I’ve been on ROUVY for just over a year and really like it. Real world courses plus opportunity to make my own is great.
Although the new AR is way off (slower at higher effort). Rode a course I created many times on original and it was close to reality. Rode new AR and wow felt like riding into a 20 mph wind the whole way. In fact rode outside for first time last week (WI weather sucking) rode this course with a 15-20 wind and was still faster into wind. So new AR has something off. using H1 as my trainer and noticed the power on H1 and my vectors has been off by 5-8 watts and used to only be 1-2 watts different.
Tried Zwift and went meh.

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"There are no problems in life, just many leadership and learning opportunities." SED

What I like with Zwift is that if you want to do a planned set, you can just put ERG mode. It makes the session a bit easier to manage exactly as prescribed.
Of course, we may lose a bit compared to real life but I think they're nicely complementary of each other.

How do you find erg on zwift?

I find it does what it is meant to. Zwift gives group rides, races and erg, so other than a mid 90's looking simulation what are its weaknesses?

With all that why would people use TR or Rouvvy

It does its job. I enter my set, I put my head down and go for it.
With that said, I think it's useful to force yourself to stay in the range, just from a real world perspective, so I like to vary.

Saw similar results for the women in VR5 (half ironman). I looked at a few results on Strava and found the overall winner to be putting out some wicked super human watts holding 27+mph with an average heart rate of 98bpm (I think her max was something like 104bpm). Same with the winner of my old lady age group (27+mph avg).

How exactly does that work? Zwift power? They didn't seem to have Zwift maps associated with them so not sure what they were using to give watts and speed off the charts on the virtual bike rides.

Why is real world and reality good? I like Zwift because there are no cars, no-one getting flats, no traffic lights, no pot-holes. It doesn't need to be realistic to be good. And ironically, Rouvey using computer graphics for the rider with real world footage makes it look really odd and clunky. I also don't like the way it's being forced upon us. We have a far superior and more established product (Zwift) and are being told in order to do virtual races with IM, we have to use some other dated app. If this is Rouvey's way of getting a foothold in the market, they are going about the wrong way. Come out with something that blows the competition away.

People talk about the unrealistic speeds on Zwift, if you find a flat section of road, with no wind, perfect tarmac and are riding right on the arse of decent riders, your speed with be comparable to that of Zwift.

I am new to Rouvy with AR and I really like it but I am much slower than in real life. I do hope they make an adjustment for that moving forward. Interestingly - for me I'm okay that I have to work harder than the other way around. That's just my personal preference.

I use a speed broadcast app for treadmill runs on Zwift - just plug in what speed the treadmill is going, and it sends that out as though it’s a foot pod. It would be pretty easy to just turn it on and sit on the couch for 30 min while I “run” a 10k. No need to even have a treadmill.

It'll be interesting to see if the Rouvy "official results arm" takes off... Or if the 60 year old grand tour victors in waiting that are currently dominating the Ironman VR results hold out, because they'll know their jig is up... I'm sorry, I scrolled the top couple overall in VR6... a 60 year old with a 35min 10km and a 40:xx 40km bike split, sorry, that's 60km/h, an average speed you see in the Tour De France for a Prologue, or possibly a short team time trial... These bike splits would spank Lance Armstrong at his doping prime... Then there was a 29min 10k with a 47min 40km bike split... etc. Sure, I could turn on my watch and go for a drive just to win a virtual race... or I could just use the events as good training sessions, and be satisfied with a mid-pack finish knowing that my efforts were legit...

I'm not sure I would pony up for Rouvy when I am more than satisfied with Zwift... I might try the free trial and try one of the Ironman VRs on it just to get an official result, but beyond that meh...

It's a big win for Rouvy though to partner with Ironman on this, and to include some of their courses... Because especially as they start to add qualification slots for actual races, more people might be willing to make the jump to their platform... And with indoor training booming these days because of lockdowns all over the world, any angle they can grab to try and get more of the market share is probably worth it (on the same token, I am hoping that they do steal some riders from Zwift so that the traffic goes down a bit and the load times get back to normal... because these days, who needs a warm-up, your heart rate goes up from the stress of hoping that it loads you into the right world on time for the start of your race or meet-up... I've missed a couple because of lags, and miraculously made a meet-up last week with 13seconds to spare)...

