Does anybody want to race in Rouvy? The Rouvy racing experiment

Triathlon Forum
1

Hi Everybody!

I am doing a little experiment for another front page article and set up a virtual race in Rouvy. I know this is short notice, but if anybody wants to join me for a virtual race experience tonight, it would be fun to give this a try.

Race: Slowtwitch Saturday Night Showdown: Thailand
Date: January 12, 2019 (today)
Time: 8:00 PM EST
Route: Puuping Palace - 6 miles, average grade of 4%, max grade of 17%, 1224 feet of total ascending
Link (if you are logged in to Rouvy): https://my.rouvy.com/…-routes/detail/26458

If you are a Rouvy user with a smart trainer, you should be able to find this through your Rouvy dashboard.

Please share any comments in this thread, and maybe we can turn this into a regularly scheduled series of events - kind of a Slowtwitch Rouvy world tour, if you will.

I hope to (virtually) see you out there!

Edit: For those who are new to this thread - We did the first race, and we’re looking to schedule some more this upcoming weekend or next week. Give us some ideas and we’ll set them up!

2

I’d like to try this. Can we plan a little further ahead? Appreciate you trying to get this going.

3

Oh man, a 30 minute climb and a 3 minute descent! Thanks for posting this…I have been trying to do more of the routes abroad anyway so if this turns into a regular thing I will try to and do it for sure.

4

I forgot to post the required and obvious joke…we climbed, now we are Puuped

rich
.

5

We’ll definitely try to plan ahead a bit more next time - I am going to set up a series of races, maybe 1 course per week with 3 or 4 opportunities during the week to race it.

Last night was just an opportunity to understand how to set up the race in Rouvy and what is different when you’re racing. Overall, I think Rouvy makes it pretty easy to get some races going, and it includes stuff like allowing you to warm up before the start, etc.

I had one issue at the end - as soon as I hit the finish line, the Rouvy app on my iPad crashed. It just shut down. So, I didn’t get to partake in the finish celebration, per se.

6

That was a brutal route wasn’t it? :slight_smile: Thank you for joining the race, and congratulations on your win! We had a nice little game of tortoise and the hare there, although the hare certainly came out on top this time. I thought it was relatively engaging, though - I was on the iPad app, so I could see you as an augmented reality avatar, but still had fun watching the distances between us change (and usually going the wrong direction).

What platform are you running Rouvy on? Did you have any problems during the race?

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m hoping to get a series of these going, maybe as a Slowtwitch event. With the video routes, this could be a neat “world tour”. I am also going to look into adding Discord into the mix so we can talk/chat while we race.

Thanks again for playing!

7

I just realized that I was credited with a DNF. My iPad crash makes for a different kind of final sprint crash, I guess!

I will get revenge on the Puuping Palace!

/ yes, there are too many jokes there… :slight_smile:

8

Travis, thanks I am running Rouvy on PC and can run it on Android for part of your testing if you like. They don’t have the augmented reality set up for all the courses on PC yet apparently, I thought they said the AR would be up an running on all the courses.

I had no problems with the app, but my dog did come to the basement to let me know she wanted to go out! I did struggle a bit on the really steep sections too but I live for a descent…have you noticed the app maxes out at 44.7 mph? On a 12%+ I can get up over 50 IRL no problem.

I knew something happened to you right at the end because I was watching your marker come down the hill and right before you got to the last little segment you seemed to teleport past me and your distance kept increasing which should be impossible because the race finish terminates the distance and should stop the clock.

Rich

9

Quick question. I tried my first Rouvy race just now. There were 4 guys lined up at the start. But after the start I never saw my competition overlaid over the video. There were on the map in the upper-right corner. I played with drifting back and forth within feet, but never never saw them except on the map.

That’s incorrect, right? I dropped out after a few minutes because it was too hard to depend on readouts of feet vs. just looking to try to find a draft.

10

Quick question. I tried my first Rouvy race just now. There were 4 guys lined up at the start. But after the start I never saw my competition overlaid over the video. There were on the map in the upper-right corner. I played with drifting back and forth within feet, but never never saw them except on the map.

That’s incorrect, right? I dropped out after a few minutes because it was too hard to depend on readouts of feet vs. just looking to try to find a draft.

Sorry for my slow reply.

Just to clarify, before the start, you saw the 4 guys lined up as AR avatars on screen? But, after the start they were just shown on the map? Did you have the list of nearby people on the left side of the screen, too? Do you know what route you were racing on?

This is where I’m not sure where Rouvy is with some of this. Maybe we could try another race sometime in the next week or so, but use one of the officially augmented routes to see if that improves the experience. Those AR routes are almost all pretty brutal climbs, though!

Who would be interested in another race this Saturday or Sunday? How about one of the following:

Saturday, 1/19 at 7:00 AM EST
Saturday, 1/19 at 7:00 PM EST
Sunday, 1/20 at 7:00 AM EST
Sunday, 1/20 at 7:00 PM EST

This weekend, I am wide open on Saturday, so I could do anything in between there, too. That’s not normal for me, though.

11

Just to clarify, before the start, you saw the 4 guys lined up as AR avatars on screen? But, after the start they were just shown on the map? Did you have the list of nearby people on the left side of the screen, too? Do you know what route you were racing on?

I never saw AR avatars while warming up at the start for about 10 minutes, and I was wondering about that. I did see a list on the left side of the screen as people joined in. And I did see them on the map in the upper right.

