Worse is pros motorpacing and taking KOMs.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

This is the future


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoUmgMhn2iY

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The more people I encounter the more I love my cats.

And grabbed a KOM at the beach :-)

I lost my 20654 on Torrey Pines. Game on!

It actually makes perfect sense. King of the Mountain is about 1 person being the fastest over a given distance, not your team against my individual best effort.

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The more people I encounter the more I love my cats.

KOMs are really a nonsense. The only way they would make sense as a measure of anything is if they were considered TTs, only to be claimed if you're not drafting. Even then weather would remain a big factor, and blatant cheating would remain virtually impossible to prevent.
Group riding is a big part of what road racing is about, but this is not road racing. This is a meaningless unqualified statistic for a few people to use to feed their egos.

I agree that KOMs are kind of pointless, and even mentioned so in another Strava thread about them. Riders who brave the hurricanes and tornadoes aren't technically cheating, but IMO 1 of the most accurate ways to tell who is the fastest is watts/kg, which I don't think Strava has. At least not the free version. Since everyone is using the wind to set KOMs, that is just 1 of the things no one can control so we gotta accept that. I guess some people think that their buddies and/or partners turning off Strava then pulling them along to snag a KOM is some sort of accomplishment. But the last time I checked my Strava account only my name was on it. I don't know. Maybe other peeps have a group version.

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The more people I encounter the more I love my cats.

Which Circle of Hell should all this KOM nonsense be allied to then? I'd say "Fourth"

First Circle: People Who Fudge Their Training Logs
Second Circle: Bike Thieves
Third Circle: Race Bandits, Bib-Swappers, Bib-Copiers, and Those Who Take TWO Finishers Medals
Fourth Circle: Dopers, Course Cutters, and Other Assorted Cheats [may include people having extramarital affairs with a Coach or Running Partner, but not always]
Fifth Circle: Gamblers, Sportswriters, and People Who Make up Charity Scams
Sixth Circle: Sports Agents
Seventh Circle: Team Owners
Eighth Circle: League Commissioners
Ninth Circle: Al Davis ... Alone for now, but saving spaces for Jerry Jones, OJ, Joe Buck, The Krzyzewski/Pitino/Calipari Triumvirate and Roger Goodell

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

Strong start, weak finish...

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" I take my gear out of my car and put my bike together. Tourists and locals are watching from sidewalk cafes. Non-racers. The emptiness of of their lives shocks me. "
(opening lines from Tim Krabbe's The Rider , 1978

Strava has 3 rules for segments: No vehicles, no using a different type of activity to grab KOMs, and no KOMs due to bad GPS.

That's it. Drafting is fine, get over it.

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808 > NYC > PDX > YVR
2024 Races: Taupo

Well it accomplishes getting the KOM. There's that.

And your point is disconnected from the very nature of bike racing.

Going as fast as possible is the point (when that's the goal). Typically that's done in a group. That's not "pathetic", that's the entire foundation of the sport.

It's not a problem Strava needs to solve. It's a problem slow people that want a particular KOM need to solve.

So go get your own team.

Or just get faster.

Cycling =/= individual time trials.

Sorry if this is news for you.

Everyone's Hell is a little different; that's mine

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

Slow people need a group to beat fast people. Go out with your Court (who is doing all the real work) and grab all the KOMs you like if that makes you feel as if you accomplished something. Those of us who see you latching on know what's really going on.

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The more people I encounter the more I love my cats.

No one in my Saturday group ride is making a living off bike racing. So, yes the person that rides the coattails of others all day long is pathetic. I don’t really care. I’m in it for the exercise. So, I would rather work harder within the same ride and reap the benefits of doing so than declare myself “fast” by leaching onto other’s speed. But, there are obviously many people that act as exactly as you describe. Whatever floats your boat.

Like I wrote to rubik, if latching on to fast people to carry you through 90% of the ride so you can sprint to the end makes you moist, go ahead on then. Don't expect admiration from those of us who do all of our own work ourselves though.

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The more people I encounter the more I love my cats.

Anyone expecting admiration from strava records is just sad. As is caring enough about a KOM/CR to look into it enough to find drafting is the reason.

