The month of July has a lot of spice to offer for cyclists. The most prominent one is the Tour De France is something everyone looks forward to. I have been following Tour De France for a decade now. Specifically, the recent rivalry between Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard has been fascinating to watch. Meanwhile, Googlers organize their own internal event in July for cyclists to have some mix of fun and challenge. I wasn’t aware of it until this year, and got to know 6 days into July when a newsletter surfaced!
The event was in its 6th edition this year. It is a global cycling competition to celebrate the Google office and the rider with the most distance ridden on a cycle in July. And not just that, they had categories for Green (for the rider with the highest average speed, only applying to rides > 30km), Polka Dot (for the rider with the most elevation), and White jerseys (most distance covered by the rider who joined Strava in 2023). The activity needed to be tracked in the Strava app, and it had a minimal setup process that allowed syncing it to the Google TDG dashboard. Honestly, I was impressed by the different layers of statistics they provided in the dashboard. One could filter the ranks based on office location, a particular rider, ride type (indoor, e-bike, outdoor), and a lot more. We also had an internal chat space to keep the cyclists engaged.
The month of July isn’t ideal for cyclists in this part of the world. It is monsoon season, and you would be lucky to have a streak of dry days. There were though patches of dry weather. I do not mind some light drizzles as long as I stay on the city roads and avoid muddy gravel courses.
I could complete 11 rides in total, almost all of them varying between 25-30km, with a max ride of 41km. Overall, it was a shade over 300km of cycling 🙂 I had never cycled that much in a short span. So this was way over my usual rhythm.
TDG brings in the concept of FED (Flat Equivalency Distance) which is basically a multiplication factor applied to your elevation distance to calculate what would be Flat distance for the same ride. The calculation is SUM(km) + SUM(1/40*elevation). So with an overall elevation distance that I covered of 2730m, I ended up with a FED of 369km.
I was pleasantly surprised to see some serious cyclists in Google (mostly in EUR and US regions) who rode upwards of 2000-3000 km! Those are mind-boggling numbers for semi-professionals because the Tour De France professional cyclists cover the same in 21 stages, but of course, their speed and uphill endurance cannot be matched!
I reside close to the city outskirts (may not be truly outskirts any longer since the city perimeter is rapidly expanding, but very close to the radial Outer Ring Road that provides great tracks in parallel). So I have some finely marked routes over the years that I follow. This city landscape is quite challenging; you barely find a large stretch of flat distance. As per the ride timings, I prefer starting before the first light of dawn.
It was one of a kind I had ever tried, even though I have been cycling for a decade. I always wanted to stretch the distances but lacked motivation. This event was just what it provided. I just hoped the weather stayed much better. Towards mid of the month, it was pouring the entire week and one could barely get out and kick the pedals.
Already looking forward to the next year, assuming I’m still @ Google 🙂