No idea why IM chose Rouvy. Zwift is the platform that has shown its worth to more people, from just ride, TR style workout plans, erg, group rides, training, riding with pros, races, enduros, broadcast of events with pros racing, even the aussie NRS series is racing on Zwift.

The speeds are probably a notch high, but as zed says ride in a big bunch on a flat road of decent quality and you can hide in the bunch at 40 kph easy.

With zwift they could have mandated the course, TT bike, HRM, ran it with Zwift power. If everyone did Watopia on a TT bike they ride exactly the same course and could have zwift power Scrutinise and filter out the obvious cheats.

Answer is IM want to compete with Zwift not partner. The IM VR series was a huge opportunity, after doing two events I like many others said blah it's just a training log with no integrity and went back to zwift racing.

The immediate future of tri is small scale sprint events with your own paper number and probably duathlons, IM won't adapt to that.

Oh don’t get me wrong, love to see “the results” on the road when I ride a outs outdoors. Just a blow to the ego. 🤪
And IM partnering with ROUVY is about the real world courses not Watopia where I will never race. I like being able to ride a known race course and see how it compares/ get a feel for it in December
To each their own.
But warm weather is coming and that means outside, the bugs, the traffic, the potholes, gotta love it.

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"There are no problems in life, just many leadership and learning opportunities." SED

One big plus is that Zwift also offers a running platform. Of course, it seems it's pretty easy to cheat it with runn for instance, since you don't even have to be on the treadmill.
One big plus with Rouvy is that you have real courses, with videos, and you can also race.

With that said, from my current understanding of both platforms (knowing that I was a beta tester on zwift and have only 2 weeks on Rouvy) is that Zwift handles virtual power much more effectively. My guess is that all the BS bike times are virtual power riders.

You guys are all wrong.
IM partnered with Rouvy becuase they are the only ones that would pay them.

Zwift is a nice distraction.
Rouvy has too imcomplete.
TR is the best training tool out there.
Strave told IM to go F-off; the leading platform in the industry.

IM internally knows that it will not be able to host a race until mid/late 2021 and it is despirately trying to make some $; and the VR platform is it. They advertise tens of thousands compete, when they do get a decent amount of sign ups but a fair amount of incompletes. Throw in some false advertisement to pump up the sponsors (Rouvy and TechnoGym) and that sums up this whole VR race situation.

For structured workouts Sufferfest>TR>daylight>something else

For social Rides and racing Zwift beats all.

There may be another reason.
Zwift doesn't do specific courses particularity well. You can't press a button, and get a 40km course, press a different button and get a 90k course. The 'race' function is... okay, the bigger rides, tours etc. (at least when I last did them) were ridiculous, "You must start at time X, or wait 2-3hours before the next session" that isn't accessible, specifically in regards to a shorter race like VR6. (Where if you were to do it back to back, then you should be able to knock out the entire race in less time that you are waiting for the next session, because your dog decided to delay you after your first run, for instance.
Zwift is now big enough that they don't care, and they haven't been listing to a lot of improvements that have been asked for for years.

OTOH Rouvy (And Fulgaz, to name another) do have the ability to say "I want to do X course, or Y distance" which for the IMVR races makes a lot more sense, as everyone will be able to do the same course (assuming they change the course each race for variety) - This may be a better quality of life thing for the racers.

(I might not be the best person to look at for this, I have only done VR6, and that ride I did outside, first ride outside in 6+weeks, previous to that I have just been riding the sufferfest, which means that getting a 20 or 40k ride hard, esp when they added the stipulation of 'no more than an extra 1km per leg)

Is there a schedule anywhere of what VR races are going to be on when?

At this stage I am just winging it and doing event as they come up but I would like to actually train for a specific event for at least a few weeks!

You are right, they only announce the next in the series after the previous race is done.
While I have no extra information officially, after looking at the current calendar

VR1 - 70.3 - April 3
VR2 - 5150 - April 10
VR3 - Sprint - April 17
VR4 - 5150 - April 24
VR5 - 70.3 - May 1
VR6 - 5150 - May 8
VR7 - Sprint - May 15
VR8 - ??? - May 22 (Assuming 5150)
VR9 - ???WTFBBQ?? - May 29


I am making the assumption that they will possibly continue the current series, ie, every other week is a 5150 distance, with the off weeks being sprint or 70.3.
Which means that May 22 will be a 5150, May 29th a 70.3, June 5 - 5150, June 12 - Sprint etc.


