Life as a Strava Segment

The past few months I've been using the Strava web site/phone app. It's basically a fitness activity tracking site. Its best/most famous feature is virtual "races". There are myriad strava segments scattered throughout my area. The segments are just sections of road or trail that are marked out by GPS. The fastest rider on the segment is the "King of the Mountain". The site keeps records of anyone who does the segment.

It's fun to test myself with Strava. I was surprised I'm still pretty "fast" even though I haven't been training to race the bike like I used to--I don't have the time to ride 10+ hours a week anymore and now that I'm in my 50s recovery from hard efforts is pretty slow so I'd probably get sick or injured if I tried. In spite of that, on some of the segments I'm in the top 5%, and on a handful I'm in the top 10 out of hundreds of riders.

It's a pretty hollow "achievement" though, even though it's also very gratifying to get a good time. Lots of amateur sport achievement is like that. People work their asses off to be good runners or triathletes or cyclists, but compared to world class athletes, they suck, and they'll never even come close to that level of performance. 

In fact, almost every sport is categorized to give people the illusion of winning. For example, I participated in "B" or low category races and could win or place a few times a year. Then I participated in "A" category races but would just be hanging on for dear life. When I was younger, I possibly had the physiology to compete in higher category local races, but didn't have the time or inclination to do the next level training, and certainly wasn't even close to the level of national or world class riders.

Life is structured a lot like amateur sports or Strava. A lot of the activities people do as a profession are about as meaningful as trying to be a KOM on a strava segment. The economy is so byzantine and diverse that there are endless variations on types of work, so an individual can pursue their "career" and get various achievements and awards that encourage them to keep cranking away.