Originally Posted by
rbeckley
I am still having problems with Rouvy with any hills over 7% grade. I am on a Trek Madone bike hooked to a CycleOps Hammer (original) smart trainer with a Wahoo heart monitor and a cadence sensor. I am running Rouvy on my Microsoft Surface Pro 6 laptop with Windows 10. I downloaded the route that I rode.
Rouvy Support suggested I check and reset my Bike Weight parameter. This morning, in Rouvy, I set my bike weight (was 24; now 19 pounds), made sure my weight and height were correct, set wheel circumference to 2090mm, did a Re-Calibration and then road the same route (American Fork to Suncrest Summit Out and Back) as yesterday. My FTP is set to 150 watts. That may be a little low (maybe 160 is correct), but I did not do a new FTP test. I'm not sure if that affects this problem. I'll try that tomorrow.
With those settings, the ride up the hill was slightly (5%?) easier than yesterday, but I am still peaking out when I hit 8% or greater gradient, whereas in Zwift, I have done 15% or so before peaking out. I am standing on my pedals pushing 200+ watts at that point and just maintaining it. I was planning on doing the "Trail Ridge Road" next but see that it has a 13% gradient. That would be a dead stop for me. Maybe that ride is beyond my capacity and takes someone that can do 300-400+ watts. However, I have done the 15% gradient up to the Tower in Zwift many times. I'm not sure which (Zwift or Rouvy) is more realistic, but I emailed support again to see if they had any other suggestions before I "X" off any Rouvy ride with a gradient >8%. I do like Rouvy and hope to use it as an alternative to Zwift a couple times a week. In Zwift I have ridden all routes, many times, including 5 times up Alpe de Zwift.
Are you using Zwift at default trainer difficulty or 100%? Default is 50% so you're only doing half the gradient. Very few people can actually do alpe de zwift at 100% trainer difficulty