Interviewed at his apartment on Mission Street, San Francisco, on October 30, 2026.

Ian: Please introduce yourself however you like.

Pratyush: Okay. So, I'm Pratyush. I'm 29 years old. I grew up in India, in Delhi, and moved to the States in 2019 for my master's. And I moved to the Bay Area in 2021. I have been here since then. Professionally, I've been working as a software engineer with Amazon. I have been with them since then; it's been over five years now.

I've been into bikes all my life. I used to have shitty old Walmart bikes growing up, and I'd just bike around the neighborhood. And that has now kind of morphed into a big hobby that I spend most of my time outside of work in. I've been biking seriously for probably the last 8 to 10 months, since I got into racing and trying to get better at biking, and get stronger with everyone in my group at Thursdays.

And then besides that, I also play badminton… That has taken a pause since I've been training for biking. And then, yeah, I love being around plants. I've been trying to keep as many of them alive.

Is there any cross-training between biking and badminton?

Not really. Badminton, I would say, needs a lot of tricky movement and a lot of reflexes. So I think probably the 5-second power output that I'll increase is going to help me in badminton. But it's a lot about reflexes, so there's not a lot of cross-training. I would have loved if it translated to something.

Maybe the endurance of cycling helps you persist in badminton, like in a full match?

Oh yeah, yeah. I was playing tournaments for badminton as well. So when you get to the later stages in the tournament — I think the semifinals of the last tournament that I played — it helped me there, because the other person was really tired and I had a little bit more endurance from biking. I felt like that's something that helped. But I also got there the hard way, whereas someone else might not have gotten there the same hard way. So I take three steps; someone takes two steps to get to the semifinals, so…

You gotta wear them down.

Yeah, I got endurance. I can wear them down. I have tons of endurance from my 10 hours of biking.

That's awesome. All right, you already touched on this a little bit: when did you first start riding road bikes?

So growing up, it was always city bikes or hybrid bikes. Then I moved to Penn State, and I bought a $700 Trek city hybrid bike, and I thought, oh my god, I have spent so much money, this is such a great bike. I rode it around for probably a year or so, and I was very happy with it. And then I moved to the Bay Area and I knew I was going to get a road bike. So 2021 was my first road bike. It's right up there, still hanging.

Nice. What is it?

It's a Tarmac SL6. Only the frame is stock right now; everything has been upgraded on that bike since then. But yeah, that was my first road bike. I think I'm gonna keep it. It's gonna be there with me as long as I keep biking.

Do you have any sense of how many miles you've put on it?

It's between 15 and 20,000 miles, I think. And most of it is in the last two years, because in 2021 I didn't bike as much. I biked a little bit, but I was still getting into it. Then I got into a relationship — 2, 2.5, 3 years, I think — and we started living together. So it was not as much riding either. I remember there was one year where I only rode 1,300 miles in the entire year, which on a good month is my monthly mileage now.

Was it the relationship that encroached on your biking?

I think so, because she was not into biking, and she would like to go out on Friday, which would not let me go out on Saturday early morning. And I was not biking early in the mornings on weekdays. It was mostly a weekend thing. And then a friend of mine — I met him at one of the group rides — introduced me to Fat Cake doing 6:30 AM rides. And that's how I got introduced to being a morning person. And now I cannot sleep past 6 AM!

Man, same thing happened to me. The mornings here are just — it's the time to ride.

Yeah. I would barely ride on weekdays; even if I would, I would go after work, like at 5:30, 6 PM in the evening. And I would usually ride by myself, because I was mainly riding with the Swell group, which were older people, so I didn't really get along with them as well. And then I got into Fat Cake, made a lot of friends there, and then I came to Thursdays, and it was a whole different — it's more like family now. It's like a family.

And when did you get serious about riding bikes?

