You can now pay a 'mule' to earn your kudos - we went inside the murky world of Strava jockeys

There’s an old Chinese proverb that people like to cite. You’ve almost certainly heard it. “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” It’s a lesson about imparting wisdom, of course, teaching others things so they grow as people, and in this case, are able to fill their stomachs.

That’s all well and good. But what if the man didn’t have to fish at all? What if there was a way he could kick back, relax, and pay someone else to return with the haul? Strava didn’t exist in ancient China, but if it did, the man might want to know about jockeys.

Jockeys? As in the people who ride horses? Yes, that’s right. Also known as ‘mules’ or ‘surrogates’, Strava jockeys are people you can pay to do your exercise activity for you. It’s a trend that is thought to have grown out of Indonesia, where athletic souls began earning money for sharing running files. They do the sweating, you get the credit. In other words, they do the fishing, you get the fish.

Until last month, I had heard only loosely of Strava jockeys. I’d seen the odd article here and there, but didn’t think it was something cyclists used. Then I came across a Twitter account, @StravaJockey, inaugurated just last month. “You do not have time to cycle or run? We do it for you for your Strava. Any time, any pace, anywhere,” they wrote. It would cost 25p per kilometre for a run, and 10p per kilometre for a cycle. Under the guise of a punter, I decide to send them a message.

How does this work? I ask. My cover is quickly blown. In a matter of seconds, they deduce I am a journalist – admittedly, the first words of my Twitter bio say as much. No problem, they're happy to play ball anyway.

The person in charge of the account goes by Gil, an anonymised name. He says he relies on a network of jockeys who he contacts around the country. In theory, every time he receives a commission, he passes it on to a jockey, who then does the activity and sends back the GPX file for the customer to upload. Where does Gil find these people? “I can’t disclose all my tricks,” he explains.

I want to see if it is real. So I ask for something very specific: could he provide a 100-mile ride, at an average speed of 20mph, starting in Manchester, north-west England? Eight hours later, I receive a message.

There it is. The file for my 100-mile ride out of Manchester, beginning an hour and a half after my request. “My guy has been out all day,” Gil says. The ride time says it took over seven and a half hours. Has someone really just spent a whole working day riding for me? I start to feel a hint of guilt creep in. “The area is quite hilly. He could not reach the average speed but there is good ascent,” Gil writes, as the guilt intensifies.

Gil then tells me more about himself. He explains he's a Belgian expat, who now lives in the UK. He’s a keen runner, a part-time cycling coach and – this it the bit that intrigues me most – “an IT expert for a living”.

“If I can, in my work life or personal life, create a computer program that will reduce my work load, I will. Mainly because I’m a geek and I like it. I’m proficient in programming languages like C+, C#, Python, VBA. At work for example, a lot of people are repeating their tasks day after day while an automation could do the job very quickly.”

Automation, you say? “I call it constructive laziness. But one rule: do not tell anyone you automate your tasks, and if the manual task takes 5 hours, even if automated, you need to entertain the fact it indeed takes 5 hours."

In other words, you have to wait for the time to elapse. The same, I figure, might apply to a seven-and-a-half-hour bike ride. I look back at the file he sent me. The ride is said to have started at 12:03pm. He sent me it at 7:42pm the same day. With a moving time of 7:32.13, this means the jockey had fewer than 10 minutes of stoppages, including the time it took to send the file to Gil, and for him to pass it on to me. It's difficult to believe, but it's not impossible.

Gil tells me more about his IT expertise. He explains that a GPX file, in essence, is a representation of a spreadsheet table. “Your Garmin watch, every 1 or 2 seconds is adding a line to this table, a time stamp, the GPS coordinates, and any other relevant data.” As I read his message, I wonder how easy it might be to forge a Strava file. Are the jockeys real? Or is it all just spreadsheet fiddling? Gil, it appears, has already premeditated my question.

