The Strava

The Strava App (or website) has become pretty popular amongst road and mountain bikers. It is a good way to log your miles and the website has turned me on to some big hills in the area that I was unaware of, and that's about it.

The one feature that I have come to dislike is the King of the Mountain (KOM). At first I thought that it was cool that I could "race" against local strangers and compare times, but this has proven to be almost pointless. Sure, I am the "King" of this hill or that hill, but that only includes the small group of Strava users. I have never finished in the top 30 of a big (100+ people) race so how could I even begin to think that I am the fastest up a particular hill? I've also never been in a true road race and if I was I bet I'd be even further back once I reached my expected category.

I also don't like that people make downhill KOM's, or even flats for that matter. You can't go on the website without seeing orange lines all over the map. The other thing that gets me is when people make the same hill into several different KOM's. Take this hill in South Saint Paul for example:

There are 3 different routes, all up the same hill that vary by .1 mile. Are the users who created the 2nd and 3rd segments bitter that they didn't get the KOM so they tweaked it slightly so that they would?

I think that Strava needs to make a few tweaks to its KOM formula. In order to create a KOM the route should have to exceed a formula of distance vs. grade. I am sure this is how Cat. 4 and above climbs are measured, but they could just drop the scoring down a bit.

I'll still continue to use Strava to track my miles and so that I have the ability on group rides to yell at people to go faster because they are "Screwing up my Strava time." But as far as the KOMs go, I'll just assume that there is a non-Strava user who commutes to work and crushes my times on a daily basis.