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So this may have been talked about before and if so, just ignore me.
On my local trails I've noticed a lot of KOMs and top 10s on Strava are being lost to people on eBikes who record them under the 'Ride' category instead of 'E-bike Ride'. It's more on the climb ups as this is where eBikes come into their own. This really bugs the crap out of me even though I'm far from KOMs but I feel for those on regular mountain bikes who's blood and sweat got them KOMs to find them taken away by people on eBikes.
Anyone else feel the same or am I the odd one out?
It is a touch annoying Isla Short lost a few at GT to a more mature plumper lady. Maybe there should be an annual race to the top on KOM/QOM sections. 😄
I have an ebike, and don't generally post onto Strava, and if I do it is recorded correctly, but I struggle to believe that people have the spare capacity to let things like this get to them. I have plenty of more pressing things to worry about that whether someone else is faster up a hill than me.
I don't think you are the odd one out, but I think too many people get bogged down in irrelevant detail. I don't think the constant comparison on Strava is a healthy thing.
I also think anyone who goes out on ebike to record a fast time and then deliberately posts it under "Ride" to poach a KOM has their own issues and should be pitied.
just flag the ride if it bothers you that much. it'll remove it from the leaderboards until they respond.
just flag the ride
if it bothers you that much. it’ll remove it from the leaderboards until they respond.
flag it for the benefit of everyone using strava correctly. I say this as someone with no KOMs, and unlikely to ever get a climbing one around here.
I got a kom a few years ago on an uphill segment I didn't recognise, 15 seconds bottom to top and beating the best time by 1 second. When I worked out where it was I realised I'd actually pushed the whole way up, probably took well over 2 minutes and knew the lad whose time I'd beaten. Its not accurate enough to get worked up over, and the lad in question laughed when I told him
I blame strava - its not possible to set the default ride type to e bike ride, so you have to remember to manually go in and change the ride type every time you record a ride, otherwise it just gets classed as a normal bike ride
TroutWrestler +1
FWIW anything uploaded from Mission Control (Specialized eMTB App) is automatically categorised as ebike. That would be the only time I would use Strava, but I generally don't want others to know where or when I am riding.
If I ever notice them then I flag them. It's often obvious - things like generally slow but still able to get up some hills amazingly quickly. Riding in the woods and taking a road KOM on the way home. Still plenty slip through. I'll see them if I get an email. Generally if I get a top 10 I would look to see how close I was to the leader, see if I have a chance at the KOM and see what routes they've been riding.
It's frustrating as it spoils the fun of it for me to have someone smash it with motor assistance.
Strava has started prompting me on Android. Says 'this looks like an eBike ride, wanna change it?' or something. Seems to work fine.
But baffling why you can't set that as the default ride type. Up to now, you had to go in (I assume by then all the KOMs have been told they've been beaten), edit it, and it adjusts everything.
Don't people just bike for fun anymore?
Before Strava it was all about beating your mates and taking the p@#s. Ahhh... the good old old days.
Do people really put so much time and effort into Strava?!!
Strava is a facet of MTBing that some people find fun. And yes, people on ebikes are making it less fun for everyone else.
I wouldn’t say I get irate about it or anything, but I’d prefer it wasn’t the case.
If I'd known that taking normal bike koms on an ebike was winding so many people up, I'd have done it more often.....
Only joking, I do always try to set my ebike rides to be just that but sometimes I may forget, apologies, its not intentional.
I lost a running KOM to someone on a 100km road bike ride. I shrugged and moved on.
Legend is where it's at these days...
What if I take an eBike KOM on a normal bike?
You can't set up a bike and say it is an ebike so that any ride you did on that bike was automatically marked as an ebike ride, you have to edit each activity and then select the "sport" drop-down list and choose "Ebike ride".
That's just a lot of hassle when you could just have a button on the "Add a bike" dialog stating it's an e-bike then every ride you do on that bike is tagged correctly.
I stopped worrying about KOM’s when Strava started charging and I decided to stick with the free version, so no comparing. The intention was just to see how I got on for a while, then maybe pay. Truth is I’ve been enjoying my rides a lot more, and no longer worry about this sort of stuff (not that I was ever going to worry any KOMs anyway!).
As an added bonus I no longer need to worry about changing my ride type either when I do take the ebike out.
As Julian and Whitestone say Strava app doesn’t help here with needing to edit and change to ebike ride. More of an issue if like me ride both normal and ebike so need to remember to edit the ebike ride type.