“Completely faking the GPX is also doable,” he writes, “but much more difficult in terms of technology, especially for cycling which covers longer distances. The big problem with your 100 miles around Manchester would be the ascent.” A rider’s speed constantly changes on rolling terrain, after all. “Capturing the inertia due to the granularity of the data will make it extremely messy,” Gil says. Still, he repeats, it’s “doable”.

“You just need to ensure data is coherent because if you’re a nobody and get the KOM from one day to another, no doubt your activity will be flagged.”

Accidental KOM hunting isn’t the only issue. Hiring a Strava jockey, be it a real human or a computer programme, brings with it a moral dilemma. There’s deceit in having your followers believe you did something you didn’t. Gil recognises the problem. He plays his role, he says, for “a bit of fun”. “From the jockey stand point, I don't think there is a moral issue. There might be a moral issue however from the user. If it’s just to brag at the coffee machine or to lie to yourself, ok. But if you want to use it to claim credentials or points in fitness app that reward in vouchers, you may cross the line of morals.”

The pond is murkier than I first imagined.

I leave it some time to settle, and reach out to Strava to see what they think of the phenomenon. Their response is resolute: anyone falsifying activities will be suspended. It's a good thing I'd not even thought of uploading my Manchester aquisition.

“Strava’s mission is to motivate people to live their best lives,” a spokesperson tells me. “Part of the platform’s magic comes from the authenticity of our global community in uploading an activity, giving kudos, or engaging in a club. As required by our Terms of Service, Strava athletes agree to create only one account for their personal use and not share their account or Strava credentials with others.

“Accounts found violating the Terms of Service, including through sharing account information or misrepresenting the athlete and/or activity, will be suspended from the platform. This is important to safeguarding and respecting the progress and work of our athletes as they lace up everyday.”

At this stage, Gil’s venture is so fresh that he’s yet to receive an actual commission, only my 100-mile Manchester tester. I wait a few weeks, and send him a message to see if he’s had any interest. “Hi!” he responds. “Someone wants an Everesting for £500!” Talk about going in at the deep end. If Gil can deliver this, he can deliver anything. Four days later, the proof comes through.

Gil sends me a 209km ride up and down Ditchling Beacon in East Sussex. The altitude gain is over 9,500m, making it an Everesting and then some. It apparently took the rider almost 12 hours. “Hard work!” Gil says.

Sceptical, I ask if he can guarantee the ride was done by a human. “Our T&C do not explicitly guarantee this. It’s at the discretion of the jockey,” he replies. “We make it clear with the client that the activity file provided may be IT altered.” My scepticism deepens.

I check Strava for recent Ditchling Beacon attempts. To tot up that much elevation, Gil’s jockey will have had to have ridden the segment 69 times. I find nothing that matches. The hill’s ‘Local Legend’, the person who has climbed it most in the last 90 days, has only managed 38 ascents. I conclude the answer to be one of two things: either the file exists, but - very plausibly - it’s private and hidden from the leaderboards, or the whole thing is made up. I desperately want to believe it's real, and so I allow myself to do so.

The truth is, by this point, I’ve grown an admiration for Gil. He’s been prompt and polite in his messages to me, and comes across as someone who wants to help people, both punters in search of more kudos, and jockeys after extra cash. The final commission for the Everesting, he explains, was £350, £150 of which went to his jockey. Was the file digitally altered? Maybe. Did the jockey even get on a bike? Perhaps not. Has Gil always told me the truth? I don’t know.

There is, however, in the midst of the murkiness, one firm reality that I choose to believe. It's more of an image, really. The scene plays out like this: on Monday morning, somewhere in East Sussex, an office worker wandered up to the coffee machine and bumped into a colleague, who asked him what he got up to over the weekend. “Oh,” his eyes light up. “I rode up Ditchling Beacon 69 times.” He then whips his phone out of his pocket, pulls up Strava, and thrusts the screen under his colleague’s nose. “That’s amazing,” they say. £350 well spent.

Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. Pay someone else to fish for you, and you'll eat without breaking a sweat.