Mystery cyclist beating pros on strava

frenchfighter

http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/lat ... times.html

A mystery cyclist beat the Strava times set by professional riders on Box Hill and a number of well-known climbs in Kent and Surrey at the weekend.

Identifying themselves as 'JP' and controversially using a photo of Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France yellow jersey as their avatar, the rider took on three laps of a circuit of Box Hill on Saturday, October 12, and beat the mark set by Madison-Genesis professional Ian Bibby during the RideLondon Classic road race in August. On their fastest lap, they ascended Box Hill at 19.5mph.

In all, 'JP' set a total of 18 King of the Mountains records for the various Box Hill segments - well, until someone flagged their ride, meaning that their times now did not appear on the segment pages.

On Sunday, 'JP' turned their attention to a rain-lashed Kent to put themselves at the top of the leaderboard for Toys Hill and Ide Hill, two well-known climbs to local riders. On Monday, they headed west to Swindon and took the Uffington White Horse and Inkpen Hill segments in Wiltshire but fell short on a number of others. And Tuesday's ride features a loop east of Swindon, with yet more KoMs in the bag. The latter two rides have since been made private or deleted.

JP broke their silence and left a message on Strava under the Box Hill ride on Tuesday: "Apologies to Ian Bibby etc, every time some chump flags this ride you end up getting another avalanche of lost KOM emails"

Speculation as to the identity of the super-fit hill-climber has been rife - even more so as their home residence is stated as being Aspen, Colorado, USA, which happens to be second home to Armstrong. The account was originally created under the name Leeroy Jenkins, rather than JP, in reference to a long-running World of Warcraft gaming joke featuring a character than runs in and annihilates everything, ruining everyone else's game. Quite apt.

The only other piece of evidence is their bike - listed as being an Ax Lightness Vial, a superlight, super-expensive model that costs just under £13,000. The rumours were compounded by the presence of several top international riders in the London area over the preceding week. Could one of them have strapped on a Garmin and had a cheeky couple of rides on the hills?

There have also been a few, perhaps less generous, commentators suggesting that the rider's GPS mapping has been 'doped', using a tool such as ride manipulating website Digital EPO which allows you to increase the average speed of your ride. Manipulated ride data makes a nonsense of times set on Strava's segments. You could feasibly bumble along on your gran's shopping bike at 5mph, upload your data to Digital EPO, select your desired speed and watch the KoMs tumble in.

However, an artefact of using Digital EPO is that it introduces spikes of speed into your data, and JP's rides do not have these spikes. Cadence and heart rate data is also present, and both sets are as they should be for a fit rider doing those efforts. The presence of cadence and HRM information also dispells the theory that they are doing it in a car or on a moped.

Whether real (or retired) professional or digital doper, the mystery to the rider's identity remains intact for now. Though, if real, we think that Sir David Brailsford would be interested in getting hold of their phone number...

rayjay

Its def the sort of thing Armstrong would do. Although he has been pictured riding a Crumpton.

adr82

That right there is the perfect example of the rampant segment duplication on Strava and why it's f*cking stupid. How many segments does one totally ordinary wee climb need???

alihisgreat

Who were the "top international riders" ?

FocusZing

An electric bike could be used to give enough of an assist to make KOM's, yet still have plausible heart rate, gps readings.

rayjay

FocusZing wrote:

An electric bike could be used to give enough of an assist to make KOM's, yet still have plausible heart rate, gps readings.

Maybe it was http://velonews.competitor.com/2010/06/ ... kes_119452

jimmythecuckoo

Are people not now taking Strava a bit too seriously?

Its not like its a proper race or anything.

mechanism

Is it not JP from Fresh Meat?

alihisgreat

jimmythecuckoo wrote:

Are people not now taking Strava a bit too seriously?

Its not like its a proper race or anything.

That's the beauty of strava.. you can take it as seriously as you like...

Pross

ALIHISGREAT wrote:

Who were the "top international riders" ?

Dunno but apparently they were slower than Ian Bibby up Box Hill.

Richmond Racer

ALIHISGREAT wrote:

Who were the "top international riders" ?

Dan Lloyd and Tyler Farrar, I think, amongst others

markwb79

Richmond Racer wrote:

ALIHISGREAT wrote:

Who were the "top international riders" ?

Dan Lloyd and Tyler Farrar, I think, amongst others

I think it was the weekend of cav's wedding, so check the guest list.

Also, Contador was on box hill around the same time doing some press work if I remember correctly

davidof

I have the fastest Strava cycle ascent of l'Alpe d'Huez. Took me a little over 38 minutes but probably still slower than Pantani although it is not clear where his 37 minute ascent relates to on Strava segments.

dave milne

I once owned most of the climbs in the kent and surrey hills due to me dumping an entire years worth of data into strava when It first started. Also had col de la madeleine south side for over 2 years

got about 1 segment now

napoleond

There was a guy in us who publicised 'taking segments back' for the general population sponsored by a bike shop.

davidof

btw, if you download this app I'm a developer on

http://www.wattzap.com/

grab the Box Hill gpx from Strava (premium account) or elsewhere, hop on your turbo and if you set your weight to the same as Froome's you can ride the Box like a boss, or a pro with power and heart rate and no-one will be any the wiser.

