Do you care about your KOMs?

I don't care. There are too many bogus KOMs. Having a Garmin 520 where you have Live KOM tracking showed me this.

I was 15 seconds in front of the leaders pace on a local KOM. 100 feet from the finish, suddenly the leader is done ? Makes no sense. Bogus.
 
@JDurk- anything in front of slimm is good stuff🙂 Only time I finish ahead of him is when he dnf's😉
 
jShort said:
I don't care. There are too many bogus KOMs. Having a Garmin 520 where you have Live KOM tracking showed me this.

I was 15 seconds in front of the leaders pace on a local KOM. 100 feet from the finish, suddenly the leader is done ? Makes no sense. Bogus.
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Some of the bogus times is due to Gps errors. So say your gps is pulling points that are -50' (with the testing we have done at work using survey grade gps, we have seen up to 150' error) feet from your actually location but as your approach the end of the segment, it grabs a point +50', boom, 100' gained in a second.
 
jShort said:
I don't care. There are too many bogus KOMs. Having a Garmin 520 where you have Live KOM tracking showed me this.

I was 15 seconds in front of the leaders pace on a local KOM. 100 feet from the finish, suddenly the leader is done ? Makes no sense. Bogus.
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or maybe the KOM owner pulled the old chuck the garmin over the finish line ploy. I still have to try that one
 
I have one KOM, but it's really just my own personal 16 mile loop I use. There's only one other guy on the same loop. Other than that, I think the PR's are more important to me. I do so many of the same climbs that I can tell when I'll be close to my PR even before I reach the top. It's a great tool for stuff like that, or even to compare segments that you may only do once a year, like Hell of Hunterdon or Gran Fondo NY or NJ.
As for unrealistic KOM's, I think there's a way to call bullshit.
 
1speed said:
No, actually it's totally related. I guess what I'm asking is whether you feel like your cycling results are important enough to you to be worth recognition (whatever they are - PRs, KOMs, anythign in between) or are they just recreational? In other words - and this may not be the right community to ask this of since everyone is here because they self-identify on some level as "cyclist" - do you give a sh*t about where you stand in relation to other riders or even an earlier version of yourself?

It seems to me that there is a fine line here where you can go overboard (as I think the people screaming for STRAVA to strip that guy of his KOMs have) or just use it for a motivational tool and not get too wrapped around where you are in the pecking order of a local segment.
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Recognition important? No but definitely appreciated. I do think most people are competitive in nature if not with others at least with ones self. Beside, I am too much of a noob to even think about KOM.
 
Here's a great example of how meaningful my koms are. I believe I have the kom in both directions on the short track lap... I have actually won exactly 0 of the 4 short track races.@rottin' isn't making me one of his cool trophies for that Kom unfortunately

Many of the woods ones get really wonky, tons of times where I'm following someone and I get the kom and they don't or vice versa... It can be a fun game, but its just a game.
 
Nope not at all

Want me to be impressed go try to get under 1000 on the list here. I was somewhere in 700's. I remember the exact day I threw out that effort. Collecting KOMs in NYC were pretty special esp the one I had on the west side greenway.
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KOM isn't that important - but i watch my relative times. new PRs, and the people around me.
can't manage it if you can't measure it......

the one in front of my house is the 30mph tour of somerville peloton.....not sure i could beat that in the metro.
 
As much as @pearl and @Mountain Bike Mike think I live for starva it is really like this:

When strava came on the scene I was using garmin connect as the way to track my rides and then started doing both. At some point I switched over to just strava (until garmin's communicator automatically did both), but strava is the only complete log of my rides since 2010. I chased many a KOM for a a few years until I got maxed out in my local area, where i either had the KOM or felt I was as high as I was going to get. Once that happened, it didn't become as much of motivation since every segment on my normal routes was a time from "one of those days" type rides.

Getting my EVO last year and MBM trying for my local times increased interest but the majority of the time I am not going for segments.
 
Used to care when Strava was new and getting KOM's on a frequent basis was attainable. Now that there's too many really big fish in the sea, I have essentially given up on that front and no longer care.

Now its just a tool to track miles and look at the pretty pictures my routes make.

That reminds me...I havent uploaded data in a while. Used to do this immediately after the ride. Now I might upload once a month LOL
 
I got my Garmin 520 specifically for the live strava segments. It gives me something to chase when I want to. I can use them as intervals. Plus it makes for a friendly competition.
 
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