Hi everyone, i just felt it was time to explain why I create all these events on Rouvy. As per usual with one of my stories, it goes back somewhat and this one is no exception! This one starts well over a year ago to when we first started using Rouvy as our only indoor platform and I noticed that if we just planned it slightly better, we could actually complete the challenges and get the extra coins and feeling of achievement you only get from completing the ROUVY challenges. ( Coins we have now realized over time don’t really add up to anything meaningful, yet…. )

After some serious, sometimes pain staking negotiations with the current Mrs. Mucker, I was able to lock in Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays (but, NOT all day Sunday 😆) as my nights to get on the trainer (And in the summer, out in the real world).

So the planning starts there.

Every time Rouvy launch a new challenge, I schedule the routes into those days, hopefully before the challenge ends. They are always listed with muckers or muckerworldwide in the title and as a rule, will be on one of those days, unless I have a prior engagement i just can’t shift. Then I get to play my trump card and move it to another day, which isn’t that often but on the plus side, can be quite interesting as it does open my events up to those who just can’t make my usual Tuesdays and Thursdays. This year in particular has been really hard to arrange (seems like ROUVY is on a challenge spectacular sometimes) and as of today, only 3 routes have been missed which I just couldn’t get scheduled into one of those three days before the challenges ended. It is a real head scratcher sometimes believe me!!

How do people get to find out about the latest races added?

If you’ve ever been involved in one of my races or events, I will have sent you a friends request via ROUVY. I do this after every event to everyone who pops up as not a friend. If you accept the friends request, you will get the invites as and when I create an event as when you create an event, you have the option to “add all friends”

Under the events tab on the ROUVY website

And they will show up on the events page on the ROUVY App home screen but this will only be around the time they start.

This is why the friends option on ROUVY route is best because as soon as you get the invite, you can register and then it will always be in your events on either the web or app and you won’t loose it. If you later find out you can’t do it, its no big deal, just unregister or just don’t show up, there’s no penalization and the race is still going to happen with or without you.

Why is it always a race format rather than a group ride?

This was decided a very long time ago. The group ride format sounded brilliant at first, everyone together, no one gets dropped, you can go to the front and put in a harder effort if you want but not drop the pack, BUT it doesn’t count as a completed route on a challenge, which was the whole point in setting these up in the first place. I’m in no way criticizing that this happens as it makes perfect sense that you shouldn’t get awarded a finishing time that has been in some way manipulated by an imaginary elastic band helping you keep up a better pace than you could do in the real world, so this is why group rides isn’t selected and we use the race format.

So, is it a race or not?? 😏

It is but its up to you if you want to treat it as such. Always remember these were created to complete challenges. Some routes on challenges are quite boring, but racing on them, really livens it up. Then you have other routes that are just stunning and you just do them to get the scenery in and maybe set a personal goal for the route. I will (hopefully) always do a race report on a “race” or “event” so if you get top 10 , you will get a special mention.

How does racing liven up a boring route?

The simple answer, drafting! That extra motivation to get onto someone’s back wheel and also to take your turn on the front, somehow takes your focus away from that dead flat straight section of road you’ve been on for the last 10 minutes!! You know that feeling you get when you set off on a solo ride, and someone’s just over a mile in front of you, and you just can’t help trying to catch them up even though you told yourself it was a nice and easy ride today, it’s that same little devil that comes out when racing!

Isn’t drafting cheating as in the same as the imaginary elastic band on group rides?

To me not at all. you draft in the real world and if you get dropped, the draft advantage decreases until you hit that 50ft gap and the draft is gone! you are on your own and no imaginary elastic band is there to pull you back up to the those front riders. It’s then you have to decide to go it alone or let the rider/riders behind catch you so you can work with those while you recover and re-evaluate your goals.

Any other advantages to using race format for challenge routes?

For me yes, and maybe some of you might feel its a strange one, but it does make sense if you stick with me. First thing to take note is you HAVE to use the standard bike in race format. not the other “TT” version. If you are automatically set up with the TT bike, ROUVY swaps you to the standard bike when you get to the start line of the race. Once the race is over, it reverts you back to your saved bike. Some people aren’t aware of this.

So this means, 50% of the time you have done a challenge route on the slower bike (The TT bike is faster on everything apart from hill climbs) and you might not have ever gotten any worthwhile drafting. so if you finish a race and its been like this, now is the time to go the challenge leaderboard and see how many of your fellow racers and friends completed this route and make a note of them.( The reason will become clearer later)

If I do a race and the above has happened and I feel I could have done better, I save that route (screen capture on my phone, write it down, or actually add it to favorites) to use when I have a free night and no races scheduled.

So its one of those nights, I load up the route, if its a flattish one, I jump on the faster TT bike and I use the superb option for virtual partners that ROUVY has and I load up all my Rouvy friends (And my own PB ghost) who have completed this route (this is why we made a note of the names earlier), load it all up and you now have your own mini race, with your own personal best on there as well which did it on the standard bike, ready to go! If anything, you should beat your PB, and you also have all those other riders on there that you can try and beat this time or at least get near too.

Don’t you think maybe you’ve over thought this????

Yes. 😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣

Cheers for reading and please post any comments you’d like to share.