What is KOM/QOM?

KOM (King of the Mountain) and QOM (Queen of the Mountain) are Strava titles awarded to the fastest male and female athletes on a specific segment.

How It Works

1. Segments: Strava users create defined portions of routes
2. Leaderboard: Every effort on that segment is ranked
3. Crown: The fastest gets the KOM/QOM crown 👑

The Strava Segment Ecosystem

Segment Leaderboard Example:
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Rank  Name           Time    Gap
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
👑 1  Fast Runner    4:32    KOM
   2  Speed Demon    4:45    +13s
   3  Local Legend   4:52    +20s
   4  You            5:15    +43s
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Types of Segments

KOM Hunting Culture

The Obsession

Some runners specifically plan routes to:

• Attack segments they're close to leading
• Steal KOMs from rivals
• Collect as many crowns as possible

The Ethics

⚠️ Controversial behaviors:

• Running segments during races (unfair advantage)
• GPS manipulation (cheating)
• Creating segments that favor your route

Local Legend

Strava also awards Local Legend status to whoever runs a segment the most times in a 90-day period. This is about consistency, not speed!

Famous Strava Segment Stories

• Professional athletes occasionally "steal" local KOMs during training
• Segment wars between friendly rivals
• Legendary segments with thousands of attempts

How to Get a KOM/QOM

The Honest Way

1. Train specifically for the segment
2. Choose optimal weather conditions
3. Warm up properly
4. Give 100% effort
5. Hope no pros are in town 😅

Realistic Expectations

Most popular segments have KOMs held by:

• Professional/elite runners
• College athletes
• Very dedicated amateurs

The Psychology

The appeal:

• Competitive outlet outside races
• Tangible achievement
• Bragging rights
• Motivation to push harder

The downside:

• Can lead to risky behavior
• May take focus from structured training
• Comparison trap

PR vs KOM

The Verdict

KOM/QOM hunting can be fun motivation, but remember:

The real KOM is the fitness gains we made along the way.

Pro tip: Create a segment on your favorite training route — you might already be the KOM and not know it! 👑