(either that or this will be different for June, for the explanation...)
The issue with that series is that it works, but they also may looked at it monthly, as below
1st Weekend - 70.3
2nd Weekend - 5150
3rd Weekend - Sprint
4th Weekend - 5150
5th Weekend (which hasn't happened yet, wait two weeks) - ???


We won't know until the 25th May, but I have a feeling it will be one of these two.
Also, we don't know when they will pull the double runs and add back swimming
(Which might not be a problem for the people in the northern hemisphere, but here the pools are still closed, and lake temp is dropping below 15°C, and I don't have a skullcap and booties.)


(And yes, having a bit more time to train for a 70.3 to nail would be good)

5150 it is and see this is the first one with the two categories.

I haven't done the last two, and really can't get into Rouvy so may try it outside. However do you still have to be right at the distance or within 1KM of it? If I am going to run and ride outside would like to distances longer but may break up my workouts.

If it's anything like the past ones, you'll have to be within a certain range of the required distance. I've broken up my planned runs before to accommodate this; it's not ideal, but this is all a learning curve anyway.

Like you, I don't think I'll be signing up for Rouvy (since I've been a dedicated Zwift user since 2016), but I'm glad they added outside rides as an option. I would eventually like to see them adding swims back in as an option, but I know there are a number of safety concerns there (OWS and pool alike).

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- John
"Have courage, and be kind."

I've ridden the VR selected Rouvy courses the last two weeks without a subscription. Which is cool and somewhat levels the playing field; at least on the bike. If IM/Rouvy continues to offer the VR courses free I'll make that my bike segment as the scheduled AG races are fun and motivating.

As a long-time Zwift original beta tester/subscriber I'm on the fence as to whether I would subscribe to Rouvy in order to race the challenger category. If 70.3 worlds or Kona slots are on the line, I would reconsider.

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tinman

YA, I thought the Arizona course yesterday, with 200 amateurs and 8 pros was pretty awesome for competition. I was watching the live Facebook feed too , was cool to see my name on the screen since I was next to a female pro. Also nice that male pro started 3 min later so I could see them pass.

What does everyone think of the new challenger division and it requiring Rouvy for the bike course and runs outside? I was thinking they need to eliminate net downhill runs, since anyone could find a big hill and just run down it.

The new Challenger division is a HUGE improvement. I was not a fan of people setting world records on the run and biking 30 min for a 40k.

I'm still a zwift fan. I enjoy how much I can push in a zwift race. However, Rouvy does a good job of controlling the course. I like that you can't draft which makes things a little more even. Ironman requiring Rouvy for rides is totally fine in my opinion. It's their business and Rouvy will pay. Requiring Rouvy or GPS rides and GPS runs is overall just a better experience. I have actually been following my ranking this weekend and enjoyed the 2 hrs that I held the Rouvy course record.

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https://www.strava.com/athletes/23685202

Yeah, agree the Challenger rules are an improvement. For the bike, my understanding is that it can be the Rouvy course or a GPS ride. Downhill GPS runs and downhill or point to point wind-aided GPS rides are still going to be a problem. Since Rouvy is currently open to all, I would like to see the Rouvy course and smart trainer required for the bike, no GPS rides. If you don't have a smart trainer, Classic division for you.

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tinman

For the Challenger series in general, I am a fan. Not a big fan of the Rouvy race time (it is 01:15am local time, no thanks), but it doesn't stop me from also riding the same course in the same conditions (Now if only my KICKR would settle and be someone consistent for the first 10 or so minutes, on sufferfest, it doesn't need a warmup time, it didn't need it for TR or Zwift, why for Rouvy?) - so that is nice.

In theory, IM did say somewhere that they are going to run some tests over the challenger results and drop results from those who do have large elevation drops overall in their bike and run results.

These virtual series races should charge small entry fees to help manage weight submissions and require stream footage that include pre-race power calibration spin down on zwift / rouvy/ whatever platform — this level of restriction would ease some minds from meter doping / weight doping.