So I deleted my Strava account...

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I meant to post this the other day, and this news story reminded me to.Strava being sued over dude's death.

There used to be a bike shop at the bottom of a big climb around here. In the bike shop there was a chalk board with first names and times to the sign at the top of the climb. This was basically strava before Garmin existed. People would come test themselves against local fast times.

I won an account at a cross race for having the holeshot or something. I then emptied my entire Garmin 500 onto it. I immediately won a bunch of QOM's. I quickly realized that I signed up as a woman. I would be an awesome woman bike racer.

I switched it into dude mode and maintained a few KOMs. Neat. Whatever. Then it started happening, people were taking my KOMs. Hm. Id get an email from Strava saying "joe just beat your time up xyz." Most of the time I would have to click it to see what the heck they were talking about. Like I have Garmin stuff from all over the state and region from riding. A few of the emails were about local things that I did not know could have a KOM, like a road around a park with a stop sign.

So then it makes me wonder, did some dude put on his aero wheels and have a friend carry a spare tubular while he set out one day to break a record, or did he happen to feel good riding one day and hit a climb pretty hard? Maybe hill repeats? My worst fear was eventually confirmed by a third party. A climb that I went up with 28mm tires, a seat bag, frame pump, etc and got a KOM on apparently was beaten. A third party told me that somebody went out to "snipe" it.

So this puts me in a weird position. Do I play their game and go back and race up it and try to take back the KOM? Do I not care? In my mind I do not care. However I do not want some dude thinking that the terms were equal. In my mind I am like "pin a number on and lets race..." However I think by signing up for strava, you ARE kind of pinning a number on.

So basically dudes who use strava for fun, keep having fun. Dudes who use strava to "win," ... just go race. If you do race, race a harder category if you are winning. There is always going to be somebody faster than you. Race until you are racing a bunch of those people and learn to eat humble pie.

im not even going to talk about tail winds and drafting.