That's one thing that separates eCycling from "real" racing is the starts. There is certainly no easing into it! I made that mistake on Zwift, thinking "oh, I'll hold 105% FTP or so for the first 5 minutes and then settle into the pack." Yeah, I settled into the pack alright - a Pack of one...

Something that is kind of difficult with Rouvy is realizing just how much stuff there is available. Their search tools could use a few tweaks to show just how much stuff is available. I just got a newsletter from Rouvy yesterday. They mentioned our Slowtwitch racing in the newsletter, which was fun. They also shared some statistics regarding the platform:

https://blog.rouvy.com/...ics-for-january-2019

The graphic that I thought was most fun was this one:


That makes me a liar. I thought there was only about 2,400 routes.

With a bit of map searching, I found a few of the routes you mentioned. Ask and you shall receive (you'll have to be signed in to Rouvy to see these):

Lemmon
https://my.rouvy.com/...l-routes/detail/7041

Palomar
https://my.rouvy.com/...l-routes/detail/1610

But, like you say, the east side of the Sierra Nevadas is lacking. I would love to see some more gravel and MTB routes. Even Indiana could use some more representation - the area I am in is pretty boring, but I think I will try to get down to southern Indiana a bit and see what I can do. We have some gravel routes that might be worth some video, and I could certainly see some opportunities in the MTB trails of Brown County. Maybe a lap of the Little 500 track at Indiana University. lol!

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Travis Rassat
Vector Cycle Works
Noblesville, IN
BikeFit Instructor | FMS | F.I.S.T. | IBFI
Toughman Triathlon Series Ambassador

Tonites race was a lot of fun. It was just BaronWave and I after sf... dropped out. BW was riding at my speed at about half of my power threshold. I tried an attack on the first climb (5 miles in) and rode over 200% FTP trying to break away. He quickly recovered and caught back up. I noticed on the flats/downhills he was riding around 40% so I slowed to 80% and tried to lull him to sleep. It seemed to work as I was able to maintain a lead for the majority of the mid-section of the race. As we came to the final 6 mile climb I held a slight lead. I was hoping BW had power just no stamina. But as soon as we started up, he/she went to 100% FTP and just started pulling away. BW managed to pull me a mile and a half and finish 5 minutes ahead. I finished as strong as I could. Thanks for the ride and the push.

Thanks Travis for putting this on. I have put 114 miles on the trainer in 10 days. That is usually a months worth of riding for me. My legs hurt but it feels good.

And to Rouvy, my free trial ends tomorrow, but you'll have another subscriber.

Final results are posted here.

We ended up with 4 people who managed to race every stage. 78 people from 23 different countries completed at least one stage. I didn't have the DNF and DNS entries in the results.

Thank you to everybody who participated! I'll be working on a retrospective piece as soon as possible, as well as sending some feedback and questions to the Rouvy team to see if we can make things better next time. Any feedback is greatly appreciated!

I had hoped to provide a live broadcast of my last stage on Twitch.tv, but wasn't quite ready with that technology yet. I hope to incorporate some other gaming tools like Discord and Twitch next time, in an effort to enhance the ride. Being able to hear each other and communicate might add to the fun.

In the meantime, here's the last mile of stage 7 group 7:

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Travis Rassat
Vector Cycle Works
Noblesville, IN
BikeFit Instructor | FMS | F.I.S.T. | IBFI
Toughman Triathlon Series Ambassador