Vanity Check

I mentioned in a previous post that I'm using the Strava app on my iPhone to track my rides and post the GPS data to the Strava website.  Strava has been a huge motivation for me from a training standpoint because it allows me to compare a few key things about my riding habits and ability:

1. How often and how many miles I ride compared to other riders.
2. How fast I am able to complete "segments" compared to other riders.

And this was really the main point of my Measuring Stick post on February 28, 2012 - trying to figure out how I measure up to other riders. 

But to expand on this a little more, segments are created by Strava users.  They are just "segments" of a longer overall ride that somone tracked with their GPS.  Most often they are tough climbing sections but they can really be anything - downhill runs, long segments of many miles, whatever.  Then, as other riders ride the segment as part of their ride one day - and post their GPS data to Strava - their name will be shown in a list for the segment with a numeric ranking based on their elapsed time.

So the other day I saw a friend of mine get a KOM, (King of the Mountain or fastest time), for a particular segment.  Hey, that's cool.  Go, Shane, go.  Well, I hadn't ridden that segment with my Strava app so I decided to get out there and give it a try - see if I could ride it faster than Shane.  I had the day off today so I did a 25 mile training ride and headed for the "David English Trail" segment early in the ride while my legs were relatively fresh.  I hammered it with all I had and then went on with my ride.  I wouldn't know how I did until I was done with the whole ride and uploaded.  I could have stopped on the trail, ended the ride, uploaded it, etc. but it wasn't that important to me.  Or so I thought.

When I got done with my ride and my bike was loaded on the Jeep I sat in the parking lot at the trail head doing the final edits on my iPhone to upload the ride.  When it was all done I noticed there were no "Achievements".  "That's impossible", I thought.  I had to have at least clocked a top 10 or something...I was hammering up that hill!  Well, to make a long story short, I had clocked the fastest time on the David English segment but Strava was not showing my achievment!  It was some kind of glitch.  Strava is like a Facebook News Feed...it shows your ride along with all the other rides posted by people you are "following" and people that are "following" you.  Well, there was my ride at the top of the feed but no achievements.  And I was a little surprised at how disappointed I was.  I guess I thought I loved the app because it allowed me to see how I measured up but apparently I also love the app because I get to show off my achievements.  Here's what I mean:

On these rides you can see that the Strava feed shares my "Achievements" with the world. 

But on my ride today....no achievements!  So sad. (With sarcasm.)

So, other than the few of you that read this blog, I Guess I will be the only one that ever knows about my KOM!  Oh well, one thing is for sure.  I had a totally gnarly ride today...dude.