Serious about riding bikes — I think mid last year. Until mid last year I was still not. I did Seattle to Portland a couple of years ago on a whim. A friend of mine was doing it — he lives in Seattle — and I had only done one century before that. I hadn't ridden more than 100 miles more than once before that. I did it on a whim, and I did pretty fine. I didn't feel bad about it. And that was kind of a point where I realized, okay, I can get into biking a little bit more seriously.

When was that?

This was, I think, mid 2024. And that was still not the tipping point of me getting started completely. I think mid last year was when a lot of my friends from Fat Cake started racing as well. And then we did the Death Ride in July last year. That was something that got me going. And then a few of my friends started riding with Thursdays, and they were like, okay, let's start riding with Thursdays. And I got here and I was like, everyone's so fast. I gotta get serious about this.

It really makes you level up.

Oh yeah. Oh my god. I've been training for the past, what, 10 months? I feel like I've not gotten even an inch better, right? I feel like everyone is just training all the time. Everyone's just getting better, so you feel like you're playing catch-up all the time. But I think I'm getting better a little bit. In the group that I usually ride with, they're all really strong; everyone's really passionate about it. So they're all working towards it.

What does serious mean to you?

I think everything mostly revolves around biking now. My plans, whatever I do — my day-to-day life revolves around biking. Can I say yes to a commitment if it's too late? I'll not say yes to it anymore. And I have been trying to track all my health metrics. I love being around numbers, so I track all of my health metrics as well. So things like, oh, can I go out and drink tonight? No, it'll spoil my HRV tomorrow morning, so I cannot do that. Just a series of things revolving around biking. Most of the decisions that I take, I ask: does this impact my biking in some way? And my vacations are now tied with biking. When I go out with my friends who are not into biking, like my friends from Penn State, I don't plan trips longer than a week now, so that I'm not off my bike for more than a week, which is too long, by the way. Two weeks is so much longer, and I keep scrolling Strava while I'm there, like, I'm missing out on so much.

I feel like six or seven days is the max you can go before you start to really lose it.

Oh yeah, I think so. It just goes away immediately. You build up your fitness for six months and it goes away in a week. It's brutal.

In what ways does road biking impact your life?

It brings me a lot of happiness when I see myself getting stronger. It gives me a sense of achievement outside of work. I am very ambitious in my career. I have ambitious goals; I try to do well at my work, and that brings me some joy, some happiness, but there's some of that outside of work that's still missing. And I think road biking gives me a sense of achievement where I'm able to do things consistently, stick to a plan that I set out for myself, stick to a goal, and achieve it in a certain time frame. And it's getting discipline into my life.

And then a lot of things — like, I never used to be a morning person. My dad used to wake me up when I was in high school. He used to say, okay, you should go out and go for a run or something. I would go to the park and I'd just lie down on the bench and go to sleep. And now it's the other way around. I'm usually the one waking up first in my house. I wake them up, and they're kind of like, oh — the tides have completely turned. So I kind of like that idea. All of these things together, they bring a lot of happiness to me.

I imagine, as somebody who really relates to metrics, that cycling, where you can measure your improvement in very real numbers, it’s really satisfying?

Yeah, just looking at — I think the biggest number that I'm focused on right now is Z2. And it's the slowest thing that you can get better at. But I can see tiny bits of improvement over the past 10 months. I got a professional coach starting April, so they've been putting me on TrainingPeaks plans and everything. So I can see my Zone 2 power. I've told him, forget FTP, forget everything — Zone 2 power is what I need to get better at, and I think everything else would flow naturally. That's my belief; probably not the very correct one, but that's what I want to get.

That sounds right. Have you ever felt like biking has negatively impacted your life?

I wouldn't say negatively, but I can't do everything at once. So I haven't played badminton — I used to play for my school when I was in India — and I haven't touched my racket in over 12 months now. Which is a big change for me, because badminton really used to be what biking is to me right now. And that shift is something that I'm not totally happy with. I also had a big community in badminton, so there are a lot of my friends whom I now see only on their birthdays or at parties. So I miss them a lot. I miss that community, hanging out with them. But I built another community, because I wanted to get into strength training, so I started doing CrossFit. So there are a lot of friends there as well. So I think— you can only choose two out of three. So it's only CrossFit and biking for me right now.

