RGT offers you something different for your indoor workouts. The training app lets its paying subscribers ride any route that they want with its Magic Roads feature, as well as its selection of 12 Real Roads with incredibly realistic views of some epic rides.
To use Magic Roads, simply upload a high quality GPX file of where you want to ride and within a few minutes RGT will turn it into a simulation of your route, complete with route video and emulating the real world twists and turns and ups and downs. It’s a great way to prepare for a ride or a race that you’re planning, letting you work out your pacing and nutrition strategies and readying you for the important challenges on the route. Or you could relive a ride you’ve already done from the comfort of your turbo.
If there’s somewhere you’ve always wanted to ride, like Old Willunga Hill in South Australia, you can set up a Magic Road and experience just how tough it is for the pros and other riders and compare your times with theirs. It’s not just roads either, you can set up a Magic Road for gravel or any off-road route as well. You can then make your route available for free as an RGT Event to your ride buddies or to all the other riders on RGT.
You don’t have to ride the route on your own though. You can set up a time for a group ride or a race (including time trials and elimination events) and invite your friends or anyone on RGT to join you or you can join one of the frequent scheduled group rides and races on the platform. No mates want to ride with you? Conscript the RGT Real Bots to keep you company and set the pace.
You can ride RGT’s own pre-set, ultra-realistic Real Roads route simulations too. There are currently 12 and RGT is adding to them all the time. Options include the Passo dello Stelvio, Flanders bergs, a flat TT in California and a tight circuit around Canary Wharf in London - with no traffic.
Changing the game
RGT has just recently completely rebuilt its user interface, making it easier to set up the app on your device. There’s now a single app that works on iPhone, iPad, most Android devices, Apple TV, Mac OS, and Windows and RGT has also incorporated extensive stability updates and improved connectivity to trainers and sensors.
So RGT is now really easy to get started with and gives you an immersive ride experience whatever your trainer and device platform.
Real world simulation
(Image credit: RoadGrandTours)
RGT is proud of its realistic ride feel, powered by its physics simulation. Cornering is like the real world. You’ll slow down into a corner, but if you ease off then accelerate out of it you’ll pass riders who take the corner at constant speed and power.
You can’t just ride through another rider either, your avatar will slow down when you come up behind them. You need to be putting out significantly more power and riding faster to pass them. But you’d be better off sticking on their wheel: there’s a drafting effect built into the app that means you’ll need less power to keep up the same speed.
The real world feel means that you need to be tactical in how you ride in a race or with RGT’s Bots, making sure that you’re near the front of the pack coming into a corner or hitting a hill to avoid being blocked.
RGT offers a free subscription
A large selection of features is available on RGT for free, but you’ll open up much more functionality with a paid subscription. The app is designed for easy set-up, so you don’t need to spend a lot of time configuring your equipment before you get out and ride.
Go for the free account and you have access to a subset of RGT’s Real Roads and a selection from its workout library. You can also join group rides and races and link your account up to Strava and TrainingPeaks.
The full RGT feature set, including Magic Roads which we’ve featured here, is only available to paid subscribers, who can also create races and group rides, ride any of the 12 Real Roads routes and follow the full suite of RGT’s structured workout plans.
A premium subscription to RGT costs $9.99, £6.99 or €8.99 per month. You get a 14 day trial of the premium features for free when you sign up to RGT.
If you’ve got a big challenge planned for this summer, let us know where you’re going in the video comments and tell us how a Magic Road could help you out.
Challenge Cycling Weekly’s own Sam Gupta
(Image credit: RoadGrandTours)
Cycling Weekly and RGT Cycling have put together an exclusive time trial hill climb on the Willunga Hill Magic Road. Starting on February the 16th for seven days you can see how you compare to Sam and challenge your friends to beat your best.
The time to beat: 41 minutes and the challenge can be found in the RGT event list on the app and on the RGT User Portal.
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Paul started writing for Cycling Weekly in 2015, covering cycling tech, new bikes and product testing. Since then, he’s reviewed hundreds of bikes and thousands of other pieces of cycling equipment for the magazine and the Cycling Weekly website.
He’s been cycling for a lot longer than that though and his travels by bike have taken him all around Europe and to California. He’s been riding gravel since before gravel bikes existed too, riding a cyclocross bike through the Chilterns and along the South Downs.
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