Hi,
I have a big summer planned so am training hard, lots of sufferfest (did Rue the day last night) and sometimes run back to back vids, or ride multiple On locations (Italian lakes last week). I’m even thinking about a half Knight (squire?) of 5 vids at some point but as my summer culminates in L’Etape which has some long, long climbs I’m keen to try and replicate riding 15k at 7% so while I can do that on the no vid endurance rides, I wondered if anyone had any tips of the right way to approach this or had taken a look at Rouvy? I haven’t kicked off a free trial yet but it looks promising (to run alongside Wahoo, not instead of). I like the idea of being able to cycle some famous climbs Mt Teide, Alpe D’huez, Ventoux etc.
Look forward to your comments.
I have a Rouvy subscription and I’m happy with it. Allows me to do exactly what I want on the routes I want.
I’m doing a month free trial off the back of a GCN promo code and quite like it.
I have used Rouvy for years, and I like it. In fact, I used Rouvy before I started with Sufferfest.
I usually substitute a Rouvy ride for an Inspiration ride, or if I have an Endurance ride in bad weather. With Rouvy, I can learn to ride to RPE far better than I can with Sufferfest, and I get a better understanding of the relationship between my gear selection and effort.
It also gives me the opportunity to ride places I probably will never get to do in real life.
I find Rouvy and Sufferfest together a very useful combination.
Anyone have experience with both Rouvy and FulGaz and what they’ve found to be their relative pros/cons? Those are probably the two other training platforms I’m most interested in.
I’ve done both, but have stuck with Fulgaz. Outside of the look and feel of the two platforms, these are the differences as I see them:
Rouvy - has virtual avatars so you can better ride with other people or do races/rides with large groups. They also have a lot more videos because individual users can upload them - but it also means there is a lot more junk to sort through unless you stick to the ones they promote, which are generally excellent
Fulgaz - Quality is consistently better because while the take user uploaded videos, they conform them and make sure they hit a certain quality before the load them. I’ve had a few videos uploaded to Fulgaz. The other reason I chose Fulgaz was because it’s the best app if you have a CLIMB. The changes in gradients are much smoother/more realistic with Fulgaz than any other app I’ve tried. They also support Real Road Feel from Tacx trainers - not sure if Rouvy does.
Either way - both apps have great videos. It may just go to the look and feel of the app…
If found Fulgaz very buggy when I tried it but that was some time ago, pity because I found the videos to be better than ROUVY.
Using ROUVY as a compliment to SYSTM.
In Rouvy, when you view the search results you can see which are the high quality videos and which are not.
I used Rouvy for a few months prior to Wahoo’s RGT acquisition when I had burned out on NoVids and Inspiration rides. After RGT shut down I went back to Rouvy but quit again, as I found the ride physics to be significantly worse than either RGT or indieVelo which I’m using instead.
I ride a KICKR Bike and compared with RGT (which due to Magic Roads I have lots of reference to being pretty close to my real riding) and iV my experience with Rouvy is that it was too easy on the flats and too hard on steep gradients. I would be consistently 1-2 gears higher on the flats and 1-2 gears lower on climbs than the other apps.
It’s a shame because I loved the real life videos of riding places but the disjointed ride feel was a showstopper for me.
Thanks - useful feedback. Apprecited.
I have never found the Rouvy ride physics to be a problem, compared to the real world. Then again I am not a strong rider so hill climbs are always difficult for me.
you can take a look at Taxc app too , all the videos are nice filmed . I did experience Rouvy a few years ago and find Tacx better ( is it still the case ? ) .
Based on your observation, I tested the speeds Rouvy reported against my wattage and climb elevation using this tool: An interactive model-based calculator of cycling power vs. speed
Based on the results, it seems that Rouvy does overestimate the difficulty of the climbs. Without, however, having access to their model, I do not know if they are more accurate than this model. There are no Rouvy routes that I can compare my real world power data that I have for climbs.
Thanks for doing that! I was worried my gut reaction would be invalidated by data (since the gut does have 
for 
). Some difference is natural, as the realm of variables to consider / assume in physics modeling (CdA, road surface, wind, air density, …) means apple-to-apple comparisons is hard. The TL;DR with me for Rouvy was that whatever it was doing; I didn’t like. It felt like I was fiddling with my gearing way more than I do in real life or RGT/indieVelo which are the other platforms I’ve used.
Note: I did invalidate my gut in comparing RGT vs. indieVelo. My first take was indieVelo was “slower” for same effort uphill than RGT. By porting iV into an RGT Magic Road I was able to show iV was consistently several % faster on the same route and effort. I suspect iV was putting on higher resistance to make it feel harder but outputting slightly higher speed.
If you ride in “Just Ride” mode, adjusting the reality level downwards might compensate for any deviation.
Quick update…
I trialled Rouvy, high hopes quickly dashed. It’s very buggy and I found it really irritating that I had to ride looking at the back of my own Avatar so based on the earlier post(er) I am in the midst of a FulGaz trial - and so far while it is a bit fiddly and could definitely take some lessons from Wahoo, I really like it.
I’ve ridden a few Mallorca climbs I know pretty well and it certainly ticks the missing gap in wahoo training which is the need to just sit on a climb for an hour and marinade. I can see it working well in combination with SUF rides and I can pay month by month so easy to use in the build up to this summers events.
BTW I have also been riding mini tours by completing all the on location videos from one location (Italian Lakes/ Provance/Tasmania) over 2/3 days creating a virtual mini break. This should have a name (or badge?).
You can change camera view and camera angle in the app settings.
Edit: added the word change in the right place