Yeah, it takes a lot of time to do anything well.

Yeah. I mean, badminton… It's just that it goes on so late. We start at like 7 PM, and then we play until 10, and then we hang around at a boba shop until 11:30. So by the time I'm sleeping, it's 12. And I cannot have my sleep destroyed for Friday every week. So I'm trying to see if I can figure out a way where I can limit it to 9 PM, come back, get into bed before 10. That's also late, by the way. But I'm working towards seeing if I can get that thing back. I do miss that.

Net net, do you think road biking is positive or negative?

Definitely net net it has to be positive. I've been investing so much of my time in it. So yeah, definitely a positive. But some downsides to it — I mean, not really downsides — my parents don't like it, because I get injured. You fall, you get injured. And whenever I'm traveling, I'm mostly traveling with my bike now. So even when I'm visiting them, it's usually more than two weeks, and I bring my bike with me.

Where do they live?

They live in Delhi right now.

Oh, wow. What's it like riding there?

It's really cool riding there. I've been there in the winters, but the winters are a little crazy there. Because of how the climate is, the AQI tends to go higher during the winters. So you can't ride really early in the morning, which I usually do here. A lot of people do ride there early in the morning, but it's not as safe. So I usually go out later in the afternoon there. But yeah, my parents were like, you're on your bike four hours a day and then you're sleeping the rest of the day, so why are you even here?

But I think that started when I had a work trip to Bangalore for a month, and I brought my bike there. I think one of my Strava titles said, "I didn't realize how beautiful my country was.” Until then, I never biked around when I was in India, because it was mostly driving around. But I brought my bike there and I visited so many places. It was so beautiful. Southern India is also very beautiful, and I need to explore it a little bit more.

But the overall point is that net net it's a positive. I've explored a lot of places. We just had a trip to Spain with a bunch of friends from Thursdays too. That was amazing. It was some of the best riding that I've done in probably all of my life, I think. India has been great. I'm going in December; I'm planning to bring my bike again. And my mom's like, no, you should not, because my cousin is getting married too, so she's like, you would not have time. I was like, I will have a day, and I'll bring it just for a day. Every summer vacation, we used to drive from my grandma's place to my nana's place, which is probably a 120-mile trip, and it's in the Himalayas. So there's a lot of elevation, and I'm really pumped to ride that. It's like 120 miles, probably close to 18, 20,000 feet of climbing.

Wow.

And I want to do that. It's like a Death Ride, and I want to do that. So my mom's like, “no, it's not safe here. People drive really rashly, and people don't really expect cyclists to be around. It's not something that has evolved as a sport here yet. So maybe give it a little bit of time,” and I said, “it's okay, you keep saying that, but I'm not gonna listen.”

Yeah, I'm curious what it's like riding in that environment. I've never been to India, but it seems like there's maybe a mixture of different speeds and modes of transportation. So I imagine that in some ways it might even be safer there, where people are thinking, oh, there's going to be somebody walking here, or there's going to be somebody… It's not like you're on I-80 in California.

Yeah, yeah. I think there are both ways to it. People in the cities expect everyone to be around everywhere, so they're more cautious while driving. It's just very dense. So in a way, it might be a little bit safer, you might not get hit by a car, because they're also going slower — they're probably going slower than all the bikes there. So in that way, it might be relatively safer in dense cities. But I'm trying to bike where no one really expects it. No one really expects a bike on those hills ever. No one even thinks, why would someone do that? It's not really a concept. It's a little bit remote.

So, do people see you as just a freak?