Also how many of those ‘lost’ KOMs are only lost temporary? Ie my garmin syncs instantly to Strava but it’s only when back at home i tend to go to phone and edit in the Strava app. So for maybe 1 hour in between I’ve maybe temporarily stole a KOM without intending too.
Suspect a very small minority are folk intentionally trying to take a KOM cheat style.
As Julian and Whitestone say Strava app doesn’t help here with needing to edit and change to ebike ride.
Once I've selected eBike Ride in the app it stays on that setting every time I open the app until I change it.
Once I’ve selected eBike Ride in the app it stays on that setting every time I open the app until I change it.
Hmmm, mine doesn't do that, i have to set it to e bike ride every time. I will now go and investigate why.
Nope, can't find a setting to do that. Maybe it's because I record the ride on my garmin watch and then garmin connect sends the ride to strava. Ie I don't actually use the strava app to record the ride?
The funny thing is, Strava incorrectly for some reason recorded my last few (normal) rides as ebike rides. I got a KOM and a few top tens !! 😂
All my rides get uploaded to Strava by my eBike app so they always go on as an eBike ride. They are not public though as I’m not interested in what someone I don’t even know is doing.
A mate of mine on Strava who rides an Ebike got a couple of KOMs on uphill sections at the local trail centre. I pointed these out to him and he didn’t even know what a KOM was. He’d put some photos on with his ride and was contacted pretty sharpish by Strava and asked to log his ride as Ebike, which he now does.
Maybe it’s because I record the ride on my garmin watch and then garmin connect sends the ride to strava. Ie I don’t actually use the strava app to record the ride?
Probably. If I use my Bolt is does the same.
My Garmin 530 allows me to select between eroad and road, eMTB and MTB, at the start of the ride and then it uploads automatically to Strava accordingly. First ride on the eMTB of the year today 😁
Popular segments around here are overrun with obviously ebike generated times, you could spend all day flagging them if you could be bothered. Normally they tend to be faster up the climbs than they are on the descents - I tend to just compare my times against names of locals I know to see how I'm getting on. (Badly, normally).
All my rides are set to private. They are edited before being shared with my followers. No need for the world to know I'm middle aged and mediocre.
All my rides are set to private. They are edited before being shared with my followers. No need for the world to know I’m middle aged and mediocre.
This is me too. I probably make 3 or 4 rides a year visible and I live somewhere where rides are actually nice and ride 10hrs plus a week these days. Different strokes and different folks and all that.
I wonder if there are any machine learnable ebike ride tell tales if strava could be bothered to implement it. I suppose a point where most other rider slow and the newbie does not by as much.
I’ve noticed it a lot on the local trail centers as well - especially in the last year.
@julians
It is possible, I set mine to ebike Nd every ride it defaults to that, I don't have to choose it
Do people really put so much time and effort into Strava?!!
No. Got an ebike now so zero effort needed for those uphill koms 😉👌
When this happens, you have to wonder how many times it's a genuine mistake and how many times it's an e-bike glory hunter with no scruples.....
Over the years we've seen people racing in cats lower than they should be in, just to win - it doesn't take much to imagine those sorts of people would happily use any advantage they could for the same reason.
The Surrey hills is KOM hunting central between a dozen to 20 people. It's been interesting seeing the times drop so much lately, some have been evokes which others have then gone to chase down on their non ebikes. a bit of friendly rivalry doesn't hurt anyone...... Well until you all push it too far and realise you've over cooked it..
Don’t people just bike for fun anymore?
Before Strava it was all about beating your mates and taking the p@#s. Ahhh… the good old old days.
And if someone finds Strava fun is that not riding and having fun?
I ride sole so I find seeing how I am doing on segments interesting and if feeling good on a given day may put bit more effort in on certain segments.
I had an uphill KOM where I had managed to beat all the local fast people and the speed was 10mph.
Along comes a person who beat all of us with a speed that was coincidentally close to 15.5mph so I got that removed but only because I had the KOM. Wouldn't have bothered if I didn't.
My Garmin is connected to my phone which then uploads the ride to Strava
There is no way to set it to E-bike ride as default (i wouldn't want to do that as the majority of my rides are on a normal bike) so i have to wait till i get home and manually change it on the P.C
People do get funny about K.O.M's on Strava, Ive got a quite a few e bike ones and a couple of normal bike ones but because my profile pic shows me on an e bike people presume when i get a K.O.M that Ive done it on an e bike and they flag it up, i tell Strava that the activity is fine then the person flags it up again and i tell Strava its fine, Ive had this go on on the same K.O.M for days!
