#41 - Getting Grouvy
Yes, you did read that right.
And no, it’s not a type-o.
Just a very bad attempt on my side to be original or funny. You have my apologies.
But the title covers a big step I made in recent weeks. I decided to purchase something that can help me to move forward. Part of what I’ve been doing the past months, are long rides. And with the days getting shorter, my riding time also gets shorter. On top of that, in the near future, I will want to start training on more hilly terrain. Now with the landscape around me being a close relative to a pool table, that’s an issue. The nearest hills worthy of the name, are a 90 minute car ride away. 2 hours if I really would want to find a challenge. That would mean I would spend up to half a day, just to get there by car. While that’s fine when I go for a weekend or a midweek tour, it’s not for a single ride a couple of times each week.
My first ride on rouvy
Passing through Almere Haven felt pretty real to me. Just a shame there are no recumbent avatars available.
I started thinking of some kind of hometrainer setup pretty much as soon as I got the trike. Back then, I mostly looked at a comventional setup, where you simply place the rear wheel on two rolls on the floor. And I saw plenty of issues with those systems. Especially combined with a recumbent trike. I was a bit scared the wheel would spin out on the rolls, since I put less weight on them. But lately I came across those fancy systems with a flywheel and electromagnetic resistance. They even have apps, and on Grouvy, I can ride existing tours. Not some generated 3D surroundings, but places I’ve actually been to. Or places I would love to ride on the other side of the world. It’s all there.
It took me a while to find a setup that fit at least one of my recumbents. Remember, I was rebuilding the AZUB 4 I got a couple of months ago? Well, as it turns out, that one is easier to mount on the system. I should be able to mount the trike as well, I have the adaptor piece for it, but the thing just is a lot heavier. And since it’s my daily ride, that would mean taking it of and mounting the rear wheel every time I want to go somewhere. It’s just too much of a hassle. Even with the through-axle system I have on there. For now, the two wheeler will do. I may change my mind in the future, but let’s just see how it goes.
And the first ride went well. I picked a nice one, starting in the Dutch city of Almere. While still getting to know the app and getting used to riding stationary, I did set some results that pretty much confirmed my expectations. Because that’s another reason I bought the thing. It has a powermeter built in. I don’t need to know my watts during every ride in real life but it’s interesting to see what I can push. What kind of power I put on the pedals. And since I never had such a system on any of my bikes, I was happy to see that those systems these days pretty much offer them as standard.
During that first 30 Km ride, I was just playing around with the settings and I didn’t take the performance all too serious. But in the end, I still performed above expectations. 83 % of the time I performed In Zone 5, 6 or 7, During the sprint at the end, I put over 350 Watt on the pedals. And since I was recovering after a week of being ill and pretty much bed bound, I was happy with those results. In any case, I put down a little benchmark for future rides.
While this feels as a great addition to my gear, Of course my heart lies with riding outdoors. I’m not sure yet on how I will display those rides on the map, but since I linked my Rouvy and Strava apps, I can actually mark them after riding. For now, I marked the first Rouvy ride purple, and maybe I’ll even make a separate map for them… Future will tell.
