If you got the email then I assume it was your KOM that had been beaten. You would have got that notification whether or not you had followed them and wind conditions are hardly private! If it had been anyone else would you have taken the KOM back given you had the time and means to do it?
FTG.
Seriously, you don’t need people like that in your life. He is all well and fine sniping people’s KOM’s, but gets pissy when it happens to him?
You earned it, keep it.
This thread is awesome.
The most obnoxious are the “holier than thou” types who act like they don’t care about strava segments.
Yes you do. That is why you have strava. If you don’t care, why do you have strava at all? To show off your rides to other people? Why do you care about that? Why track any of your data?
But tell yourself you don’t, thats ok.
Caring to the point where it drives you crazy or ruins your life or you need to “protect” your KOM? Thats lame of course.
But we all like to see our improvements and it is the little wins, such as a top ten on a tough segment or even a KOM. If your time is taken by someone on an E-Bike, it sucks. You can tell someone to get over this, but then you can justify cheating at amateur races as well: “so what if he was cheating? Its just an amateur race that means nothing, there is no money involved!”
Its the point of the matter. And enough people obviously care or this wouldn’t be a discussion.
Its the ones that don’t have Strava that are the worst. Its like being vegan.
How do you know if someone isn’t on Strava? Don’t worry they’ll tell you! 
I’m not sure if this type of potential ‘flagging scenario’ has been discussed. My preference is mtn bike segments due to the elimination of groups and wind - obviously trail conditions and general changes to the trails happen over time, but at least times are somewhat comparable.
On my trail network we have a healthy rivalry for the segments, but I’ve been noticing recently some guys are clearly cutting the course - it’s super obvious when you use the ‘compare effort’ feature. Some course cuts will save 30 seconds on a 7 min. segment, so it’s quite significant when the bar is already set with a fast time. To me this is super lame, but I’m not gonna flag becuase I assume we all know it’s lame. I just find it ruins a fun rivalry on a nice trail network. Humans will be humans I suppose.
Some one definitely cares enough to seek out bizarre KOMs (I’m guilty of making this one in the days before private segments Curiosity Segment Out of Town 09/01/13 | Strava Ride Segment in Peterborough, Peterborough, United Kingdom). At my old work I used to commute in shirts and trousers (with over trousers to keep them clean) on a heavy steel fixie, and I had intended to make this a lunchtime training route (it was basically the furthest I could go in my lunch hour and get back to comfortably clean up) so I could track my progress but I never bothered and got into interval training instead. I had forgotten about it until I got the uh oh last week
FLAG IT!!!
You are projecting your feelings onto others…because you “care”, therefore everyone else must “care” as well, they just don’t want to admit it. Lots of people have Strava and never sniff a KOM.
I suppose I technically “care” a small amount, but in the grand scheme of things, I really don’t…if someone takes a KOM I have, I may try and take it back at some point, but I’m not going out hunting it down. Heck, until 3 days ago I didn’t even have Live Segments…and I only have it for the next 60 days because of a free trial, then I’ll lose it.
Lots of people don’t care…no need to project your feelings onto them, nor is there anything wrong with caring…but keep things in perspective. Blocking people because they took back a KOM is something I don’t understand…
Yeah, I’d actually wager that less people “care” about KOM’s than those that do.
I track a few for fun, but many of my friends that are active Strava users, employ it for tracking their rides, miles and following their fellow friends. They have no ability to hit most of the KOM’s in the area if they even tried. Some take some level of review of their own progress on some segments as a way to consider their fitness over time. But most of the people I know using it are leaning towards the casual & social side of the app.
Like any good tool, there are many ways to use it and assuming everyone else matches your use pattern is a mistake (aka projection as mentioned).
I’m going to “project” my feelings onto what @varmstrong said. I think this whole bit wrt people caring about segments applies to people in this thread saying they don’t care about segments. There are a lot of replies about segment flagging and a fair amount of them are professing how much they don’t care while also throwing a line in about how they watch segments, or used to, or just for fun, or whatever.
The point is, just own it. You care enough to contribute to a discussion about segment flagging. That’s caring. It’s ok to care about things.
I don’t have the time or inclination to review the whole thread, but I would suggest that this is a conflation of multiple people, not a large quantity of people doing it. Sure, there may be the odd outlier making those conflicting statements, but it is likely not representative of the overall responders.
To then go on to call others “obnoxious” and “holier-than-thou” indicates an unwillingness to engage in honest dialogue.
This seems to be taking a direction of “finger pointing” which is not in the spirit of “Rule #2” in the forum guidelines:
Challenge the Idea, not the Person
This builds on rule #1. The best arguments focus on the idea rather than the person who’s communicating the idea, whether it’s someone on the forum or a public figure. Let’s avoid making things personal and strive to live in the “counterargument” and above. And opinion is important! This is cycling, lots of stuff is subjective.
Please keep to the topic of note, flagging in this case.
Talk about projection.
If the shoe fits, wear it, i guess?
These are the most obnoxious people, in my opinion, that come onto this thread to proclaim how much they don’t care about the segment.
You don’t care enough to read the thread, but you care enough to pick one of my sentences to quote and analyze?
People at the sharp end of things typically care. Your professionals care. Its easy to say you don’t care about a segment when you’re 239/530. The guy who gets 40/54 in a race doesn’t really care who wins.
If someone started showing up in your dad’s tri club with mechanical doping or otherwise cheating on a segment, I bet your dad and his friends would care.
Bottom line is this, I was talking about the obnoxious holier than thou people who seem to chastise others for caring about a segment as if this means they are somehow inferior to care. Or that they have some sort of ego problem because they like to see their names at the top of a list.
If people didn’t like to see their names at the top, competition wouldn’t really be a thing, would it?
The real ego problem is the ego protection when you actually DO care, but can’t put in enough work or effort to get there, so it is easier to tell yourself you don’t actually care, and then condemn others that say they care.
Spot the difference…
past that…I’m out.
Sure, and that’s great, and I’m genuinely happy that they are out there having fun. They also aren’t coming onto TR forum and stating that its stupid to care for KOMs or segments.
I am sure there are times when your dad is still competitive with his buddies… we’re like that as humans. It is in our genetics. This is why we have age group racing.
My main point in the first comment, was that people being obnoxious about not caring, like you are an egotistic jerk if you do, are obnoxious.
I’m damn proud of my KOMs. I have 3 pages of them despite being 55 years old and only having 2.75 watts per kg. I do have relatively good sprint and short power so I’ve used it to my advantage.
I’m more proud of some top 10s I’ve gotten. I’m 2nd on a segment after Brandon McNulty. I got a 28 second sprint KOM after trying for 6 months. I held it for a few years but eventually someone got me by 1 second. I also have a top 10 on a 7 minute climb where it’s all local hard hitters above me. I’m proud of that one because I rode above my usual abilities that day and I’m not a climber.
I draw the line at creating some circuitous route where I get the KOM and I’m the only person who ever rode that particular route. I don’t need to pad my KOM list.
And I’ll flag any ride that looks suspect (gps error, cutting course, ebike, whatever). It’s up to Strava to figure out if it’s legit.
Nope.
Just like environmental assistance and TT bikes are ok.
Motivation to put together your own group on a favorable wind day!
For what purpose? how can you determine who “deserves” a cup vs. not?
A few years ago, a group of us went up north across the Cheddar Curtain…really strong wind from the north and we were flying coming back. We damn near swept the top 10 on a few segments (although we weren’t really trying…it was just a consequence of the conditions). It happens…