Cyclists that are out to get your Strava KOMs - should I challenge or? A comical question more than anything, but yeah a personal one as well.

One "clown" recently took a KOM I've had for over 2 years, and he did it fair-and-square. No argument there.

However, he argued with me that I had that KOM because I drove a car, yet I've got proof I rode over areas that a car cannot go on, and I don't own a motorbike.

So he went on a vendetta and took out all of my KOMs! Bloody hell!

Ok, so he's faster than me. So what?

Or should I raise up and take him head on?

Do we really care about KOMs that much? Is it all meant to be friendly competition, or do some of you actually defend these things to the death?
There is way too much emphasis on Strava KOMs, especially seeing there is minimal data integrity control.

There are people in every region that I've tracked that make it their mission to be on top. Quite frankly they can have it and some people need that validation.

Strava as a system has so many holes, that the 'value' you can assign to the data should be minimal.

For example:


You can manually manipulate your xml data and achieve any KOM you want
You can use any powered vehicle and no-one would know
There is no consistency in GPS coverage, esp between devices. I've seen multiple segments with 2s/3s times just because the data got messed up due to mobile coverage.


If you feel the need to challenge a rider, enter a race. Timing is better, and head to head you can see who's got it in real life.

On the other hand, I find it very useful for training - plotting your mental state against actual times. Typically you would use the same setup for most rides, so you can expect the same data integrity and therefore plot gains as relative to your own performances.