I am not one to drill into my stats very much, unless of course they are impressive…so that’s nearly never. But the other day I was recalling a couple of screaming descents that I did in the first Haute Route Alps I rode in 2013. One of them was off the Col du Mont Cenis, flying into Italy. My step-brother, Rob, and I were passing cars one after the other on that road. Rob (in his late 50s at the time) said that we’d better not tell our parents about that.

The other one was the classic southern descent of the Izoard, where I think I was riding with Rob and Mark, the star of our team (called Vicious Cycle – and where I got the name for this blog). I went back in my Strava records to check these out, among other ones, and discovered that two of the days from that 7-day race had been flagged, either by another Strava user or Strava itself. They don’t give reasons, but I suppose it’s because some of those descents were too fast and they thought I was a car or motorcycle. It could be another reason, but I’ll stick with that one. Anyway, here is where I am on the leaderboard for that descent.

327 out 42,073 people who have done the segment (over 60,000 times). That’s really good for a nobody like me. The more amazing thing is that I’m not even the top of my ‘Following’ leaderboard – I have two friends (not Rob or Mark…I don’t think they had Strava back in 2013) who are much faster than I am. Yes, Rich Velo, you are obviously one of them.

Anyway, I can tell you that you can unlock flagged activities on Strava by clicking a button and telling them that you weren’t in a car rally. I got this resolved in 2 days.