KOMDefender - Do I flag this ride?

[Mr Purple]

Imagine the worldwide moaning and gnashing of teeth the day Strava becomes completely irrelevant!

Still maintain collecting KOMs will one day have all the kudos of collecting Beanie Boos or MySpace followers. And that's from someone who collects KOMs.

[warthog1]

Just checked. I do have a handful of obscure ones and some shared, as in a bunch.
'12,'13 and '14 though.

[ironhanglider]

I had to look it up, I have 4 KOMs, 3 of them with 215 riders or less. I have one with 2800 riders, that one was at 66km/h and I will admit to scaring myself a little on one corner of that one.

Cheers,

Cameron

[Mr Purple]

So the morons have comprehensively taken over the regular 'Fulgaz Weekly Challenges'.

Last week's highlights were a guy who rode a 43:51, and then said he did it as a 40:32 (might want to make your Strava profile private if that's your plan, mate) and now there's a couple from Massachusetts who speed along at 44km/hr on the flats averaging about 3.5W/kg (him) and 3W/kg (her). I'd assume they just have their coefficient of drag turned way down.

I'm done. Bit of a shame because it was a good motivator there for a while. Have hit unsubscribe from the group.

[Mr Purple]

As a follow-up to that one I finally buckled and attempted this week's challenge.

Flattish course - 277W for a 37.5km/hr average. Mr Ego above did a 40.3km/hr average with 257W. He's about 6kg heavier than I am. I barely beat his partner who did 36.6km/hr with 195w.

Genius. The board moderator knows full well what's going on; he messaged me after I posted my time. He's just not sure how to address it.

On the positive side, it was good motivation to get back close to FTP after a series of niggling issues, so it's probably done the job.

[Mr Purple]

Lost five segments in two days to e-bikes this weekend.

It’s becoming endemic!

The delivery riders are the worst. Up and down every street in a few kilometre radius doing 50km/hr up all the hills. Not sure why they post to Strava, wondering if it’s a mileage/tax deduction thing.

[Retrobyte]

Not sure why they post to Strava, wondering if it’s a mileage/tax deduction thing.

Yep - probably easier than keeping a spreadsheet of their kms

[stevenaaus]

Not sure why they post to Strava, wondering if it’s a mileage/tax deduction thing.

Yep - probably easier than keeping a spreadsheet of their kms

So, how hard can it be for strava to keep abuse like this from the leaderboards ?
Doing simple things like this should be their priority. I pay them $80 a year, but there's no way i can request "No challenges in my dashboard."
Money grabbing ****. I'm out until they see some sense, or at least offer a cheaper subscription offer.

[Mr Purple]

To make it worse their notification system has been broken for about three months.

I have 318 KOMs currently. Fortunately I don’t take them seriously enough to sift through the list and find out who’s driven/e-biked up one every time that number drops. That number seems to just fluctuate randomly.

I agree. There is an autoflag for absolutely ridiculous efforts but too often I’m looking at estimated power and thinking ‘this guy could win the tour if this is real’. How hard is it to filter those ones out?

[jasonc]

There is an autoflag for absolutely ridiculous efforts but too often I’m looking at estimated power and thinking ‘this guy could win the tour if this is real’. How hard is it to filter those ones out?

i've said time and time again, limit koms/qoms to those with bike computers/proper GPS devices. that will remove 99% of the fud (i.e. phone strava users)

[vbplease]

or another idea.. leave the kom/qom as it is, to let the monkeys make a joke of.. then set up another kom/qom leaderboard under strava's paid subscription which is limited to rides recorded with a proper gps unit, power, heart rate and maybe another algorithm to weed out particular results which are significantly outside someone's long-term power curve.

[Mr Purple]

Well, in a way it is sort of self policing. If you take out one of the major climbs in Brisbane you're going to get flagged if you're not running a HRM/Power Meter/people don't recognise your name.

It's the stupid little segments (i.e. the ones I hold) that constantly get taken out by cars and e-bikes.

I think you've got to be careful not to take it too seriously though. As I've mentioned before on here I've had multiple rides flagged by one particular manchild who was unable to mentally cope with the fact I was faster than him on a few, very specific, segments.

In the end I dealt with this the mature way by a) first blocking his account, and b) absolutely obliterating him. He's often selling very high end secondhand gear on a local Facebook group and thus far I've managed to avoid asking him 'is this faster than an old guy on an entry level road bike?'

[warthog1]

Well, in a way it is sort of self policing. If you take out one of the major climbs in Brisbane you're going to get flagged if you're not running a HRM/Power Meter/people don't recognise your name.

It's the stupid little segments (i.e. the ones I hold) that constantly get taken out by cars and e-bikes.

I think you've got to be careful not to take it too seriously though. As I've mentioned before on here I've had multiple rides flagged by one particular manchild who was unable to mentally cope with the fact I was faster than him on a few, very specific, segments.

In the end I dealt with this the mature way by a) first blocking his account, and b) absolutely obliterating him. He's often selling very high end secondhand gear on a local Facebook group and thus far I've managed to avoid asking him 'is this faster than an old guy on an entry level road bike?'

That's a pity

[Mr Purple]

Just got 6 'Uh-Oh' messages on Strava from a guy who rode 234km over 15 hours, finishing at 11pm at night on the Gold Coast, and set 24 KOMs with a maximum speed of 121km/hr.

He has a total of 1100km on Strava with 0 followers.

Think I can safely flag that one!

[Mr Purple]

Pretty sure there's one guy deliberately driving up my KOMs. He does his ride at about 15km/hr and then spends a good 5-10 minutes deliberately driving up and down weird combinations of back streets in my area at 40-50km/hr.