Oh, they do. Oh, they do. Every time — even sometimes in Delhi, which now has a big cycling community — people just come up to you, and they're like, oh, what kind of bike is this? And they just start asking you random questions: oh, where did you get it from? How much did you buy it for? Things like that. I haven't biked up there in the Himalayas yet, but I can imagine it would be tenfold, and everyone would be just staring.

What's the town called?

Pithoragarh.

I wanna see the route map for that one.

I'll send you the elevation profile that I'm trying to do. But yeah, it is very beautiful. I'm pretty sure it's going to be really fun biking up there. It's just that no one expects me to be there on my bike, which makes it a little bit dangerous, and I do realize the point that my parents are trying to put out, but I want to do it.

You gotta do it.

I want to do it.

Do you have any goals for yourself for road biking?

I think the main goal is to explore as many places on my bike. I have a car; I don't drive it enough. I've probably driven less than 5,000 miles in the last three years on that.

Wow.

Even to go around the city, I just use my bike. I just don't like driving my car anymore since I've gotten into biking. So wherever I go, I just bring my bike with me — that's my goal. And I don't want to say no to any ride because it seems too out of my ability to do. That's probably my main goal. And then recently I got into racing as well. I'm not really into, oh, I want to get a podium, or I want to win every race, or I want to get to Cat 2, because I don't think that's going to bring me a lot of joy. I would definitely love to be on a podium someday, but I would like to get stronger, or make it hard for my friends. That's what I'm really looking for. Like when you go on West Peak Wednesdays, for instance, these days, they're like, this week Dakota was so crazy, he went so hard! That's what I want to do — like, oh my god, this guy made my life a mess on this ride! That's the main goal. And then maybe win some races along the way.

I think those are beautiful goals. What do you absolutely love about cycling?

I've realized, traveling a lot, that biking is probably the best way to explore any place, by far. I mean, you're in Lycra all the time, walking around and looking like an idiot to people. But even if you're exploring a city by car, you just drive up to a place; you don't see anything along the way. And you can't walk as far, so you limit it to a space and then you go somewhere else. Biking, you see things along the way, and also wherever you're going, you're able to explore. So that is something that I really love about biking. That's probably one of the reasons why I've just started to bring my bike everywhere I go. It's the easiest way to explore a city. I don't have to bring my road bike everywhere — even Lyft bikes, the city bikes that they have everywhere, are just so much easier and so much fun. And of course, in the city, it's so much faster than driving around.

It's amazing too, being in the environment. Like, when you're in a car, you're closed off.

Yeah, you're sealed off.

When you're out on a bike, you smell it, you feel the air, the temperature.

Yeah, exactly. You realize there are things there that you never really saw while driving past. So you notice a lot more things when you're biking through a neighborhood, versus using public transport or driving around. And you'd probably naturally notice a lot more while you're walking, but you can't walk as far.

Yeah, it's limited in a different way. So, next question: If you had zero constraints on your time, how many hours a week do you think you'd ride?

I think I'm doing about 15 to 20 hours a week right now, and I think it's a healthy amount to be spending on a bike. If I do any more, it would probably turn towards making it professional, which I don't want to do. I want to bike because I enjoy biking, and I don't want to take the fun out of it by doing any more. So I think I'm giving it as much time as I can right now. Somewhere between 10 and 20 hours a week on average is a good amount. And even if I had enough time, I'd probably pursue more hobbies instead of spending a lot more time on just biking.

So on an average week how many hours do you ride now?

On average, it's about 15. I've been riding a little less since I got back from Spain, when I had a little scare. I blacked out while I was biking in Spain.

I did not know that.

I had blacked out before. I had a few incidents before—

While riding, or just—

No, no, just in general. I blacked out at my gym; that was the most recent previous incident before that biking incident. That was over a year ago. And then a couple times before. So it has happened to me before, and I was talking to doctors about it as well. They said it was mostly dehydration, something like that. But this time I fell off my bike, and I got injured a bit — I mean, I didn't get badly injured, but it was really scary, just blacking out, and we were about to descend. It could have been a lot worse. I was fortunate enough that I could get back on my bike two days after that. But then they put a cardiac monitor on me. They monitored it for 30 days. They just cleared me this past week.

