Road Grand Tours (RGT): a eulogy

It is with a heavy heart that I received news that Wahoo was shutting down RGT.

The servers would stay up one final month until the end of October 2023 – after which the cycling simulator would cease to exist and its servers given the long kiss goodnight. As a gesture of good will, RGT effectively eradicated any distinction between free and premium membership for this month.

A few trips on Cap Formentor up to the lighthouse, for good measure.

RGT always loomed in the shadow of the big orange gorilla in the indoor cycling software space, Zwift. It appealed to those of us who didn’t want to pedal in an overtly gamey virtual world – instead it sought to deliver a realistic experience all throughout its update history. Its secret sauce was the “Magic Roads” functionality, where one could submit a GPX or TCX file of a certain route, and RGT would control the smart trainer and generate basic route visuals to suit.

I thought Wahoo’s acquisition of RGT would mean breathing new life into the service, which had its loyal fan following but never generated the kind of massive user base Zwift did. Which is a shame. In hindsight, I suppose it was obvious that Wahoo’s rationale for buying RGT was to help sell its smart trainers. I just didn’t think that Wahoo was all too ready to ditch RGT without introducing any real improvements. Not like they had the money left to do anything, anyway, I suppose, after misjudging smart trainer demand and making one too many bad financial decisions…but the bitter pill at the end was that RGT was rumored closed down as part of a settlement in an ill-advised lawsuit Wahoo brought against Zwift.

Not gonna lie – this makes me a little upset with Wahoo.

Given that almost 100% of my riding is now indoors due to the demands of work and fatherhood, what does this mean for me? Well, I’ve tried giving IndieVelo a go. Right now it’s in closed beta, and access is free, so I figured I might as well try it out. It appears to be where most of the RGT faithful are headed.

There is some slight irony to IndieVelo receiving a lot of RGT’s rider base. When I tried it, it looked and felt a lot like Zwift, but with much of the overt gamification removed. Routes all happen around a big virtual island, but said island promises to offer a breadth of routes. Even the training mode – an area where I felt RGT had always faltered – seems to have taken some of the best ideas from Zwift. That said, under the hood, the physics modeling, drafting, and race mechanics all seem to lean more towards the more realistic RGT side of the spectrum.

I suppose this is where indoor cycling smart trainer software has to go to expand a user base. Time will tell if there is enough room in the market for multiple competitors in this space, or if there is even any hope of going up against Zwift at all.

For now though, thank you, RGT. This tiny team of developers can leave with their heads held high, knowing that they had delivered on a fine product which sadly not enough folks appreciated.

I’m excited about mechanical shifting in 2023, but not because of Shimano

So apparently, despite the electronic Di2 version coming out in 2022, Shimano 105 R7100 mechanical 12-speed is still on the cards after all.

Shimano has done a pretty ridiculous job of handling this, in my opinion, with all the “will they, won’t they” hemming and hawing, and the built bikes equipped with 105 12-speed mechanical showing up on trade shows, but suddenly being hidden on the sly. I am fairly sure they had created the relevant shifters and derailleurs from the outset anyway, or had at least planned it, but did all of the double-takes seemingly at the last minute.

At this point, the whole hullaballoo about 105 R7100 12-speed has left a sour taste in the mouth. 105 is not just any groupset – it is the supposed groupset of the people, beloved by all from avid enthusiasts to racers on a tight budget. The eagerness with which Shimano dumped all of this goodwill for a much more expensive electronic Di2 version feels like a betrayal. Cold comfort is, the 11-speed R7000 version hasn’t really gone away yet.

One thing I can argue for Shimano’s decision to go electronic for all its 12-speed road groupsets is the approaching limitation of how many cogs can practically be put on a rear wheel and still offer decent shifting. If the Chinese-made competition is any indication, reliable shifting across twelve cogs may be too much to ask for a shift cable. Even Campagnolo has had complaints with its mechanical 13-speed Ekar groupset, which is the Italian firm’s gravel offering.

This got me thinking about a different manufacturer’s groupset launch.

