Mark you calendars, Third Thursday HH in Westover is May 16!!

[Gripped Films]

@consularrider 51554 wrote:

Yeah, right … :rolleyes:

Last Friday I went out to do some openers for a local road race on Saturday. There had been some friendly challenges about a six pack for whoever de-throned Tim on the 11st segment. I went, I saw, I was not impressed. Ok here’s the deal – that segment is totally dangerous. You can either enter the segment by turning uphill left or slightly faster turning downhill right from Kennebec which I tried – or – you can enter the stretch going 40mph downhill if you blow through a stop sign. The traffic left and right has NO stop. And it ends leaving you grabbing brake before you shoot out into a busy Patrick Henry. So yea, if you wanna risk your life anyone can grab this lame KOM. It’s a total death trap and should be banned. I agree the KOM leading up Patrick Henry is much more safe and much harder.

While KOM’s can be used as great motivation (I love challenging Tim and love beer even more), at the end of the day the ONLY KOM/QOMs that really matter anyway … would be at the finish line of a sanctioned, legit race. And in my Saturday race I got 17th. so I’m not all that.

Ride safe out there and don’t let Strava change that.
I should also mention that if there was a KOM for running up 22 flights of stairs no one would depose Tim Kelly.

-jb

[Gripped Films]

I did break the law on the effort that took the KOM and I have tried for about an hour to remove it from my Strava page. It’s dangerous and I wouldn’t do it again even for free beer or to best Tim.

[MRH5028]

This is close enough to me that I have very little excuse not to attend. Will be my first Bike Arlington/WABA social gathering. I assume you all will be easy to spot, not like Westover is huge.

[Gripped Films]

@Gripped Films 51805 wrote:

I did break the law on the effort that took the KOM and I have tried for about an hour to remove it from my Strava page. It’s dangerous and I wouldn’t do it again even for free beer or to best Tim.

clearly I have too much time on my hands however… guess who else broke the law to get this kom? Might as well be fair when you call someone out.
http://app.strava.com/activities/27554879#579279780

[Gripped Films]

@DismalScientist 51785 wrote:

Actually, you were right. Jason got the 17 sec KOM on the time he blew the stop sign at 25 mph. On the time he made the right from Kennebec he scored 20 seconds.

and what did Tim do when he took the KOM? http://app.strava.com/activities/27554879#579279780

[TwoWheelsDC]

@Gripped Films 51803 wrote:

Last Friday I went out to do some openers for a local road race on Saturday. There had been some friendly challenges about a six pack for whoever de-throned Tim on the 11st segment. I went, I saw, I was not impressed. Ok here’s the deal – that segment is totally dangerous. You can either enter the segment by turning uphill left or slightly faster turning downhill right from Kennebec which I tried – or – you can enter the stretch going 40mph downhill if you blow through a stop sign. The traffic left and right has NO stop. And it ends leaving you grabbing brake before you shoot out into a busy Patrick Henry. So yea, if you wanna risk your life anyone can grab this lame KOM. It’s a total death trap and should be banned. I agree the KOM leading up Patrick Henry is much more safe and much harder.

While KOM’s can be used as great motivation (I love challenging Tim and love beer even more), at the end of the day the ONLY KOM/QOMs that really matter anyway … would be at the finish line of a sanctioned, legit race. And in my Saturday race I got 17th. so I’m not all that.

Ride safe out there and don’t let Strava change that.
I should also mention that if there was a KOM for running up 22 flights of stairs no one would depose Tim Kelly.

-jb

The issue of breaking the law/riding dangerously to get Strava KOMs has been discussed on this forum previously, so I don’t want to further bog down this thread with that. So I will just say that my KOM “challenge” was related to our happy hour and not meant to be some sort of “get that KOM/QOM, whatever the cost!” call-out. That’s just now how the forum rolls, and I don’t think any of the members here saw that as encouragement to go do something dangerous…also, the challenge associated with that particular hill is a bit of an in-joke for those of us that live in the neighborhood and ride it regularly (I’ve done it 61 times this year)…between Dismal and me (and now Hozn), I think we traded the not-Tim-KOM three or four times. I never break the law on that particular segment (well, except maybe an Idaho stop at PH), and I don’t think Dismal or Hozn do either…I make a legal left turn from Kennebec onto 11th, then race up the hill and make a legal stop at Patrick Henry.

So I appreciate your input and get what you’re saying…but I think that, within the context of this forum, a friendly KOM/QOM challenge such as this is unlikely to result in the type of dangerous behavior you are referring to. But hopefully you can make it happy hour and we can all discuss it over a drink. Supposed to be 80 degrees!!

