because they have gone out to get it back. Most of our local leaderboards usually have the same top 10 in varying orders depending on gradient/length.
It’s not taken seriously and is great for making hard training more fun.
If someone doesn’t like it then there are plenty of other trackers without the social side.

In answer to the op…as I see it it’s not that he cares that much but he was going out tonight anyway and now you’ve just decided his route and why not just try a bit harder as he’s passing through.

I had a KOM on my commute from a few years ago. As an (ahem) older rider I still get days when the legs have it but they are fewer and farther between and motivation is a big factor. I used to spot the segments on my commute and see if I could put in solid efforts on one or two of them every few days.

With a massive weather system driving a gale force westerly I got a notification that my KOM had been beaten by 1 second. I got out my good road bike and specifically went out to get it back. Good road bike had a power meter on it showing an average 687W for 34 seconds and I had the top spot again with a clear margin of 2 seconds.

My commuter bike runs flat pedals and every time set on it would have been carrying a laptop and a change of clothes. Kind of disappointing that clipless, stripped of weight and with a the strongest ever tail wind the difference was 3 seconds. A 687W (average) effort is probably me on one of my best days so if anybody beats it now (four years on) I won’t be likely to challenge again.

If it’s local then yea, why not? It’s one of the best bits of strava for me, a bit of friendly motivation/competition.

Should the op have read ‘People don’t all use strava exactly the same way and for the same reasons that I do. Down with that sort of thing!’?

I will sometimes try if I am on a ride where the segment is and I feel like I could actually take it back but in reality I am unlikely to be able to. Any KoMs I get are already going as fast as I am fit enough to go and as I am now over 50 I am not getting any faster so I am unlikely to beat many of the fastest times I did on segements 6 years ago (KoM or not)

I think KoMs are a thing of the past for me now after having used Strava for 6 or 7 years as I won’t get any now that I didn’t get 7 years ago as there is a difference between age 44 and age 51. I concentrate on my times over a complete loop where I can try an hold a higher average speed over a longer distance and I find over the longer distance the differences are very slight.

Like many areas we’ve a few pro and semi-pro riders around and they feature heavily in the top ten of most segments. I beasted myself on a local segment and got nowhere near the top ten. Then I noticed that a lot of the top ten were on the same day – turned out it was the Brownlee brothers and their mates out on a chain gang and they’d obviously gone for it on that bit!

I prefer to filter the leaderboards to “Following”, at least I know what I’m up against. I’ve had a few KOMs that have been won and lost, in some cases I know the person involved, they’re ten years younger than me and a lot fitter so it’s unlikely I’ll get them back.

It appears that you clearly do

Trust me I really don’t. I just think it’s weird that people are so precious about them.

Unofficial grace period, certainly for mates if they get a KOM – of a week.

Then do it.

What is best in Strava?

(To) Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of the women!

I have precisely 1 KOM, which I share with a mate. It’s an unpopular 30s ish section of turns through a grassy slope…Given that I live in an MTB honeypot area, where being in the top 10% of times often means a 90th place or so, you soon learn perspective about leader-boards.

I just think it’s weird that people are so precious about them

Do you really though? I mean you cared enough about the segment to have been monitoring it for months to know time had been the same. And you’ve done a bit of Strava research into your ‘competition’ looking at their other segments. You’re miffed enough to post a topic about it.

Lets be honest you aren’t exactly a huge leap away from donning a skin suit and trying to win it back 😜

You can really wind some people up by looking up the Strava segment on https://mywindsock.com , checking the leaderboard and letting them know you can see they got the KOM in a 20mph+ tailwind as a storm came through. 😉

Can you really ? Or would it just mark the perpetrator as a weapons grade **** ?

Still baffles me that people get so high and mighty about ‘not caring’ about segments. Fine, but don’t get all sanctimonious because other people enjoy a bit of pointless fun, it’s all just cycling! And who cares if the truly fast guys don’t use Strava, that’s like saying I’m not allowed to be pleased with a half decent result in a local CX race, because Matthieu Van der Poel exists…

I have to turn myself inside out, and usually with a tailwind, to get any local KOMs, so there would normally be no point going back to one straight after losing it.

The only KOM I’m slightly proud of is an hour(ish) long road-gravel-road section which should really be more popular than it is. Neither me nor the KOM-tradee appear to have properly beasted it yet because we’re able to take a minute or two out of each other every time. Plus it’s too remote to just nip back to each time I lose it, so I’ll have an extra two or three months training in my legs by the time I lose it again!

Not being a roadie and not being a particularly spectacular mountain biker I’ll probably never find myself anywhere near a KOM but I do like to see how I’m doing against people I follow, it’s a bit of fun. Surely the KOMs are just an extension of that, I doubt I’d ever get wound up about it but it would be a bit of a laugh trying to win them back.

You do seem to care a little from your post.

No, because I don’t have any uphill KOMs any more and you don’t get notifications on the DH ones.

And going straight out to reclaim a DH one would probably result in accident and injury. Or a flight/drive to France or Scotland.

Round here a top 10% still leaves you in four figure placings. I was chuffed with a top 500 the other day!

On the other hand up in Yorkshire I had quite a few KOM’s. Doesn’t make the idea pointless but does show it to be a bit of willy waving and not much else.

We’re all capable of mentally calibrating our results against the size and quality of the competition.

Not huge rider numbers on some of the local trails here but I was pleased to get the same time as a former WC downhiller and 1s behind a current EWS pro this week.

Ok I did just mention that, but to me it’s more about the internal confidence that good results bring – as opposed to “willy waving”. Knowing you’re riding pretty well for once, helps you carry on doing so.

Well, that’s the plan anyway.

Where I run there is a small climb I go up and I got KOM one day. The following day the person who lost it went out and got it back.

I actually thought, what a very sad person he must be to have specifically gone out of his way to claim it back.

I don’t have many KOMs but neither do I have any alerts set up, so I’d never know if anyone went faster than my best time

I have a few KOMS, but age is catching up, so if someone takes them I’m not going to get them back. There are plenty of benign off road sections around my way which was good for KOM attempts, but in the last few years off-road roadies, or commonly known as gravel bikers have been swarming all over them.

Its actually made me head off the gravel roads and find lots of “paths” to ride which is more fun.

I did grab a KOM earlier this year, only to find someone had got the same time as me on the same day. A couple of days later he went and took the KOM specifically, but has lost it again to riders that are far faster then the both of us.

Chris Rea had an insight into Strava KOMs before they even existed…

😉

I have a few KOMs, including a few individual cat4 climbs and some cat3/4 combos. It definitely does not make me a god on a road bike, it simply means that none of the many local riders far better than I have not given them a “proper” effort or even ridden that precise route, with or without tailwind.

From here on in it’s most likely to be somebody on an E-bike whether road or MTB….on a ride out on a nice sunny day on the road bike last week in moderately hilly terrain 100% of other riders I saw out were on e-bikes, range of ages – this was the first time thats happened  (which means I saw 5 riders on a 3 hour ride, but thats normal). Within a few years Strava Climb KOM’s will be a pointless activity.

I lost one recently to someone on the road next to the trail. The person was doing the iron man I can’t really flag it can I?
Oh and strava sent 15 emails saying I’d lost my kom