@Saddlesaur Remind me what the suggestions were for the calendar. I found this post which had a good suggestion about blocking days - that would be nice to have. Were there other suggestions?
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I actually like repeating exercises so I can compare my power and heart rate on the same videos over time.
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I also enjoy the Challenge List in FulGaz - you can save a completed ride to your Challenge List and then ride against yourself or anyone else who has saved the ride to their Challenge List.
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When the Sufferfest app had barely any functionality, the advice was use TrainingPeaksā calendar and there was a partnership deal they had to be able to āsubscribeā to the sufferfest plan of choice for no cost in TP and it could be managed there - IF you had a TP subscription, you could manage the plan fully - like decide, Iām ill ! - I need to shunt my whole training plan out by a week - and it did it perfectly. (or days or weeks, but I liked keeping it aligned)
That should be the target for SYSTM - get to the level that SUF + TP offered but for the single price - the LEAST we should get as compo for the sacrilege that RGT bought, swallowed and shutdown for a NDA with Zwift!
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Yes, I am still a whole-hearted supporter of all things Sufferfest and Sufferlandrian, but this right here is why I switched my primary platform to Trainerroad. Iāve been on TR + Zwift for the past year. I run old Sufferfest videos whenever I need a fix.
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Hereās a list from a couple of years ago:
Workout player:
Ability to have HR graph overlain the power graph. (or hot key to show HR graph)
Be able to select smaller font and data boxes in workout player to obscure less of the screen. Ā½ the current size would be good.
Percentage of FTP shown in target power.
Up/Down % power adjustment should show current % before incrementing. Also good if it was shown on the screen somewhere. Scrolls too fast. Slower, or stop at 10% increments.
Show the Level in workout status bar when in Level mode.
10 or 5 sec warning for upcoming STAND. Louder ding. Sit alert different from stand alert. STAND banner in line with targets rather than at top of screen
Cadence indicator in the workout player. Something like a bouncing ball or crank icon rotating at the target cadence.
Calendar, Plans, and Workouts:
Show plan week in calendar. Indicated easy weeks of 2:1 and 3:1 plans. Show plan workout number.
Allow notes to be added to workouts in the calendar.
Add suggested alternative workouts in plans, especially for those that come up often. E.g. NPLH as an alternative to Recharger.
Make it easy to delay plan rather than delete and re-add plan.
Show the workout TSS and IF in the calendar.
Compare power result graph to power target graph.
Add time tick marks to the workout player graph. A major mark every 10 minutes and a minor one every 5 minutes would be good.
For workouts, show table of intervals (power, %FTP, duration)
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Well, I missed that chance, trial 2 weeks ended, but then FulGaz sent me an email invitation to use a code to try another 7 days if I was interested. I tried to use that today, the code failed several times both from within the app and from the website, so I emailed them asking for help. They sent another code, several more tries to no avail, and when I replied back about that, they extended me for another 14 days!
I greatly appreciate that, and their very prompt responses to facilitate that, when the code wouldnāt work.
So I got back into the app and looked at the workouts page you suggested, @Johan and I realized it is the same page I used before and only saw 4 workouts.
Still looked the same. I poked around, in and out of that page, not finding any othersā¦
UNTIL I finally had my cursor on the FAR RIGHT edge of the window and FINALLY I found a scroll bar that had been invisible the whole time. I had tried scrolling with a mouse scroll wheel but that doesnāt work to move the workouts up to se more below.
(Although, IF the mouse cursor is already in that far right edge area, the scroll wheel DOES seem to work.)
So I could finally see more workouts and I ran one tonight and did the Tenerife intervals workout. Video was really good, no complaints there.
But there definitely are areas needing improvement. Iāll list the things that jumped out at me tonight.
- The Workouts list has all the TSS scores cut off at the far edge of the window. (Iām on a PC, with very capable display set at 1920x1080.) Very frustrating to not be able to see what Iām choosing without having to open each workout first to see more info.
- During the workout, there is basically nothing telling you what the next interval is going to be until itās already started, and the computer voice that says, āNow. 20 seconds at 240Watts at 95cadence,ā doesnāt even speak until the interval is already starting, so you have to pretty much know already whatās coming to anticipate and raise cadence a second early to avoid bogging down. The voice is just too late and too slow getting out the info. That wasnāt as bad once I anticipated on my own, but if it werenāt exactly the same 7 reps intervals at same power, I would have often been caught out. And a workout with more variation would be really frustrating. SYSTM is always excellent in this regard, using the audible as well as visible notifications of changes, and it does these in advance so you know the change is coming, you know what the new power and cadence target is, and you can manage it all well.
- I have to say that the computerized voice that announces things and makes very ācannedā sounding comments during workouts leaves a LOT to be desired. It is SO monotone and lacking any sense of genuineness that I find it detracting far more than it adds. SYSTM does a really good job in this area by comparison!
- This is more minor, but the workout today still showed time counting, ride was continuing, but it took me back to the very start of the video and I repeated the first minute or so. Shows a funky straight-line back on the Strava map. Not sure why they felt they needed that last minute or so of cooldown, since it was an odd amount anyway, like 6mins 27secs.
Overall, I am happy that FulGaz does have more workouts, and with the previously mentioned caveats, the 2 workouts Iāve done were pretty decent. Once I finally was able to scroll through them, it was reasonably easy to see the basic graph of the workout demands and select some with areas of focus I wanted to find. I didnāt use the search function at all, so I cannot comment on that further at this time.
