Indoor Route Simulations in the Wahoo App

Announcements
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For those who might have missed the announcement or the Wahoo marketing email, a new route simulator was added in the Wahoo App for indoor training…

https://support.wahoofitness.com/hc/en-us/articles/25228373373458-Indoor-route-simulation-in-the-Wahoo-app

This feature is available for anyone with a smart trainer who has an active Wahoo X subscription. The feature, available under the Plan → My Routes and Plan → Routes by Wahoo in the Wahoo App (not SYSTM!) allows you to select a route, and ride it in Simulation mode, where the trainer resistance is adjusted based on the route gradient. Any route you’ve created/saved in partner applications (RideWithGPS, Strava, etc.) will show up in « My Routes ».

I gave the feature a try this morning, selecting Cygnet Coast Road (which I had ridden in RGT 2 years ago, and saved the RGT session as a route this morning in RWGPS), and really had fun riding it… Of course, having a KICKR Climb or KICKR Bike to get the road gradient change the Climb’s incline as the trainer resistance increases really adds to the feeling of engagement.

The screen display offers multiple pages of data, but the one with a « current 3km view » of the gradient, the whole route gradient, and a few data fields (HR, power, speed, time, distance, incline) was perfect for me.

The speed estimation seemed quite good, and truth be told, I did not much miss the « virtual world » interaction of Zwift or RGT compared to this new feature…. This feature might very well make me drop my Zwift subscription next fall.

So I thought I’d given a kudo to Wahoo for this new feature, as I find it unfortunate that they’ve really not made much of a marketing effort to announce it.

My workout was initially synched to Strava as an « indoor » ride, but then I toggled this off, the GPS map showed up, along with the simulated elevation.

Sir @Rupert - would it be possible for the workout to be specified as a « Virtual Ride » in Strava rather than an indoor ride? This cannot be changed manually…
Also, would it be possible to automatically share this workout to Garmin Connect as do the SYSTM workouts?

Well done, Wahoo… Given many people’s frustration with what’s happening with the Sufferfest workouts - myself included, I wanted to give credit where it’s due…

Rob

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Thanks for the review. I’ve never much enjoyed this style of workout but maybe I should give it a try.

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Personally, I prefer this simulation style over a NoVid…

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In the Wahoo app, I see it says “Routes [Beta]” but clicking on Select does nothing.

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What version of the WA are u using, Sir?

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12.2.3

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That’s an odd number, as I think they’re on public version 6.54.1 or something

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I see. 6.54.1 Go into the plan tab. Then selecting routes will allow you to do the sims. Going into the Route (beta) cards is hit and miss atm depending on what route. Although it seems to be working for me even there now.

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@RServranckx thanks for the feedback. I’ll pass this request onto the dev team as we build on this new feature.

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Thanks! I think it has a lot of potential…

Rob

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Questions:

  1. Are you doing this in Wahoo App on PC/Mac/Android/iPhone?
  2. Have you done the same using a device (Wahoo/Garmin/etc) to control the KICKR Bike?
  3. Does whichever version of the Wahoo App (PC/phone etc) show anything much different than the previously mentioned device control screens show? i.e. I have used my Garmin Edge 840 and previously 830 to control my KICKR to ride any route I want to create with either Strava or Garmin Connect routing and it does this well. I wonder what more the Wahoo App offers in the way of displayed information? For example, does the App show a full map of the course and allow you to follow your changing location there as you ride virtually? (That would be nice!)
  4. I’ve run into the same issue occasionally when the Garmin synced activities to Strava don’t come in as Virtual, and it does change the resulting display (like no map) but that hasn’t been a problem for a long time now. Hopefully Wahoo sorts this out to make it automatic; in the meantime, once you change to Virtual Ride in Strava, the map should show up, as you discovered.

The biggest advantage I see to using Wahoo App instead of the GPS device (Edge 840 etc) is that you don’t have to HAVE a GPS device to do it.
IF the Wahoo App can ALSO actually show your position on the virtual course AS YOU RIDE, I think that would also be a super helpful feature, especially if it lets you show an elevation graph below the map as well. That could make things much more engaging.

My own practice has been generally to ride courses that I already have GoPro video recordings of my own rides, which adds a great deal of interest and makes it feel a lot more like I’m really out on those same roads, watching video as I follow along on the Edge device as best I can. But staying right in sync with uphill and downhills etc isn’t perfect so the more data I could see, like elevation and position on course map as I ride, the easier it would be to bump video ahead or back when I’m getting too far out of sync.

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I gave this feature a try last night using the Wahoo app (I can’t recall if I’ve done this with my Roam previously). While it’s kind of cool, I sincerely doubt that I would do this very often. Maybe if I was doing a race and I wanted to see what the course was like. But at most, a couple of times a year. If that. And, it would be much better if there was video footage of the scenery (like in FulGaz)… I guess I could have put a video on.

It also took me a while to find a route to ride (the ones I have saved in Strava didn’t show up in the Wahoo app on my phone - they do show on the Roam, however), and it took me some time to figure out how to get a route from Strava to the WA on my phone.

So… meh.

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Yes it does. And if you pause the ride you can use the map to “teleport” to other locations on the route. It is a quite nice feature.

I’ve only done it using the Wahoo App and haven’t tried using a cycling computer. Didn’t seem to me to really provide added value, but perhaps someone else who’s done that can chime in.

To my knowledge, the Wahoo App is only available for IOS and Android devices and not for PC or Mac. This makes it a less useful feature for me because my iPad appears to be too old to be capable of this feature (can’t upgrade the OS past version 16.something) and my phone is such a small screen. I’m hoping that if Wahoo does eventually integrate these apps so all the features are in one app, that they keep Windows and Mac computer versions available!

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  1. I ran this on my iPad.
  2. No, and given that I have an ELEMNT Bolt, the screen is rather small and I’m not sure how much I’d get out of the gradient display route. I’m sure that it’d be usable, but not very great.
  3. Yes - you can teleport to any point on the map. There are many screens to page through, though I preferred seeing the one with th 3km gradient view, which also has a smaller « full route » gradient view, and many data fields.
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I mirror my iPad screen to my TV. You can do the same thing with your phone if it’s an iPhone. I won’t use this a lot, but will use it to train for some races to see how to pace some of the climbs.

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I can do that with my android phone. Thanks for reminding me. I’ll try it sometime.

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