I assume this was just some kind of bug where the avatars never rendered.

I’m definitely interested in trying again, but weekends I ride in real world all day. But I’ll watch this thread for any weekday attempts.

Thanks for the reply.

12

That’s interesting regarding the 44.7 mph. What’s funny is that if you look at the race results, your average speed is 53.96 mph! I was shooting for 50 mph and couldn’t get there (I somehow averaged 47.98 mph on a way to my DNF). My stats clearly show the top speed of 44.7. I will try to gather up a few of these questions and get them over to the Rouvy folks and see if we can get some answers.

There are a few things that I think that Rouvy needs to really be a better online racing option:

  1. There isn’t a classification system - if they can do something based on watts/kg like Zwift does, that’s going to make it more attractive to people who want to compete with people on the same level as they are. I personally couldn’t care less, but at the same time, it would be kind of nice to know if I’m keeping up with people I should be able to keep up with. So, I guess that means I could care less…

  2. Some in-game communications. Chat/text would be cool.

  3. Ironing out the things that have come up in this thread - anything that makes us question the accuracy, such as the top speed stuff, is going to be first priority. The AR is a big one to improve the overall engagement, although I think it is getting closer. One thing about Zwift that makes it fun is the awareness of others being online, too. I would love to see some sort of indication in the Rouvy route search that shows where people are riding - some sort of indicator that says “50 people are riding the Puuping Palace route right now” would be really cool. It might be enough to sway me to choose one route over another.

Would you be up for another ride this weekend? I threw a few times out in my post in response to trail.

13

Would Monday or Tuesday evening potentially work for you? I would have to do sometime around 7:00 or 8:00 EST. Or, really, really early in the AM (5:00 AM EST), with a relatively short, less than 45 minute total race time so I can get my kid up for school in time. I don’t think that works very well for anybody in North/South America.

14

Would Monday or Tuesday evening potentially work for you? I would have to do sometime around 7:00 or 8:00 EST. Or, really, really early in the AM (5:00 AM EST), with a relatively short, less than 45 minute total race time so I can get my kid up for school in time. I don’t think that works very well for anybody in North/South America.

8P EST or 5A EST would work.

15

i am interested–i just need to sign up first
.

16

Alrighty, I scheduled four more races, with the hope that this provides some options so anybody can join up for at least one race. Smart trainers are not required. The one thing that is required, though, is to say the race name in your best monster truck announcer voice…

Race: Slowtwitch Saturday Night Showdown: Oregon, USA
Date: Saturday, 1/19/2019
Time: 7:00 PM EST
Course:AR - North Applegate (Oregon) - 12.09 Miles, 1% average grade, 10% max, 636 ft ascending

Race: Slowtwitch Sunday Night Slaughter: South Korea
Date: Sunday, 1/20/2019
Time: 8:00 PM EST
Course: 고모리 오픈 (Seoul, South Korea) - 4.92 miles, 1% average grade, 7% max grade, 328 ft ascending

Race: Slowtwitch Monday Night Mayhem: Germany
Date: Monday, 1/21/2019
Time: 8:00 PM EST
Course: AR - Grosser Arber (Germany) - 12.46 miles, 3% average grade, 9% max, 1798 ft ascending

Race: Slowtwitch Wednesday Rude Awakening: Tasmania
Date: Wednesday, 1/23/2019
Time: 5:00 AM EST
Course: Ables Hill Loop Video (Tasmania) - 5.25 miles, 3% average grade, 14% max, 735 ft ascending

The Saturday and Monday races are official AR races, so I hope that those will provide the extra elements that AR should provide - being able to see each other as avatars on the course. The Sunday and Wednesday morning races are not officially AR courses, but it would be nice to offer some shorter race options.

I also have created a Discord server for voice communication during the racing. All races can use the same Discord server and channels:

Server: Slowtwitch Rouvy Racing
Invite: https://discord.gg/uD6WHvt

Channel: General Voice
Invite: https://discord.gg/Fdknajb

Channel: General Text
Invite: https://discord.gg/uD6WHvt

I know very little about Discord - this is my first time using it, so I hope it doesn’t become a distraction from the Rouvy functionality.

I hope to see everybody out there in the virtual world!

17

I’m down for Monday. But since I’m IRL racing Sunday, I’ll be bringing my A (zone 2) game if anyone wants to chill in the back and take in the scenery.

18

Travis, thanks for setting all this up and know that it is appreciated. I know from experience that being a ride organizer can seem thankless.

I can do most of those times but 5 am is tough for me. In any case I won’t be able to race every event but could certainly ride easier like trail.

I also like the idea of aggregating and reporting our various problems we have to Rouvy, they have been pretty responsive in the 2 years I have been using it so this will be another opportunity to improve the platform.

Rich

19

Excellent! I’m glad to have anybody join whenever they can. I figured having a few times during the week will give more people an opportunity to join.

I will be running on the PC tonight in full Augmented Reality mode with Discord, hoping to see how that works.

Thank you!

20

Well, we’re experiencing some technical difficulties. I got an error indicating that it was unable to sync with time.google.com. I restarted Rouvy, rebooted, tried different network connections, etc. I can see that 3 were able to start via the Rouvy website, but 4 of us never left the start line.

I’m riding the course anyway. Bummer.