there's no skill in downhill ridding, lol what an idiot!
there's tons involved I'm off road but even on road it takes both skills and balls to do 40/50mph and around counters, slightest bit of sand / grease anything and its game over! you need to look for and avoid these were possible, you need to balance your weight on the right place so you don't slide out in a sharper comers ect ect! oh so its a KOD not a KOM its still a skill, ask any pro rider they will say the same, I know for a fact I can't descend as fast as a pro rider even if I was twice as for and had the same level of bike!

You guys, if you're taking segments that seriously, you're doing it wrong. Just go out and have some fun. Who cares if it up, down, or flat, just hammer as hard/fast as you can and hope for the best.

Not to judge, but that sounds like a reasonable case for a "hazardous route", if it encourages cyclists to blow through stop signs at speed. In my area there are just a few like that, but its generally avoided - its bad form, and makes everyone look bad. Making segments from stop-to-stop is the easy answer.

It's an office park. That's used as a race course. Can anyone read any more?

You know whats even better, making segments 5'-10' from the stop and 5'-10' before the stop, so people don't blow the first stop sign to get their speed up and have room to stop before they hit the intersection.

Yes, because having performance and training goals is bad...

...says the guy with a Strava link in his sig line.

I never said that...having performance and training goals is a good thing...using strava to obtain those goals is a good thing. I don't mind segment hunting or sniping or whatever, let the fast guys have them...but if you're flagging segments because someone stole your KOM or if you're complaining about downhill or flat segments not being KOM worthy or "wussy" or whatever, it just seems to me that you're taking a social media platform a bit too seriously. That's all.

Fair enough. I agree with that.

Its all good. I don't know you, but I've seen your posts and you seem like a nice/well rounded guy. I wasn't very clear in my original post.

I just started riding in March, I'm not fast, but I'm getting better. Strava has been great for me - almost every person I ride with now, I've met through strava. It lets me keep track of my rides, shoot the **** with new friends, and adds a bit of healthy fun competition. I know several of the guys that go out and hammer segments, thats their interval training...I can respect that. It also means a lot to me when they invite me to go ride with them. For me, thats what strava is all about.

skill + cojones = fast descending

Lacking either might make one dismissive of it.

Depends. Some downhills are like roller derby and don't take much more skill than watching a toy roll away, others have tight corners that separate the men from the boys. It's definitely not true that all descents take a lot of skill.

Also, the key word here is skill. Riding your bike up a hill doesn't take much skill. It takes stamina, fitness, and perseverance, but not skill; a descent full of switchbacks doesn't take a lot of cardio fitness, it takes finess. And this forum likes to focus on the ra ra meat-head mentality you find in the weight room at the gym. So technical descents don't get much love here.

But even a straightforward descent can reward subtle differences in aero position. Which I know is a skill, cause I see people my size walking away from me on non tech descents with some regularity. Despite my best attempts to get aero.

If this course was on regular roads, I would agree with you. But on this course - as I said in the OP:

When I squeezed a few laps into a busy day last Sunday, there was not one single car within a block of me.



ANYWAY - I created a new (identical) segment, and all the performance stats are back

No disagreement, really, from a card-carrying coffin-dodging troll or whatever, except for one thing: people aren't likely to get seriously injured on a climb, unless it makes them blow through a red light or something.

Descending quickly can take a lot of skill, which the average recreational cyclist is not likely to possess. Turning it into a race is asking for serious injury.

Now I'm cool with it. Serious injury is loads fun, to be sure.

The analogy is that anyone can put down some cash and buy a high performance auto, but putting him on a racetrack is just asking for an injury unless he knows how to drive the thing.

Putting someone with a dentisr bike on top of a steep chicane-riddled descent, intent on winning a Strava segment, is just asking for trouble.

Again, I don't want to be a kill-joy. Trouble is gnarly, especially if someone tapes it and posts it on youTube.

take it to A&S, folks

Ha, I remember making that request in post 12. I was called mean and hurtful names.

I'm going to take a wild guess and say that if the descent is worthwhile any dentist and their bike won't have a chance at getting the kom and will likely tap the brakes most of the way down the hill. That doesn't mean the segment should be flagged for being dangerous or isn't worthy of being a segment. It just means that dentist has to ride more.

I think this is true sometimes, but not always. If you're going downhill on a road that's straight as a ruler, and has a decent surface, it's hard to see much chance for injury... Maybe a gust of wind will blow you over, or you'll have some catastrophic failure like your carbon fork asploding, but otherwise you'll just build up speed and lose it on the runout. (Or, in the city, some driver will pull out in front of you.) But if the road is more fun because it has switch backs, giant potholes, etc, then you're right, and you have a good point.

Obviously, the people who work there text and drive. That's dangerous...

ffa

There's lots of these around me and their existance has always bothered me.. I didn't know you could report them, will do so from now on.

I dunno.

How about a 1-2% downhill that's a 3-4 miles long? KOM on that is going to go to someone who can put out a pretty decent effort.

Probably on some day with a 35 mph tailwind, too.

Yeah, I could have gone faster, but I was too busy laughing my ass off. :-D

BTW, to clarify: it honestly is fine for you to do what you want on the streets as long as it don't scare the horses.

And I hate the nanny state.

One might hope appeals to exercise a little common sense out there would not fall upon deaf ears.

But if it doesn't, and deaths due to people devoid of common sense trying to win Strava segments continue to receive publicity, the nannies will come and pass a bunch of stupid laws and/or sue Strava out of existence, and that would be a shame.

Now go on with your bad selves.