My opinion of SYSTM is still that it is SUPERB as far as engaging, well-designed, demanding workouts. If I only considered that factor, SYSTM wins hands down.
But I also do enjoy realistic, quality video of scenic places to ride a bike. FulGaz certainly has that in spades, as does ROUVY. If SYSTM offers more and more On Location with Mike Cotty, it certainly offers some alternative in this area, and to me, Mikeās presence and comradery during a ride is hard to beat. But riding other locations AND doing those at oneās own pace with grade changes tied to real-world roads is the territory of ROUVY and FulGaz (and maybe others, but not SYSTM, as far as Iām aware.)
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Glad FulGaz extended your trial.
Canāt comment on the display issues, I use an iPad.
I turn the canned voice and on screen instructions off and just keep an eye on the workout progress to ready myself for the next interval.
I have not tried Rouvy but believe their video is filmed from vehicles and they do some processing to make it more 3D. I think the best quality is 2k. The videos Iāve seen on YouTube did not look that good/ realistic to me, for example cars seemed to be crawling along.
FulGaz rides are filmed by cyclists and if downloaded at 4k is very good. The quality will vary if you use Reactive mode as the video speed adapts to your speed, in Steady mode the video plays at original speed.
The workouts do loop so you have to use the back arrow (on iPad) to show the end/save options. On that, you can save a ride and pick up where you left off later.
I also enjoy the Mike Cotty On Location workouts - itās fun riding the same routes on FulGaz where they are available.
I believe Rouvy is now also the only platform enabling you to upload your own gpx files and ride them. Wahoo used to have that before they killed RGT.
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Yes, the promptness of their resolving the issue, AND extending for 14 days instead of the first-offered 7 days says a lot about their willingness to provide a good evaluation period. It certainly addresses the concerns I mentioned in an earlier post about not having time to really assess a platform/app enough to be willing to buy a membership.
Other platforms ought to take note of this! It seems theyāre so concerned about not getting taken advantage of that they instead prevent potential customers from having a chance to learn the app and maybe like it!
I agree with your assessment completely. I still liked ROUVY in spite of those factors, and I think the app interface is superior to FulGaz; easier to navigate, more intuitive in some ways, and it seemed more polished to me. That said, it has NO audio, so that limits the engagement factor; another area that SYSTM just excels, IMO.
Thereās room for improvement for sure, on both ROUVY and FulGaz, but I think FulGaz could improve a LOT of things fairly easily to make things more intuitive and informative in use. Hopefully they are working on that harder than they are on adding more rides. They already have more than anyone will probably ever ride! But the user interface improvements will help EVERY rider on EVERY RIDE!
Yes, Iāve done both modes and seen that difference. As you said, the video is very good! I downloaded the very 1st ride, only because it forced that on me for reasons unknown, but the rides since that one have never pushed anything and I just started streaming the ride and all has been great. I have a good connection as far as I know, and have no complaints with the video quality at all. It IS more refined than the ROUVY videos I did. What I noticed on ROUVY vids was that especially things on the sides and closer to the rider were just very slightly blurred or had artifacts taking away from the crispness of things, but the scenery ahead tended to be sharper and better. But FulGaz seemed better in ALL areas. I know that ROUVY now does not accept video from āolderā camera sources at all; my GoPro Black 9 is disallowed for new submissions, which surprised me because it is rated up to 5K video and has pretty good stabilization capability, but apparently the advances have been significant since that, so ROUVY is trying to upgrade the overall quality going forward, which is good.
I was surprised that mine actually looped, mainly because it had not finished yet. I see how that works on ZWIFT, for example, and you get notified of the same and can choose your options at the time it finishes. But the workout I did had not finished and there was no indication other than the video suddenly going back to the start, which I recognized was repeating now. It seemed that they just created the workout in error and didnāt match the timing correctly to be done at the top of the mountain, even though the Cooldown portion would logically have been better to stop at the top anyway. A minor glitch, Iām guessing.
Do you mean only a GPX file or something also tied to video of the same?
You can ride any GPX file by importing it to a Garmin device (EDGE, FENIX, others) or WAHOO device, I believe, though I only have Garmin.
Those devices can control your trainer and do a pretty good job of it. I do that occasionally and watch saved GoPro videos of my own rides of same roads. It actually provides very good realism if I can maintain a similar output of when I took the videoā¦
But thatās harder and harder to do as I get older and weaker! 
Sorry, yes, you upload your own video and gpx file and then it generates a Rouvy virtual route based on that. It tries to detect where the road is (so that 3D avatars cycle correctly) and you can even add objects like banners and such.
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Agree on lots of small things FulGaz could improve that would be big wins, search, and allowing users to rate rides (stars) would help search and community engagement, also allowing you to tag rides (favourite is the only option). The most recent app update has fixed a number of annoyances but also broken a few non-critical things.
Overall FulGaz is a good fit for me, I just want to ride and keep fit. I can choose from many rides and explore, do a couple of workouts a week, ride against my/others previous efforts, the events are fun and I can gauge my performance against others in my age group, and itās well priced.
Over the last ~2 years I have enjoyed SYSTM and specifically MC On Location and the Pro Rides.
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