How to Use Rouvy to Race Pros, Improve Your Fitness, or Simply Enjoy Real-World Scenery (2024)

Have you ever wondered how the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift racers like Demi Vollering and Katarzyna Niewiadoma felt climbing Alpe d‘Huez? Maybe you’re intrigued to see how you’d fare against Jonas Vingegaard or Tadej Pogačar on stage 9 of this year’s Tour de France? But you probably don’t have time, finance, or any serious plans to ride in these places anytime soon.

Worry not, as Rouvy, an indoor training platform used by Lidl-Trek men’s and women’s teams, can take you there without leaving home.

Much like Zwift, Rouvy allows cyclists to race and train indoors but unlike Zwift, you ride in real-world scenery, which is how the pros used it to practice riding the 2024 Tour de France and Tour de France Femmes courses before heading to the start.

With an extensive rolodex of cycling routes, all converted from video recordings, you too can ride in cycling hotspots like Switzerland, California, Italy, and New Zealand. These routes can bring your wanderlust adventures to life or visually enhance your next VO2 max training session. Regardless of your preference, you can always find a route that’ll motivate you to keep going.

Here’s everything you need to know about how to use Rouvy and why you should add it to your training repertoire.

In 2017, Czechian brothers Petr and Jiri Samek set out to make indoor cycling less boring. Instead of setting up a trainer and adding entertainment, the brothers wanted to make the ride the entertainment—just like real life. To bring indoor rides to life, Rouvy’s creators filmed, digitized, and connected GPS coordinates to each route so users could ride them indoors with a smart trainer.

Around 2018, Rouvy bumped things up a notch by adding augmented reality (AR) to some of the traditional 2D recorded routes. These AR routes, of which there are about 19,000 miles to ride, feature animated 3D riders, race markers, and pace partners overlaid on 2D videos.

On the app, you can either ride solo by choosing a non-AR route or if you’d like some company, you can find an AR option to suit your ride preferences and mood. Either way, you’ll experience climbs, descents, and turns that mimic the outdoors.

In addition to changing how you experience routes on an indoor trainer, Rouvy has broadened their catalog in recent years. You can easily find segments from current Grand Tour races including the Tour Down Under, La Vuelta, Strade Bianche, Paris-Roubaix, and even past Olympic and national championship routes.

With an aim to give “more scenery” and “less graphics,” Rouvy offers real-world routes to make the experience look more realistic. On these routes you can ride for fun, train, and even race.

When using the noncompetitive “just ride” mode, you can ride at your own pace and manually adjust the resistance level to give your ride a more realistic feel. You can reduce the resistance to as low as 30 percent to make riding up a climb more manageable or as high as 150 percent to simulate an attack or practice pushing harder.

If you’ve got some energy to burn, you can also opt for the “time trial” mode in which you ride against the clock, either solo or as part of a group. Like a real time-trial event, you can’t pause or take a coffee break, and your time only counts if you complete the event.

If you’d like to see how your time trial effort stacks up to riders in the real world, you can link your Rouvy and Strava accounts. When linked, you’ll get a notification on Rouvy once you approach a real Strava segment. When the segment starts, Rouvy will display the avatar of the King and Queen of the Mountain and even your PR avatar (if you’ve previously ridden that segment). As the segment progresses, your effort will determine how your avatar stacks up against the KOM, QOM, and your own PR.

At the end of the segment, Rouvy saves your effort and you have a chance to get on Strava's leaderboard along with riders competing on the same Strava Live Segment in the real world.

Both FulGaz and Rouvy provide real-world immersive video experiences in high quality resolution. You can stream Rouvy in standard definition, high definition, full high definition, or 2K (even better than high def), whereas FulGaz has 4K resolution. In some ways FulGaz videos are like Rouvy’s non-AR videos because they don’t have virtual banners, ghost riders, or pace partners.

Both Zwift and Rouvy feature the highly popular Alpe d’Huez climb, called Alpe Du Zwift on Zwift. The 21 switchback-route is the same on both platforms, however, the immersive feel on the historic climb differs significantly with Zwift’s digitized world.

Both Zwift and Rouvy also feature segments that give you the opportunity to push your watts, however Zwift segments don’t align with real-world Strava Live Segments.

All three apps allow you to ride, race, complete structured workouts, and adjust the course resistance.

As for pricing, Rouvy offers a seven-day free trial period. You can then choose from six subscription options including a monthly plan that costs about $12 and yearly plan that costs about $149. Plans are available for single, duo, and groups of up to five members. Annual memberships can be paused for up to 180 days, but if you’d like to ride or race during the paused period you can purchase a 24-, 48-, or 72-hour daily pass for $3, $4, or $5.

FulGaz offers a 14-day trial period after which you can purchase a monthly membership for $15 or an annual membership for $126. You can pause monthly memberships but not annual memberships.

Zwift offers a monthly subscription for $20 and an annual subscription for $200. There is a 14-day free trail period for new monthly memberships but the annual plan does not offer a trial period. (However, if you’re new to the platform you cancel within 30 days for a refund.)