[DismalScientist]

@Gripped Films 51828 wrote:

and what did Tim do when he took the KOM? http://app.strava.com/activities/27554879#579279780

As I stated to a different interested party:

DismalScientist wrote:

Review of his performance shows that he took the stop sign at Kennebec at 25mph and made a quick right on Patrick Henry at 15 mph.

[Honeybadger6]

@MRH5028 51822 wrote:

This is close enough to me that I have very little excuse not to attend. Will be my first Bike Arlington/WABA social gathering. I assume you all will be easy to spot, not like Westover is huge.

Yes, those of us that aren’t risking our lives for KOM (or figuring out how to beak TK without breaking the law) will be the big gaggle of drinkers in cycling gear outside on the patio! (Mostly… I live 3 minutes away by foot so I might dress up for you all and put on jeans!)

That said, I’m wondering if TwoWheelsDC and I should just throw a shit ton of beer in a trailer and drag it to the strava segment so HH can be drunken strava segment competition instead?

[DismalScientist]

@Honeybadger6 51834 wrote:

Yes, those of us will be the big gaggle of drinkers in cycling gear outside on the patio!

No lycra for me. I would like neighborhood property values to remain high.:p

[txgoonie]

@Honeybadger6 51834 wrote:

HH can be drunken strava segment competition instead?

I think riding that segment drunk would be an extraordinarily bad idea

I just wanted to jump in b/c I talked to Jason about the segment off-line. I encouraged him to come to the HH and, since he and Tim also have a long-standing Strava rivalry (an entirely friendly one), thought it would be funny to grab the KOM beforehand. I needled him to try it b/c I — as you can see earlier — was angling to get a beer for myself! So I wanna to put to bed any misapprehension about the KOM being gotten “at all costs.” It really wasn’t. Jason returned from his ride thinking that he hadn’t gotten it, immediately saying the segment was dangerous and probably ought to get flagged (but didn’t want to ruin the forum fun by doing so). Diving into the details of any questionable Strava segment will certainly reveal some devilish behavior — we’ve discussed that ad nauseam. Who would rather talk about the beer wall?

[Tim Kelley]

@txgoonie 51840 wrote:

I think riding that segment drunk would be an extraordinarily bad idea

I just wanted to jump in b/c I talked to Jason about the segment off-line. I encouraged him to come to the HH and, since he and Tim also have a long-standing Strava rivalry (an entirely friendly one), thought it would be funny to grab the KOM beforehand. I needled him to try it b/c I — as you can see earlier — was angling to get a beer for myself! So I wanna to put to bed any misapprehension about the KOM being gotten “at all costs.” It really wasn’t. Jason returned from his ride thinking that he hadn’t gotten it, immediately saying the segment was dangerous and probably ought to get flagged (but didn’t want to ruin the forum fun by doing so). Diving into the details of any questionable Strava segment will certainly reveal some devilish behavior — we’ve discussed that ad nauseam. Who would rather talk about the beer wall?

Quick note–my initial run at it was when the segment was longer and went through the stop sign. It was flagged as hazardous and a shorter segment was created which would entirely legal. That being said, my illegal try at it was still the fastest when that happened.

So, will I try to get this KOM back? Perhaps…

[Dickie]

Geez, I go away for a week and the HH thread becomes the Darwin awards….you are all crazy! However, this might make for the best HH yet!

[hozn]

@Dickie 51853 wrote:

Geez, I go away for a week and the HH thread becomes the Darwin awards….you are all crazy! However, this might make for the best HH yet!

Ha — I am sorry to be missing this one for sure. Look forward to catching up with you guys at the next one.

Jason, thanks for the comments. You probably don’t need to beat yourself up too much about blowing the stop sign, as that’s how it was won in the first place. It’s probably not a good segment, though, I agree; I’ll let one of you guys flag it if you like. I’m confident that either of you could significantly best my time turning left off of Kennebec, though I agree that this isn’t necessarily the safest approach either, even if it’s legal. There are so many great — and challenging — segments around. I appreciate folks like you & Tim keeping it exciting for the rest of us.

[jrenaut]

Late RSVP – I am IN. And I will be forcing you all to come gaze longingly at my new fenders, which you can see in the “Post pics of your bike” thread.

[consularrider]

It’s too early to get it’s own thread, but maybe we can have a future Happy Hour in Bike Arlington’s own building!

[Author]

Posts