It was supposed to rain today, but it didn't. Yesterday, I decided to ride on RGT with my newly imported Keene n Back route. The start finish was on WTR and White Pine. It goes to the base of Keene and back. The gear setup was very easy. It detected my trainer, the moment I installed the ANT+ dongle. I botched the video, for the start. I was fumbling with stuff before I could get the video recording. I selected 50 random bots with abilities between 80 and 210 watts. I didn't care much about winning. I was more intersted in how realistic the simulator is, compared to real life. The first mile was similar. The short kicker, followed by a modest climb to the start of the descent. About 1 mile into the descent, I could tell the gradient was not accurate. I was hitting gradients, well into the 10's of percent. There are no such gardients in real-life. So, I kept descending. I was within the first 20 for most of the descent. I reached the base, but the avatar failed to turn around. I then got stuck in cyberspace. No roads, just a virtual 3D box-like environment. I let it go for about 1/2 a mile and then decided to turn around. It took a while before I was put back on the road for the return trip. The return trip was mostly uphill, but had more undulations and steep sections than it should. I was concentrating on The bots around me. Trying to gauge my position and determine If I could move into 1st. In the meantime, I was keeping an eye on the mileage. Every so often looking at the remaining distance. The miles went quicker than I anticipated. At about 3 or 4 miles, I made it to the front and stayed there for the remainder of the ride. I kept the power at around 3 W/kg or better, while out of the saddle. At about 2 miles, I was focusing on finishing, but forgot that there's a 1.5 mile descent after the summit. That part was fairly accurate. I reached the finish in about 1:12 hours. So, that is comparable to real-life. On a good day, I can do sub 1:10. With about 1/2 mile more. In my opinion, the Magic Roads feature works great, but has its bugs that need to be worked out. Perhaps, I need to import a higher resolution route, in GPX format. I'm not sure what happened at the turn-around. I had it in Drone mode. So, perhaps it was the camera angle? They need to work a
bit on the surrounding environment for custom maps. As for the workout, I got what I wanted. The legs felt good. My concentration was spot on. Gear worked flawless. Pretty much, no ailments. Other notes, to start the race, you initiate the procedure and you are given 3 minutes before the start of the ride. The (bot) riders start, the moment the clock reaches 0. With or without you. I'm going to discontinue the subscription before it renews. I'm definitely glad I tried it and hope they can keep improving upon it!