It's blooming annoying, because for some reason I never get an 'Uh-oh' notification when he does it. Just end up five KOMs lighter and have to go look at his account to work out what he's done this time.

[Mr Purple]

Probably as good a place as any, but did anyone else realise Strava just added back in 'top 10' lists to both the app and online programs?

I really didn't need that. I just found out I'm just off a whole bunch of KOMs I didn't even know existed until now.

Having said that I have 335 KOMs and only 395 top 10s. So that's a pretty decent conversion rate!

[jasonc]

https://road.cc/content/news/strava-aut ... ies-301759

[Mr Purple]

A few reminders of the 'fake sugar rush' of virtual KOMs this week.

Lost three (fortunately I don't really care). The first was a guy with no real world rides who rides around at 500W (and <100bpm) everywhere, the second was a guy in the 95-105kg range on Strava who would have needed to weigh 50kg to do it with his power, the third was a guy who drove home from a real world ride and then uploaded it as a 'virtual ride'.

The bit that's really annoying me are a couple of reasonably strong riders in the 'Fulgaz' group who openly admit they turn down their coefficient of drag to win the weekly challenges. I can still beat them about 90% of the time (except when it's really flat) but I have no idea why the group moderators don't just ban them. Ah well, it's all good training!

[stevenaaus]

Strava is a technical mess. Just unsubscribe until they get the message. IE - Fix your bugs and introduce tiered subscriptions, not pander to the idiot "more features" brigade.

[find_bruce]

Strava has started adding nonsense like "Carbon Saved 2.10 kg CO2" - compared to what?? I figure it's as ridiculous as the power figures it makes up or that I'm the local legend for riding on roads other people are too smart to use

[g-boaf]

A few reminders of the 'fake sugar rush' of virtual KOMs this week.

Lost three (fortunately I don't really care). The first was a guy with no real world rides who rides around at 500W (and <100bpm) everywhere, the second was a guy in the 95-105kg range on Strava who would have needed to weigh 50kg to do it with his power, the third was a guy who drove home from a real world ride and then uploaded it as a 'virtual ride'.

The bit that's really annoying me are a couple of reasonably strong riders in the 'Fulgaz' group who openly admit they turn down their coefficient of drag to win the weekly challenges. I can still beat them about 90% of the time (except when it's really flat) but I have no idea why the group moderators don't just ban them. Ah well, it's all good training!

Wasn’t Fulgaz supposed to be the escape from dodgy fake Zwift behaviour?

So it’s not any better.

I use Fulgaz sometimes just to ride up a big mountain on my own. No idea about groups or other riders to be honest.

[Mr Purple]

Wasn’t Fulgaz supposed to be the escape from dodgy fake Zwift behaviour?

So it’s not any better.

I use Fulgaz sometimes just to ride up a big mountain on my own. No idea about groups or other riders to be honest.

The advantage on Fulgaz is at least it's a small enough community you can instantly work out who's cheating. In Zwift it's hard to work out whether every second person has TDF winning W/kg or is just weight doping.

The disappointment with Fulgaz is that there's often not the technical knowledge for others to recognise who's cheating. There's a guy thta often beats me in the weekly challenges that's been there long enough that everyone assumes he's a fast rider. Going by his previous comments he has his coefficient of drag turned way down, but it's impossible to accuse him of that because he mysteriously doesn't have an actual Strava account. As in this guy that often puts in performances over 5.5W/kg equivalent for 30 minutes plus doesn't have a Strava account. Interesting that.

I was flagged myself this week. Gravel ride of 57km at 24.1km/hr average with a HRM and two photos of the bike did it on largely in a state forest with no vehicle access where I took 5 KOMs off two people. Flagged as a vehicle.

Not sure why someone would do that. One of the people I beat gave me kudos so presumably not him, and the other is a top level mountain biker with over 1000 KOMs so I don't imagine he'd do that. Having said that I did have a lot of respect for a local rider around the corner from me who holds a lot of the local KOMs until I found out he was often 5th of 6th at the time he did it but mysteriously holds them now. In other words he just flags anyone faster than him.

Gave it the 'no, it's fine' with a very pointed comment in the descriptor. If it gets flagged again I'll start blocking people. It's a fine line - you really don't want to take this too seriously but it's annoying to have a solid effort declared ineligible because someone is a petulant manchild.

[g-boaf]

5.5w for 30 minutes? Is that all?

Try 6.0w/kg for 4 hours from some little old rider smashing all the KOMs at better than world tour pro rider pace. That’s the usual in Zwift.

I report them as Zwift wants.

Occasionally I’m with a fast group of riders who have the fitness to drop some of these types with dodgy power. They work together put the power down and real power wins.

[Mr Purple]

It's finally happened - someone took out a bunch of my KOMs by simple virtue of being a lot faster than I am.

I can now see why some of my rides get flagged. I got the notifications and saw the power readings and HR and thought 'really?' but recognised the name so I know it's legitimate.

Crazy stuff. Two hour ride with 1200m elevation from a maximum 75kg rider with a weighted average power of 339W. He took out a 520m 6.7% climb I've held for years by two seconds at 32.2km/hr and 735W. I can hold that W/kg for that long but because I'm 14kg lighter will never get anywhere near that fast.

All power metered and HR monitored so definitely legit. The bike was allegedly a dual suspension mountain bike so I'm not 100% sure on that part but even more impressive if so. Bravo dude. Gave the thumbs up because honestly I'm not getting any of those back - if it's any consolation he's about 20 years younger than me.

[jasonc]

A dualie? With a motor maybe? The specialized levo dualies have a pm.....