Wow.

So I was riding a lot less for, I don't know, probably 6 to 8 weeks. Not less hours, but less intensity — still doing about ten hours a week. But I think starting next week, I'm going to get back on my training plan and ramp it up. I haven't gone to Zone 4 in a while. They just cleared me on Tuesday this week, so Wednesday was the first one where I could actually push myself and go really hard.

Back with a bang! What do you wish a non-cyclist could experience about cycling?

Oh, that's an interesting question. I'm thinking about all of my friends who do not bike. I took my friends to bike with me to Hawk Hill once. They were really happy about going, but they were physically unable to go up the hill. I think some of them did get e-bikes, but most of them were physically unable to. They had to walk their bikes up the hill, which I still can't imagine, because we do that multiple times a week. So I would love for them to just have that ability to go wherever they want to, because it's truly liberating to be on your bike and go anywhere. And I don't think I give it enough credit that I am able to bike 100 miles on a whim, which is not a small feat. I sometimes feel like, oh, I'm not strong enough, I'm falling behind everyone else. But on the other hand, when I go out with my friends who are non-cyclists and realize that it's hard for them to climb up even Hawk Hill, I realize how much fitness it has helped me get into. And I would love for them to have that kind of ability as well, and explore things in a way that they probably could not imagine right now.

It's a sport that if you're not fit for it, it's not fun. But to get fit for it, it takes a lot of work and time.

Yeah, it's hard, man. Like, on weekends, we're like, okay, let's keep it chill and do a Point Reyes, which is 80 miles. I talk about this with my friends, like, yeah, I didn't go too hard today, I just did Point Reyes. And they're like, how many miles was it? I was like, yeah, 80 miles. And they all get startled: you rode 80 miles and you're saying it's chill? For me now, yes, it is. For everyone in our community, yes, it is. Nothing too crazy — there's no climbing, nothing, it's almost flattish. But to someone who's not biking, it's still a lot of miles.

The definition of crazy changes so vastly. Have you ever taken a total break from cycling? And if so, why?

No. Since I started biking with a lot of intent, I don't think I have taken a total break from biking. Like I was talking about earlier, I think I'm spending the right amount of time, so I wouldn't really want to take a break from cycling, unless it’s for health reasons, which I was about to because of the blackout thing, but no, I don't think so. It brings me a lot of joy, and I really don't know what I would do for 15 hours, 20 hours in a week if I'm not biking. On some random weekends, when we go out on a Friday night and I'm waking up late on a Saturday, I don't know what to do for the rest of the weekend. I feel like I'm going to drive myself crazy. So I think it'll be a heartbreak if I ever take a complete break from biking.

Lastly, please choose only three words to describe who you are as a cyclist.

Three words, okay. Hmm, I didn't see that coming. I'm trying to think of words that would truly describe how I want to be. I think ambitious is something I would want to say, and it's not about being ambitious about any achievement or anything. It's just having ambitious goals about biking. I think “ambitious.”

And then, let me think. I don't want to use cliché words, like explorer, things like that, because we're doing that anyway. So… I think analyst would fit well, because I like going after numbers. After every ride, I go into all the segments that I know and I try to compare: okay, was my power up, and was my heart rate down? That's what you're trying to get all the time. So I do that a lot after all of my rides. That's something that relates to my biking as well.

And then what else? I think I see myself as a collector too, in multiple ways. I have three bikes right now. I would want to have even more, and I don't plan on selling any of them. But besides just collecting bikes, I have a lot of pictures of all the memories that I have on my bike as well. So I think collector might fit well.

In terms of memories, in terms of bikes.

Yeah. Yeah, that's it.

Thank you so much.