🚴‍♂️ Cycling · evening

Tested out racing on Rouvy for the first time in a while on the weekly Team GRC Sunday Short Race, on the Challenge Salou course. Read on for my thoughts on the race, and racing on Rouvy in general.

I don't race on Rouvy very often. I find Rouvy difficult in that there are so many rides to potentially choose from, and no constraints on start time, that I struggle to get riding at all. Rouvy is not alone - I struggle with Kinomap and Fulgaz for exactly the same reason.

I wanted to race this afternoon, but the options that I might have chosen on Zwift were all too long given that I want fresh legs to race for CLS in the Zwift Racing League on Tuesday. I'm struggling to get going on indieVelo for whatever reason, and I'm quite excited about the potential in BikeTerra. However, it was unusually on the Rouvy events list that I found a good option, under an hour, with just 200m of climb - I opted for the Team GRC Short Race on the Challenge Salou route.

One of the main differences to racing on Zwift is the unified field. While on Zwift the race is separated into ability groups, on Rouvy (and indieVelo) the field races together. That can be pretty soul destroying for those of limited ability, and so I also look for fields that have plenty of entrants. It's not much fun riding along at the back by yourself. As it was almost 100 people registered for this race, and at least 82 made it to the start line - so a diverse mix of abilities to provide an interesting field.

The race itself was good. I didn't attempt to go fulgaz from the start, if I had then I might have been slightly further up the classification. I started relatively hard, settling in to around 70th in the field, slowly climbing through the field to finish 61st, while riding in a group of 3-4 riders including ColB, dJAMOLIDINE, and for a while Alan61.

The draft is as important to racing on Rouvy as other systems, but is much harder to hold on to - you need to stay much closer to the rider in front than say Zwift. If you can hold together as a group though, you will move much faster than any of the riders could move under their own steam.

There is a system that event organisers use that I had not come across previously called Niteor, it does a similar job to what RGTdB did previously, though it is more indieVeloHub in implementation than ZwiftPower or ZwiftRacing.app. If Rouvy racing will always be single classification, then it really would benefit from implementation of the vELO systems deployed in indieVelo hub and ZwiftRacing.app to measure improvement within the field - I think ZwiftRacing.app is excellent in the data it supplies.

I also discovered Inside Cycling World, who broadcast some of the races to their YouTube Chanel. FFWD to about 1:03:00 in the video below and you can watch me head over the line with ColB.

The main challenge I see with adopting Rouvy more widely (for me) is probably getting my head around the race calendar. I race ZRL with CLS on Tuesdays, and Ladder series some Thursdays. I have already put the Mamiky and Muckers series in my diary for Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays - though I will struggle with some of the larger climbs given the gearing ration on my Wattbike Atom.

I do feel like I have my training and racing up and running again though, and have some momentum - I'm looking forward to seeing how I can progress through the winter, building power and losing weight to hopefully climb through the field.

Video