I don't normally take too much notice of who's got Strava KOMs, partly because I have no serious expectation of getting any KOMs or even top 10s - I live near London and about 50 yards from the 2012 Olympic road race course, so pretty much every segment within 50 miles of me has thousands if not tens of thousands of recorded riders, including plenty of pros. If I can get in the top few percent I count it as a decent result. And partly because I'm normally a pretty casual Strava user - it's fun seeing what friends and training partners are up to, and occasionally seeing which of the guys I ride with gets bragging rights on local hills, but it's not something I spend a lot of time on.
But the other day I set a PR on a local hill that I was quite proud of (55th out of over 5000), had a look at the top 10, started doing a bit more digging and basically concluded that most if not all of them are fixing their GPX files. I've got an FTP of about 4.0 W/kg right now so while I'm far from being a pro I'm not exactly a sluggard, and I did this hill in perfect conditions (dry, tailwind, fresh after a rest day and with an easy ride up until that point), and went absolutely full throttle up it, was spent at the top. I averaged 19.9mph which I was pretty pleased with, top 10 were all in the 29-36mph range. I figured they must be some pretty amazing riders so went to have a look as I always find it interesting what kind of training better riders than me are doing. Only to discover they're not amazing riders at all. There was a lady whose lifetime Strava mileage is <1000 miles averaging about 12mph. A guy in his 50s who judging by his picture is carrying 30-40lbs of excess weight and does most of his rides at 13-15mph. About the only just about plausible time was from a Cat 2 rider doing 29mph who does at least clock >10,000 miles per year, but even that one is a bit suspicious given that he normally records at least one out of HR, cadence and power, but on this particular day seemed to have taken all the sensors off his bike apart from the Garmin itself (not a single one of the top 10 had any out of HR, cadence and power in fact).
These weren't cases of riders accidentally leaving their Garmins on after they'd got in their car - their rides both before and after the suspicious segments looked normal. They weren't GPS glitches that they just hadn't noticed either - most of them had called their rides something like "crushing the X hill KOM!!!" and/or were exchanging comments with their friends about how awesome it was. Are people actually that sad that they would go to all the time and effort to fix their GPX files just so they can pretend they have a KOM that anybody who knows anything about cycling must know is false? How easy is it to even do that, have you got to go through the whole file manually adjusting time stamps or are there tools out there that do it for you? I know there are some very strange people out there, this was just a particular brand of strangeness that really got to me for some reason...
But the other day I set a PR on a local hill that I was quite proud of (55th out of over 5000), had a look at the top 10, started doing a bit more digging and basically concluded that most if not all of them are fixing their GPX files. I've got an FTP of about 4.0 W/kg right now so while I'm far from being a pro I'm not exactly a sluggard, and I did this hill in perfect conditions (dry, tailwind, fresh after a rest day and with an easy ride up until that point), and went absolutely full throttle up it, was spent at the top. I averaged 19.9mph which I was pretty pleased with, top 10 were all in the 29-36mph range. I figured they must be some pretty amazing riders so went to have a look as I always find it interesting what kind of training better riders than me are doing. Only to discover they're not amazing riders at all. There was a lady whose lifetime Strava mileage is <1000 miles averaging about 12mph. A guy in his 50s who judging by his picture is carrying 30-40lbs of excess weight and does most of his rides at 13-15mph. About the only just about plausible time was from a Cat 2 rider doing 29mph who does at least clock >10,000 miles per year, but even that one is a bit suspicious given that he normally records at least one out of HR, cadence and power, but on this particular day seemed to have taken all the sensors off his bike apart from the Garmin itself (not a single one of the top 10 had any out of HR, cadence and power in fact).
These weren't cases of riders accidentally leaving their Garmins on after they'd got in their car - their rides both before and after the suspicious segments looked normal. They weren't GPS glitches that they just hadn't noticed either - most of them had called their rides something like "crushing the X hill KOM!!!" and/or were exchanging comments with their friends about how awesome it was. Are people actually that sad that they would go to all the time and effort to fix their GPX files just so they can pretend they have a KOM that anybody who knows anything about cycling must know is false? How easy is it to even do that, have you got to go through the whole file manually adjusting time stamps or are there tools out there that do it for you? I know there are some very strange people out there, this was just a particular brand of strangeness that really got to me for some reason...