I have written a few times about how I bike inside now that I am in Idaho for a variety of reasons (snow, cold, wet, allergies, safety), and maybe I will get outside again in the future, but for now it is all inside riding.
I blogged about different programs I was trying out to find the one that I thought would be the best option for me. I tried MyWhoosh, TrainingPeaks Virtual, Zwift, FulGaz, and Wahoo. Well, I liked MyWhoosh and TrainingPeaks just for the fact they were free. I felt that TPV was very realistic even though it was in a fully virtual world. MyWhoosh connected better with Garmin Connect so I used that one the most often.
Well time came for me to make a decision as to what I was going to use ALL the time. MyWhoosh was good, but I felt that the routes became a bit redundant, and not as realistic of real riding. So, then I had to figure out what I was going to do, because everything else cost something. TPV went to a cost base at the beginning of April.
What to do?
Well, I ended up trying out ROUVY. That was one I didn’t try out initially for some reason. So, I gave it a try because I liked that it had real world routes, but with a virtual cyclist. Also, the cost was a little less that TPV.
I liked it. I liked it a lot. So, that was the one I went with. I paid for a year all at once since it was cheaper that way, and that means I can use it whenever I want (everyday right now for the most part). The challenges are fun and test me out in different terrains. The drafting in it seems to work well. I wish it had the wind that TPV had, I think that adds to the realness of the riding, but I can’t complain. I love that there are a HUGE amount of routes from all over the world. I have “ridden“ in 11 different countries so far in the last 3 weeks. It is neat seeing the different places. There are some routes in the US that I would like to do myself someday and all of them are on there virtually. That will allow me to “try them out” and see how I would do on them. I can use it to train for those routes if I someday get the chance/will/gumption to actually go to those places and ride them for real.
It does upload directly to Garmin, but since I don’t have a Garmin trainer I don’t get Garmin credit for the rides in their challenges. I have found a way around that with using my watch for an indoor ride and then I just edit that file to include the info from the ROUVY ride. It does mean my distances are doubled, but I can deal with that (as long as I remember to start a watch ride).
So, if you are looking for a program to use for bicycling inside I would strongly suggest ROUVY. It isn’t perfect, but it is very good.