I guess I'd describe myself as a semi-serious cyclist, or maybe a serious cyclist with caveats. That is, even though I ride a lot and race some, I still don't do what is necessary to become really good. Don't get me wrong, in the last eleven years I held a state championship eight times, with the other three being silver, and was national silver medalist a few years ago, and manage to get on the podium at USAC when I participate. But I don't come close to challenging for gold. And so far, I haven't been training to achieve it. That's too much like work. I have my sights set on 2022 Nationals, when I'll be the youngest in my age group. 2021 will see me getting more serious. None of this has anything to do with today's post.
I resisted joining Strava for years, finally giving in so that Marilane could track me as I cycled about Williamson County by myself. I find one of the features, the fastest riders doing a segment, useful. It wasn't useful until they added age categories, specifically 75+. Now I can see how I stack up against folks my own age. Like anything else, you take these with a grain of salt.
The latest innovation from Strava is Local Legend. This gives a laureate to the person who completes a segment the most times in the past 90 days, speed not being a factor. This is nothing I aspire to attain, it just happens when cycling routes become less varied. For instance, when I practice 15 second accelerating, I use one of two sections in Old Settlers Park. One of them is a Strava Segment. That's 20 or so times it's completed per practice. When I do cadence drills I prefer to run up and down Great Northern, a straight, flat 1.4 miles with a bike lane. Because the drills are mainly three sets of fifteen minutes each, I do go out-back-out and rest one section, three times. Someone, not me, created Strava Segments consisting of one out/back, two out/back, three out/back rides. So, my practice resulted in becoming a Local Legend. And we finally get around to today's post.
On Thursday I received an email from Strava saying that I had lost my Local Legend on Great Northern. Since I really don't care, that didn't bother me, but I was curious about the person who overtook me. The email included a link to his page. He had completed 25 (I had 23) segments, or 70 miles in the last 90 days. More power to him. Then I saw that in the last four months he had only cycled 152 miles. That got my dander up (it shouldn't have, my reaction was completely irrational). I had completed my "hill" route on Thursday and Friday called for a heavy leg workout at the Y in the early morning and an easy hour spinning on the bike mid-morning. It could have been at Old Settlers Park, but I decided to return to Great Northern and get my laureate back. So silly, competing for something I didn't care about. I hadn't been on my TT bike in awhile, so on Friday morning I loaded it up and cycled Great Northern, completing seven segments.
I'm not doing that again. That is, competing to be a stupid Local Legend. A deeper dive into his Strava showed he rarely does anything other than Great Northern and close environs. This is what the Local Legend was designed for and he deserves the recognition. Of course, I'm not abandoning my cadence drills, so will continue to increase my segments. I blame this all on Strava. The email created a false competition. I fell for it once, shame on me. Not twice.
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