Here is today's ride report. I set up the trainer outdoors and decided to run my phone instead of dragging my laptop outside. I first tried the Rouvy AR app but it had the same problem as before, reporting my cadence as 89, 90, 89, 0, 88, 90, 91, 90, 0, 89, 90, 0, etc. So I gave up and tried the Rouvy Workouts app. After telling me that the AR routes would not be supported on that app for much longer it ran fine.

I spent 30 minutes on a training ride up some route named Passa Vala-something-or-other. It looked like Franconia Notch in New Hampshire, quite lovely. I was passed by a few riders, passed a few who were stopped. The grade was showing 6.5 to 7%. Of course the load with a non-smart trainer is determined by whatever gear I select but an app reading the speed sensor and knowing the drag vs. speed curve of the trainer type would calculate power and compute my speed up the grade from that. It had me going between 3.4 and 5mph most of the time.

Now, I've been up grades like that many times, have climbed Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park on ten different vintage bikes. That's a 3.3 mile run that climbs 1000 ft. With a little bit being flat at the bottom and top the climb computes out to an average of 6.5 to 7%, with occasional pitches at 10%. So I know what a grade like that feels like and how fast I can go. The Rouvy app showed me running between 3.5 and 4.5mph, not bad, probably a bit low but close enough! This ride was 7.36 miles, if I remember right, and I did only about 1/4 of it. (We had done a bit of jogging on our morning walk, and until this week my 71 y.o. legs haven't done much running in a long time.) The virtual riding experience really challenged me to push harder, much like real life. Unlike real life, on a Rouvy ride I can stop without having to walk back to the car.

A curious feature was a number displayed in the the upper left corner labeled Z1. It may have been a power number though it didn't quite match the power values Zwift was showing for me yesterday. Of course they might not be directly comparable. The curious feature was that I could shift down to lessen the physical load of my pedals while keeping the cadence the same, and this number would drop. Waitaminute! If the speed sensor is not connected and the app is reading only cadence how would it know I shifted to change the loading??? I tried this quite a few times and both the apparent speed and that Z1 number reflected the gear I was running. It continued to report my cadence accurately. Apparently it was detecting wheel speed anyway even though it wasn't saying so. Whatever...it was a nice riding experience. I hope when I connect tomorrow that I can find the same ride and pick up where I left off. That kind of navigation is not obvious in either the Swift or the Rouvy apps. I have some miles to go on that training run and I'd like to finish it!