All three apps are compatible with a variety of power meters, smart bikes, and smart trainers from popular brands including Elite, Jet Black, Saris, Wahoo, and Zwift. You can also ride Rouvy with a grade simulator from Wahoo or Elite. Zwift is compatible with wheel-on trainers and rollers but you’ll need a power meter if the device doesn’t have a built in sensor to transmit power data.

To experience Rouvy, create a user account online and download the app to your computer or mobile device. Sign into the app using the same username and password from the website.

Once logged in, the app will allow you to connect to most smart trainers and bikes, grade simulators, power meters, heart rate monitors, and cadence sensors via Bluetooth, ANT+, or manually. If you have a classic or turbo trainer, Rouvy notes you’ll need a power meter, speed sensor, or cadence sensor.

Before clipping in, you can customize your avatar’s body (male or female), cycling kit, bike (frame and wheels), and clothes (glasses, shoes, and socks). As you gain experience on the app, you can upgrade bike frames, jerseys, bibs, helmets, gloves, and more. (FYI, you can do this on Zwift too, but not on FulGaz as the avatar feature has been removed from the app until further notice).

If you cancel your account for any reason Rouvy still wants to keep you riding, so the app allows you to ride up to 20K, or about 12 miles, every month for free—no strings attached. This is a good deal for those days when the weather, your job, family, or life gets in the way.

How many routes does Rouvy have?

Rouvy offers more than 25,000 routes of varying lengths from across the globe. These routes include legendary climbs and descents to cobblestone and gravel routes. Of these routes, nearly 1,000 are Strava Live Segments, and more than 1,300 are AR routes in nearly 50 countries.

Do you need a strong internet connection for Rouvy to work?

Yes. Because Rouvy videos are recorded in 2K resolution, high-speed internet service is required to ensure stable video quality. Slower internet speeds can result in extensive buffering and video interruptions.

However, Rouvy allows you to download routes to your devices to prevent video-quality download interruptions to immediate and future rides. You can ride downloaded routes offline at anytime and your ride results will be uploaded when your device reconnects to the internet.

How can you find different routes and workouts on Rouvy?

Using the search feature in the app, you can type in a portion or the full name of an event or segment. Also, you can filter routes by time, terrain, type of course, event, and more. If you’re only interested in riding a Strava segment, non-AR route, or only on certain continents, Rouvy can also filter that for you.

In terms of workouts, you’ll find them sorted by recommended routes, trending routes, route collections, and the latest official routes. The app may recommend up to 10 routes ranging from 45 minutes to more than six hours. Many of these courses are segments of a larger events like La Vuelta. You can also opt for a structured workout to increase your FTP, climbing ability, or VO2 max.

Route collections are exactly that: a number of routes that align with a particular type of ride, such as scenic rides, gravel, downhill, or even rides that traverse Mallorca, Spain. The latest official routes feature segments from recent events. For example, the app currently highlights 27 new routes of La Vuelta 2024, which runs from August 17 to September 8.

How can you earn coins on Rouvy?

With a range of distances and elevation challenges to suit every rider, Rouvy annotates the number of workouts required to complete a specific challenge like La Vuelta Virtual Medio, which has seven workouts while La Vuelta Virtual El Diablo has 21 workouts.

Each workout specifies how long the challenge lasts, how many people are registered, and how many coins you will have when you’re all done. You can use coins to upgrade your avatar’s accessories like helmet, socks, and jersey. You can also earn experience points which count toward your Rouvy career and eventually, you can earn “legend” status.

How can you ride with others on Rouvy?

A Rouvy rider never needs to ride alone. Every route features an icon indicating the number of riders along it. If the riders on the route have already started, use the “set your ride” page to add virtual partners and up to 10 ghost riders to keep you motivated and encouraged along the way.

You can also join races or group rides. With events featured around the clock, just jump in when you can. Before joining a race or ride, check out the route information, then take a peek at the participant list. Each event not only specifies the number of riders registered for the event, but the start list annotates each rider’s age, functional threshold power (FTP), and country. This will show you whether you’ll be riding within your FTP range or working to keep up.

Also, if you start or join a group ride or workout, the app has a “rubber band” feature to keep the group together. If someone in the group falls behind the leader, the app gives them a boost.

What are the best routes on Rouvy?

Rouvy’s 10 most trending routes for 2024 right now include Lago di Garda in Italy; Colorado River in Utah; Obergesteln-Fiesch in the Swiss Alps; Avenue of the Giants in California; Cheddar Gorge in Britain; Alpe d’Huez in France; Lake Pukaki in New Zealand; Nusfjord to Haukland Beach in Norway; Paris; and Las Vegas.

Can you race with professional cyclists on Rouvy?

Yes, kind of. If you really want to see how you stack up against the likes of Wout van Aert and Tadej Pogačar, you can try to time when they’ll reach a particular segment of a course and race them in real-time while riding in the app and watching the broadcast on your TV.

For past events, like the Tour de France, you can still try to race the pros. Make sure your Rouvy and Strava accounts are linked, give your best effort when the Strava Live Segment notification pops up, and validate your efforts on the Strava leaderboard to see how you compare to the pros.