362 KOMs in One Tour: Why Personal Progression Beats Chasing Segments

During the 2025 Tour de France — the fastest in history at 42.85 km/h — a total of 1,809 Strava segment records fell. Tadej Pogacar alone claimed 362 KOMs. Over the entire year, 7.6 million KOMs and QOMs were set globally on Strava.

These numbers are impressive. They are also completely irrelevant to your training.

The Strava leaderboard has become one of the most compelling distractions in amateur cycling. It turns every ride into a race, every hill into a competition, and every tailwind into a chance at a crown. But chasing segments is a terrible training strategy — and it can actually make you slower.

Why KOMs Are Meaningless for Training

A Strava KOM records the fastest time over a defined GPS segment. It does not record conditions. It does not know that the previous record was set on a calm day and yours was set with a 30 km/h tailwind. It does not know that one rider was drafting in a paceline while another rode solo. It does not know about equipment differences, road surface changes, or temporary closures that eliminated traffic.

Pogacar's 362 KOMs were set while racing in a professional peloton of 176 riders, with team cars providing aerodynamic shelter, on closed roads, after months of altitude camp preparation, with a power-to-weight ratio exceeding 7 W/kg. That those times are faster than any amateur's best solo effort on the same segment tells you nothing about your fitness.

Even comparing your own KOMs across seasons is problematic. Did conditions match? Was your effort truly maximal both times? Was your power meter calibrated consistently? Segment times introduce so much noise that they are nearly useless as performance metrics.

The Training Cost of Segment Chasing

The biggest problem with KOM hunting is not that it measures the wrong thing — it is that it trains the wrong way. Chasing segments turns every ride into an unstructured race. You blast up a climb when your training plan says zone 2. You sprint through an intersection to beat a time when you should be in a recovery spin.

Structured training works because it applies specific stress to specific energy systems at specific times. Zone 2 rides build mitochondrial density and fat oxidation. Sweet spot intervals raise FTP. VO2max intervals expand your aerobic ceiling. Each workout has a purpose, and that purpose requires controlled effort.

When you spontaneously go all-out for a segment, you compromise the session's intended training effect. An easy ride with three red-zone segment efforts is no longer an easy ride. It is a poorly designed interval session that disrupts your recovery without providing the sustained stimulus of a proper hard session.

The result is training in no-man's-land: too hard to recover from, too inconsistent to drive specific adaptation. Research on polarized training repeatedly shows that athletes who keep their easy rides easy and their hard rides hard improve more than those who ride at moderate intensity all the time. Segment chasing is the fastest route to moderate-intensity monotony.

What Actually Matters: Your Power Curve Over Time

The most meaningful metric in cycling is not how fast you rode up a particular hill on a particular day. It is how your peak power across all key durations has changed over weeks and months. This is your power curve, and it is the single best indicator of whether your training is working.

Your power curve captures your best 5-second, 1-minute, 5-minute, 20-minute, and 60-minute power over a rolling time window. Unlike segment times, power data is unaffected by wind, gradient, traffic, or drafting. 300 watts is 300 watts whether you are riding uphill into a headwind or downhill with a tailwind.

When you compare your power curve from six weeks ago to today, you see exactly which energy systems have improved and which have stagnated. That is actionable information. It tells you whether your sweet spot block raised your threshold, whether your VO2max intervals expanded your 5-minute power, or whether your sprint training added watts to your peak.

The Meaningful Metrics

How to Use Strava Analytically

None of this means Strava is useless. It is a powerful data collection tool. The problem is not Strava — it is the gamification layer that incentivizes the wrong behavior. Strip away the leaderboards and focus on what the data actually tells you, and Strava becomes genuinely useful.

Compare Yourself to Yourself

Pick 3–5 segments on routes you ride regularly. Instead of comparing your times to other riders, compare your own times across the same segment over months. Better yet, ignore the time entirely and compare the power you held. If you averaged 280 watts on your local climb in January and 295 watts in April, that is a 5% power improvement regardless of what the clock said.

Use Personal Records, Not Leaderboards

Strava's personal record feature tracks your own best efforts. This is far more valuable than comparing against other riders. When you see a personal record on a segment, it means you produced more power than you ever have at that specific effort duration and gradient combination. That is a legitimate fitness marker.

Track Rolling Power Bests

Instead of fixating on segment times, track your power personal bests over rolling time windows. Your best 5-minute power in the last 90 days is a far more meaningful number than any KOM. If that number is trending upward over months, your VO2max is improving regardless of where you sit on any leaderboard.

Similarly, your best 20-minute power over the last 90 days directly reflects your FTP trajectory. Watching this number climb from 250 to 270 watts over a training season is far more satisfying — and far more useful — than collecting crowns on your local segments.

The Psychology of External vs. Internal Benchmarks

Research in sports psychology consistently shows that athletes who focus on self-referenced goals — improving their own performance over time — experience more sustained motivation and lower burnout rates than those who focus on normative goals like beating other people.

KOM chasing is the definition of a normative goal. Your success depends entirely on what other people have done. On popular segments, holding a KOM requires conditions and abilities that have nothing to do with your training quality. A strong rider on a calm day will lose the crown to a weaker rider in a paceline with a tailwind. The randomness is demoralizing.

Self-referenced metrics like power bests, CTL progression, and W/kg improvement are entirely within your control. They reward consistent, smart training. They are immune to other riders' tailwinds. And they tell you something true about your fitness, not about who happened to ride the same road on the best weather day of the year.

Building a Progression-Focused Practice

Shifting from segment chasing to progression tracking requires a small mental adjustment but pays enormous dividends.

First, stop looking at segment leaderboards mid-ride. Turn off live segment notifications on your bike computer. They distract from the purpose of your workout and tempt you into unplanned efforts that compromise your training.

Second, review your power data weekly. Look at your peak powers at 5 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes, and 20 minutes. Are they trending up, holding steady, or declining? This tells you whether your current training block is working — and if not, which energy system needs more attention.

Third, set power-based goals instead of segment-based goals. "Hit 320 watts for 5 minutes" is specific, measurable, and entirely within your control. "Get the KOM on Oak Hill" depends on wind, traffic, tires, and whether a faster rider has ridden it since last Tuesday.

The 2025 Tour de France produced 1,809 broken segment records because the best cyclists in the world raced at unprecedented speeds on closed roads with team support. Let them have their KOMs. Your power curve is the only leaderboard that matters.