For me Strava is just a tool to log mileage and track my improvements (or decline!) i dont let it wind me up if someone beats my K.O.M even when they beat it by going 20mph faster! (Moto x bike on a bridleway)
Strava is a facet of MTBing that some people find fun. And yes, people on ebikes are making it less fun for everyone else.
I wouldn’t say I get irate about it or anything, but I’d prefer it wasn’t the case.
<applause>
I used to get really het up about this. I had a KOM from the time I was living in Italy which lasted years before someone on an eBike smashed it by about 2 minutes. I was extremely proud of this KOM as it represented the peak of my XC racing fitness in my late 20s, before I had a family and stopped riding as much. I flagged it but it never got taken down. How do I know it was an eBike? Well, there's a chance that the rider was Superman but the average speed of the run strangely corresponded to the max permissible top speed on an eBike in Europe.
All the segments in my current local vicinity have suspiciously fast times. I'd say 50% of the riders I encounter on the trails round here are now riding eBikes. I've learned to not get wound up by it but it has changed my Strava usage. Whereas before I used to love hunting down KOMs, now I just use it to track my training and log PRs. I'm much happier and get less stressed over it.
@julians
It is possible, I set mine to ebike Nd every ride it defaults to that, I don’t have to choose it
From a Garmin? Where do you set it? All I have in the Garmin settings is this. There's no concept of an eBike in the gear settings, just bike. As others have said, Garmin Connect syncs it to Strava. I don't record a ride with the Strava app (where you could pick eBike every time).
Not a biggie to have to edit it, but most of my eBike rides are flagged by the time I look later, so obviously annoying folks.
Worrying about people cheating on Strava is like worrying about some drunk guy talking utter bollocks down the pub. There's nothing you can do about it so just save yourself all the stress.
No stress. Strava is mainly a helpful way for me to track my age-related ongoing decline as I'm slowly udged down and off the local leader boards. (As I don't pay for premium it's only the actual top tens I can see.) I do occasionally still udge up them and have a few uphill koms (up v unpopular hills) and I probably know and ride with three or four folks from a lot of the off-road top tens round me. I don't care very much and the guys I know who actually race don't care at all, and all this stuff is only fun while it lasts, but it'd be a shame for some bugger on an ebike to bump me off the lists prematurely...
When this happens, you have to wonder how many times it’s a genuine mistake and how many times it’s an e-bike glory hunter with no scruples
That doesn't really matter though if the end result is the same. I'm sure a handful of unscrupulous people are taking KOMs on secret eBikes because it gives them a weird pride. I suspect a lot more people are doing it 'for a laugh' which is irritating since it's only them who finds it funny, and of course plenty of people are doing it accidentally/without caring.
I've not got loads of KOMs or anything, but I am often 'in touch' and on a good day on the right trail I can have a go at beating the KOM time, or at least seeing how close (E.g. in percentage terms) I am to the fastest time. That's not possible if you can't distinguish real times from assisted ones.
Obviously there are plenty of people who don't care about K/QOMs / Top 10s which is fine too, of course. In fact I'm aware that I'm seemingly in a minority of MTBers that actually like trying to go fast up hills under their own steam (including a lot of people on here), so why should Strava tailor their service towards me anyway? I don't even pay them. Personally, I can't see really the point in Strava unless there's some sort of competition element - if it's just for ride tracking there are better services. So I do worry about the long-term survival of Strava as a service if its USP (the competition element) is eroded.
The problem is that Strava considers ebike segments different to normal bike segments, rather than making ebikes a category of bikes. Therefore, if you set your ride to ebike there are almost no segments to ride - and as I set up a good proportion of my local segments, that is v annoying. I put all my rides, ebike or not, on private which keeps me off the leaderboard or a miraculous KOM.
To be fair on most trails, especially uphill switchbacks there's always 'Strava lines' and shortcuts so some form of 'cheating' has happened since forever.
My problem is that there aren't any ebike Strava sections around here ( or at least not many ), and also that strava doesn't let you compare your times on normal vs ebike.
This means that I upload as a normal ride, compare me against e-me, not bothered about any KOMs, and then change it to an ebike ride.
So I can see why people just leave them as normal rides.
P.