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808 > NYC > PDX > YVR
2024 Races: Taupo

I think one of the best things you can do to try to get the results you prefer to see on segments (from other people) is to carefully design the segment. The other thing you can do is to be judicious about which segments you really care about.

If you don't like pace line segment results, design the segment to deter that. Then don't care about segments along major group ride or team routes. That's their normal territory. They likely group ride that thing all the time.

Either way, apply the 20% power figure for TT anyway to likely competitors. Even pros, for 400w for an hour on road bike that would up the ante to 500w for an hour if you put that 400w into a TT bike. Who's going to paceline 500w for an hour? Solo rider can still win.

If you want a TT that won't get pacelined, dog-leg the start off of a little neighborhood street. Or dog-leg the ending into a neighborhood street that would ruin a group ride route.

The one thing I've seen a couple times local to me is a pro of some kind is in town for some reason or another. Goes out on a ride. Then proceeds to gobble up 5 to 10 "mere mortal" KOMs. I'm not talking the local known KOMs that are pretty popular. I'm talking about going out and tossing out 500w for a couple minutes in the local neighborhood where there's only 50 people on the leaderboard. Probably all living in that neighborhood. Good job, you beat everyone on the segment "Bob from accounting's last mile home" by 3 minutes on a 5 minute segment. Such an achievement.

It's not news to me. Ever since I was little I saw sneaky little ways slow people would do to try and win races. At first it was trivial stuff like cutting corners, you know, shit kids do when they think no one will know. Then they do other sneaky little things like trying to block others, pull on their arms, hang their elbows out, not keeping their lane... shit like that.
Cycling does the same. They get a team of riders to pull a sprinter to a good position to sprint from, and even go so far as to hang their arms out, block other riders from a good position, and recently, not keep their lane to send other racers into the stands.
Nah, I'd rather ride alone.
And since this is a triathlon forum where many of the races are non drafting and more of an individual sport, not a cycling forum, I figured there would be a bit more pride in a person's individual ability.
Go ahead on though braddah. Get all up in that ass you stud muffin.

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The more people I encounter the more I love my cats.

You're taking Strava *waaay* too seriously.

If you like pure individual effort, then target steep climbs where drafting doesn't really help.

Also you might take a look at GPSRace.cc. It also doesn't explicitly ban drafting, but it is a neat alternative to KOMs.

Since you can create your own "Races" in GPSRace, you might be able to create your own rules for a specific race.

You can call yours "Slug's Get-Off-My-Damn-Lawn No Drafting No Fun Race"

Also your sig line is completely unsurprising to me. :)

I would have used "pride" instead of admiration, but there is no pride in getting sucked to the front by domestiques.

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The more people I encounter the more I love my cats.

Way I see it, he can still get them. TT bike still is a huge equalizer. It's just not a super popular hobby in the US, and not everyone rides their tri or TT bike balls to the wall downhill and around corners like they do in pro TT's. Even if you're weak, riding it like you stole it is worth tangible time.

The lap record for the flatter local RR is just shy of 28mph for the P/1/2 race. That's about the WORST situation for a local trying for a solo segment time. Going against a P/1/2 category on a pretty flat race course. 28mph might be a stretch for most solo on a TT bike, but it's not out of the realm of possibility at all. We've got locals doing around 27mph on similar routes for a Covid segment TT contest on only like 260w. I'd bet 310 to 320w for 30min would do it. That's not unreasonable at all for a road race segment.

You didn't see what I wrote about KOMs in another thread or this one, and even how I think they are a crock due to all the drafting, E-bikes, how those who have the schedule or balls to ride in a hurricane, or how even a watt/kg comparison is more accurate on who is fast. KOMs are simply a time for me to strive for to help me get faster. 1 ride I got 32 KOMs, big frigging deal. Anyone, including a lady with a higher watt/kg ratio would have made me look silly if she rode the same route at the same time. Only 4 of my followers have ever met me in person and they also know KOMs are a crock. So, I am not taking KOMs as seriously as you think. But what I am doing, I am doing them by myself, under conditions anyone else could have ridden at the same time.

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The more people I encounter the more I love my cats.