Trainer App #1 - Rouvy

• Posted on 15 January 2023
• By KW
• Posted in trainers, training apps, Winter bike riding, Winter bike training
• 0

On a cold, frosty morning in January, your intrepid Social Media Dept. took one for the team and began doing research.  Today's mission: navigating the Rouvy training app with the new Saris H3 smart trainer.  (Disclaimer: MSBC neither sells nor profits from sales of any of these training apps.  This is simply a user review.)

Actually one of the oldest cycling trainer apps, dating back to 2004, Rouvy is an interactive, video-based app that connects with a smart trainer to record your training and fitness.  When paired with your PC, Mac, or virtually any tablet, it will monitor your cadence, power, speed, distance, and heart rate.  It includes charts for performance zones like heart rate, power, and cadence, too.  It allows you to spin individually or to join a group or even a race.  There is a "Monday Morning Time Trial" option as well (oohhh, sorry to have missed that one...).

Rouvy, like most virtual training apps, includes an option for you to be in a real-life situation on real-life routes, or you can choose to do a Rouvy workout - intervals, climbs, etc.  (Sadly, again, I missed those...)  These workouts also include a route.  There are also training plans you can set up for yourself, or you can use the ones in the app.  Inputting your gender, age, weight, and fitness level customizes these plans.

I chose the "Golden Gate Bridge" ride to start with.  Routes are organized in several different ways - time, miles, difficulty - and I needed about 30 minutes.  "Ooohh, a bridge.  How bad can that be?  Plus it's like 6 miles.  Let's do it."  Well, the Golden Gate Bridge is in San Francisco, so...

Anyway, off to the start.  There is an avatar version of me, drawn by someone who has obviously never seen me in real life.  I am surrounded by a few other riders, and as soon as I begin pedaling the app begins to record my efforts.

The interface is pretty slick - real video of the route with my avatar plugged in.  Other avatars are there as well, and I will chase some girl named Emma until the end.  There are also race banners, fans along the road, and other things to keep the ride interesting.  (I am watching with my laptop plugged into a 42" TV, by the way.)

The user graphics are a little hard to get used to: the info for heart rate, cadence, power, and MPH are in the upper left corner of the screen and are all the same size.  There may be a way to resize them, but I did not venture into that area yet.

Emma passes me again as I realize that it's very quiet here in the basement.  I will deal with her later, but first I have to minimize the app and... I'll just minim... Hmmm.  First glitch.  The app I am used to using can be minimized in order to access the computer desktop.  For Rouvy, as far as I can tell, I have to pause the workout ("don't worry! You can resume later!" the screen assures me) and exit the app completely.  Oh, well, it's time for a break, anyway.  I exit the app and find Stevie Wonder on YouTube. The first tune to pop up is "Higher Ground" and I am immediately concerned.

Back to Rouvy, I can indeed re-start from whence I left off, and a few clicks later Stevie and I (oh, and Emma is still here) continue the climb.  I am figuring out all of the on-screen graphics, finally realizing that the power and cadence icons are what they are; I mixed them up more than once.  My heart rate is too high, though for some reason the screen tells me I am going 22 mph, so I will go with that.  There's no way I was doing 22 mph, though, so something is amiss.  Seems to be accurate with speed otherwise, sadly, as I slog up another incline.  Dammit, Emma.  I will get you.  Also, the Golden Gate has nothing on the Mackinac Bridge, and I have crossed it much faster than I anticipated.  Why does the GG get all the press?  Just because Tony Bennett sang a song once?  Come on.

Time got the better of me and I had to quit early.  This was mostly due to my laziness and morning inactivity; I could have easily turned off the Today Show earlier, I guess.  Rouvy asks if I want to save the route, and it places it in my "library," where it now sits waiting to be joined by other rides.  I need to figure out the upload process to Strava ASAP.  I discover at this point that Emma is a ghost rider, which makes me a little happier, I guess, and I never did catch the one real guy that was about 2 miles ahead of me (not that I expected to).  After saving my efforts I am rewarded with an entire screen of information that I can use to interpret how near death I was.  Average power, MPH, cadence, heart rate (ouch...), distance traveled, etc. are all available.

One thing I like about this app compared to others I've used - I've owned a smart trainer for several years - is the way it treats climbing.  One app I've used simply locks down on the resistance unit and makes you die.  This one seems to gradually ramp things up, which is much better.  (This could indeed be a function of the trainer interface and not the app; I will find that out later, when I use the other app.  My new trainer is a much better one than the budget model I own.  There's a lesson there somewhere.)

Pricing for Rouvy is "as low as $12/month."  That means it's 144 bucks for a full year, billed one time.  You can also sign up for a monthly subscription, but it goes up to $15/month for the privilege of cancelling any time.  And I do cancel.  I'm not paying any money per month during a Michigan spring/summer/fall.  You may decide the convenience of being able to ride no matter what the weather is worth the extra cost, but I'm riding outside.  Unless it's raining.

The one drawback I found is the lack of minimize-ability, which just means I have to remember to wake up Stevie before I start.  My usual app has built-in music for almost everything, though much of it is really annoying and I usually find Stevie Wonder or Frank Sinatra or Panic! at the Disco instead.

I think that takes care of Rouvy.  If I had to give it a rating, I think it would be 4/5 stars.  Or maybe 9/10 whatevers, which is like 4.5 stars.  It's good stuff and fairly easy to use.  Still on the list are Systm, from Wahoo Fitness, and Zwift, which is the app of choice for most everyone I know.  Zwift is currently being difficult to log in to - I apparently did some time in the past, can't remember my password, and their little bots haven't emailed me the reset password link for two days...

See you soon.  Gotta figure out a way to have the boss let me clock in for training rides.  Hmmm...