However you will get a lot of hate from people who take Strava very very seriously. Don't be surprised to wake up with the severed head tube and handlebars of your favourite carbon bike in your bed.

MickTheMove

Hasn't this JP been mopping up these segments for the lat 6-8 weeks? I seem to recall a lot of chatter amongst some very disgruntled hill climbers on twitter!

mr_poll

Trust the comic to get things wrong - Leeroy Jenkins never ran in annihilating everything - he ran in messing everything up whilst gamers were still planning. The sentiment is still the same.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkCNJRfSZBU

napoleond

mr_poll wrote:

Trust the comic to get things wrong - Leeroy Jenkins never ran in annihilating everything - he ran in messing everything up whilst gamers were still planning. The sentiment is still the same.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkCNJRfSZBU

That is ACE!!!

napoleond

I am *literally* crying laughing. Oh god.

'Least I ain't chicken'

plowmar

Couldnt he have used a car or m/cycle at a suitably slow speed?

No_Ta_Doctor

plowmar wrote:

Couldnt he have used a car or m/cycle at a suitably slow speed?

Well his heart rate etc is in the Strava data, so he'd have to have been pretty excited by it if he was just driving.

dnwhite88

plowmar wrote:

Couldnt he have used a car or m/cycle at a suitably slow speed?

How did he get cadence on a car or m/cycle?

meursault

Maybe someone is editing gpx data? You could put any heart, cadence, power etc. you wanted.

Lightning

plowmar wrote:

Couldnt he have used a car or m/cycle at a suitably slow speed?

Editing data and uploading a fake ride on Strava is simple, really. If I wanted to cheat, that's how I'd do it.

Note: I'm not saying this guy is cheating as I haven't even looked at his rides/KOMs. However, if the reason people are calling him a cheater is because he's taking KOMs from the pros, that's hardly a valid reason. A good racer with proper conditions (and without having to ride an entire stage before the segment) can easily take the KOM from the pros, even if the KOM was set on a stage finish. This is even easier if the KOM was set during a race and the climb suits a TT bike.

plowmar

It does look as though I don't understand the 'Strava' system, but I'm still in the stop watch era - even at times confused by my Garmin.
All I was thinking was there must be a way to be the system - as there are as well as being true to the system but only doing part of a ride as has been pointed out.

davidof

Lightning wrote:

A good racer with proper conditions (and without having to ride an entire stage before the segment) can easily take the KOM from the pros,

Lets take ADH. Chris Froome rode it in 39 minutes at the end of a long stage near the end of 3 weeks of racing. There are none of the local top amateur riders around here (Rhone-Alpes) who can pitch up and ride it quicker. Ditto for most of the local climbs. The top local cat 1 amateurs are slower than the pros on pretty much all the climbs. Everyone dreads the pro peleton passing through and blowing away the top 5 or so places on a climb.

So someone taking KOMs from pros is unsual and not "easy".

lyn1

davidof wrote:

Lightning wrote:

A good racer with proper conditions (and without having to ride an entire stage before the segment) can easily take the KOM from the pros,

Lets take ADH. Chris Froome rode it in 39 minutes at the end of a long stage near the end of 3 weeks of racing. There are none of the local top amateur riders around here (Rhone-Alpes) who can pitch up and ride it quicker. Ditto for most of the local climbs. The top local cat 1 amateurs are slower than the pros on pretty much all the climbs. Everyone dreads the pro peloton passing through and blowing away the top 5 or so places on a climb.

So someone taking KOMs from pros is unsual and not "easy".

Whilst I take your general point, it depends how you define pro. Your example is of one of the best climbers in the Pro Tour. Bibby, who held the KOM, is a good climber at Conti level. Big difference.

davidof

Did non of the Olympic riders record a time for the segment?

Lightning

lyn1 wrote:

davidof wrote:

Lightning wrote:

A good racer with proper conditions (and without having to ride an entire stage before the segment) can easily take the KOM from the pros,

Lets take ADH. Chris Froome rode it in 39 minutes at the end of a long stage near the end of 3 weeks of racing. There are none of the local top amateur riders around here (Rhone-Alpes) who can pitch up and ride it quicker. Ditto for most of the local climbs. The top local cat 1 amateurs are slower than the pros on pretty much all the climbs. Everyone dreads the pro peloton passing through and blowing away the top 5 or so places on a climb.

So someone taking KOMs from pros is unsual and not "easy".

Whilst I take your general point, it depends how you define pro. Your example is of one of the best climbers in the Pro Tour. Bibby, who held the KOM, is a good climber at Conti level. Big difference.

This is where I was getting at. We do have a couple of riders now (like Ten Dam for instance) who are clearly on a different level, but most of the pros you find on Strava don't really set impossible KOMs. In fact, from what I usually see, when the peloton passes through, some pro takes most of the KOMs on that route. However, this only leads to a segment popularity increase and some good (non-pro) rider who likes Strava targeting it and taking it.

I understand this task is much harder if the pro is Froome fighting for the tdf on a long HC climb.

okgo

Bear in mind Bibby times was from one if the pro races wasn't it but of draft?

Tejvan just two seconds back could beat this 'jp' if he targeted I it (and indeed if it was or is real).