A serious Question on Strava, Why?
 

First of all, I absolutely Love Strava, I am so addicted that I have to upload my rides within 30 min of stopping. Strava is, and always will be a training tool. A damn good one at that! But a Facebook for cycling, it is still a tool.

I never want to get a email telling me that my freinds rode and I didn't. One perk of Strava is that it displays all of your training information, "AND" compares that information to other riders.

When you see that another rider can ride over the same area that you just did, but he or she did it 1 min faster, it kind of makes you want to train harder and ride harder so that you can now equal, or better that time. It makes me!

Now to my question. Strava has something called King Of the Mountain, (KOM). This is a very prestigous. It shows that you have rode and trained to be the best that you can be, over a certain segment or ride. In turn, it makes other riders train harder to get that elusive KOM, which makes you train even harder to keep it. A endless cycle that helps everyone.

Now, someone tell me how can another person on Strava, can flag a ride (remove it) that has never even rode it? How can someone who doesn't even live in the state, flag a ride? How can just one person, flag a ride? How can someone who is in the top ten of that segment for a year, all of a sudden flag the ride?

Do you get what I am eluding too? If you ride at an average of 12mph and I ride at an average of 18mph, And that is an average for flats, hills, sprints and downhills combined, (average)? Why do you flag a ride, because you can? Because you don't want to get up at 4am, ride in the rain and the cold, day in, and day out. Training endlessly to get better. Making yourself suffer over and over, so that someone can plop themself down in front of a screen with a donut and a soda and hit enter on the flag icon?

I try to keep my pace at 22mph, I ride alone, I ride alot, I ride hills, I love downhills, Headwind is my freind, I watch what I eat, and I suffer! In one night, someone flagged 8 of my KOM's, all for the same hill! WHY!!!? I have had those KOM's since 2012. Why now?

I am now pissed, and I hate to admit it, a little depressed. I am mad, I want to find them, I want to hurt them. I will get all of those KOM's back! I have others, but to wipe out a whole hill is a ******* move!

Why does Strava allow one person flags, allow people to flag segments from other states? Allow people to flag segments that they have competed on? and now because they can't beat it, flag it?

:popcorn

;)

Oh, were those your KOM's? Sorry 'bout that mate. Was just kinda drinking and flagging away that other night. ;)

Flagging was introduced as a way of removing the incentive to ride hazardously in dangerous areas.

As for getting upset about fake internet racing....you can solve that by going to your local crit and paying the fee, signing the waiver and pinning a number on. Turns out real performance and races aren't achieved through uploads.

I was looking for the [Sarcasm] [/Sarcasm] open and close brackets. Is this for real.

:deadhorse:

Yep! :thumb: (I can't believe the things that people get upset about :rolleyes:)

psimet is right though. If you really care about performance like this, you should race. Best time on a certain route doesn't mean much when so many variations can go into it. But winning during the same conditions and route at the same time, that's more definitive, you were the best rider that day. Plus racing will add some strategy and thinking.

And since strava doesn't require you to prove your times, doesn't mean much. Those uploads can be edited and fudged. I think strava should require you to upload video verification so someone can verify the entire distance if they want to question it. And for people who care that much about uploading data and buying equipement to do so, I imagine a camera and video upload wouldn't be much more to ask.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH6YqAMKxD4

Fixed all that for you.

This is one of the hundreds of reasons why Strava is stupid.

I think a lot of the KOMs, around here at least, come down to who went out and rode the segment on the day that the tailwinds were the strongest.

^^beat me to it. The tailwind must be stronger where you are...

Yeah, but then you end up hanging out with elitist d-bags who think their version of cycling is only one that is real.

Oh yeah, and I think this is the best Strava feature ever.

The stoopdnis is high, in this one.

People are being assaulted by semi-automatic poultry and you worry about THIS?

You should email strava and ask for the little Pro Icon in your profile picture so that noone will contest your 22 mph uphill KOM's

You can set the segment to "private", for your training purposes, and I'm pretty sure that no one can flag them.

:roflmao2:

I'm pretty sure strava causes more stress than any real benefit that comes with it.

Someone can flag a segment as dangerous. If the hill that was flagged had hidden driveways or required bombing down it to a stop sign, it's very well possible that someone found it to be dangerous and flagged it.

If you don't feel this was justified, you can email strava and discuss it with him.

Also, a flagged segment or a lost KOM really doesn't affect your training, you can still ride your bike. Go make some other segments and work on those.

I enjoy Strava, but almost every segment in my area was won with a strong tailwind or a group of people working together. Almost all are unattainable by just riding hard. Which is fine, but I've worked much harder for some of my top 10 finishes than some of my past KOMs.

Because this belongs in one of the average speed threads in the 41 :p

one of a number of stupid things that people do for kom's.


also, why does everyone say 41? what does that mean**********??

It's the highest speed anyone on the road forum has attained. If you beat it, we will change the reference number.

You will need to prove it by posting a strava ride, of course.

I still remember when this was the 33.

Wow, lots of Strava hate here.

The question was about why others can flag an entire ride, not a segment.

This feature allows other Strava users to remove rides from the leaderboards when the ride has obviously bad data, such as when the end of the ride is actually in a car on the drive home and the user forgot to turn off the app.

If your ride is flagged, don't cry, because Strava gives you a way to fix the problem and then notify them that it's fixed, and then they'll unflag it.

I see I have to copyright my posts 'round here now.... :)

Before there was a SEO friendly URL, the forum URL was 41. Bikeforums.net/41 or something like that. I didn't know the 41 was based on highest speed attained by a rider though.

I also think it's moronic that Pros are destroying KOMs set by amateurs. It's really dumb considering they have actual real competitions to determine who is the best.