Well, yes, calling most of the inclines 'mountains' is daft enough and equating riding them quickly as comparable to climbing Alpe d'Huez is silly.
Given the speed of most of the people on these segments - there are only 8 people who've made the effort to ride the Telford/Roseburn "sprint" at more than 20mph - I'm not even sure how meaningful it is to call most of the people on those leader boards participants in anything. I notice that today Neil had his third fastest ride on that "sprint" although neither of us were making any special effort at all. We often get passed by a tall man on a slick-tyred mountain bike who doesn't look to me like he's making any special effort. I'm inclined to think that what we see on Strava is almost entirely illusory - it's the appearance of 'racing' and time-trialling where, in fact, there's only a handful of people consciously participating in a leader board full of passers by.
It's not even clear how consciously the "holder of the current fastest recorded time amongst participating users along a short downhill stretch of shared-use path" was participating. He's only ridden it once as far as I can see. The number 2 guy (a certain Mr McCraw) also only seems to have ridden it once. No.3 also.
I'm starting to think that on a lot of these short flat segments what you're mainly seeing is "the fastest Strava user who passed along a short downhill stretch of shared-use path".
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