MicroShift has perpetually played shadow figure to Shimano in the past, a favorite of budget-constrained product planners who want good shifting on their cheap road bikes, but can’t justify Shimano parts in their bill of materials. That has changed slowly in the past few years, their involvement with gravel cycling and mountain biking eventually birthing the Advent and Advent X groupsets. Neither of these are state-of-the-art, topping out at nine and ten rear cogs, but they successfully found their niche and gained quite a following.

Them’s fighting’ words. After what I’ve seen, though, MicroShift might be right.

Not too long ago, the Taiwanese company launched their new Sword groupset. This is specifically made for drop-handlebar gravel bikes, where Advent and Advent X started life as parts for bikes with flat handlebars.

I don’t know about you, but I find the release of Sword oddly exciting. What could be so buzzworthy about a groupset with ten cogs at the back?

The control lever layout is carried over from MicroShift’s road groupsets. The upper lever seems to be for harder cogs, the lower one for easier cogs.

At this point in time, Sword, to me, represents a keen ear directed towards what people are actually using their bikes for. MicroShift’s traditional control layout aside, the Sword levers sport a higher pivot for the brake lever that Shimano has used on GRX, but paywalled behind its Di2 incarnation.

While there are indeed only ten cogs on Sword’s cassettes, each has a wide spread of gears, made even more useful by chainring sizes that account for the gearing increase brought on by larger tires.

And while I would love MicroShift to give Sword the benefits of hydraulic braking, the fact that these levers pull brake cable frees end users to pick whatever cable-actuated brake type they want: discs, cantilevers, maybe even side-pull rim brake calipers. That freedom of choice extends to the rear derailleur and crankset: swapping between 1x and 2x just requires the rear derailleur cage and chainrings swapped for the other set.

Best of all, if Advent and Advent X are any indication, pricing for Sword shouldn’t be extortionate.

Had I not already had a bunch of spare groupset parts in storage, I would be keen on buying Sword in 2x form. No joke. This is not sponsored content nor an advertisement; I am genuinely interested in trying it out. At the very least, it would make for an interesting test of how my TRP Spyre disc brake calipers would work with the raised brake lever pivot point…and it would certainly spice up the three-horse bicycle groupset race.

Hello fatherhood, goodbye watts?

With a brand new little human in the house, things have not quite been the same for me as a cyclist. And yet, they haven’t really changed a huge amount, either.

The first few weeks or so after my baby was born were a whirr of activity. Generally speaking, it was getting used to the impact of now having a third human in the household, one who was pretty helpless by himself, and had his own schedule that paid no respect to ours.

Eventually though, my wife and I found a routine that worked, and my son slowly became a creature of habit. We lucked out in that his sleep schedule mostly worked itself out, only requiring nursing from my wife every couple of hours in the first two weeks.

While my wife and I grew up with househelp and nannies around the house, thing hadn’t really gone our way when it was our turn to be parents. After a number of false starts, we simply decided to go it alone. Living in the age of remote work, we were lucky that we were spared the need to commute to the office most days, making it easier to look after our little rugrat.

All this meant I had to be creative with how and where I carved out time for riding. Doing so outdoors just isn’t an option for now, so I was very appreciative of my indoor cycling setup. I applied said creativity by taking to the trainer on weekday mornings at 4 am, just before my work shift. I found I could sneak in 60-75 minutes of pain cave time this way, while still being present in the afternoons to watch over my son as my wife goes on her own work shift.

That early morning schedule poses its own challenges. My legs are barely woken up at 4:30 am, and so it’s a challenge to do much of anything other than steady Zone 1 and Zone 2 efforts. I’ve tried 40/20 intervals once or twice, but repeatedly hitting 120% of my FTP is a big ask within these conditions and the limited amount of time, so I’m keeping those days rather infrequent. All this means the training stress load isn’t quite as effective at building a higher FTP – it’s really more of fitness maintenance than anything else.

The final area changes have had to be made is with my bike Hyro. I swapped the 32 mm Continental Hometrainer indoor trainer tire back on, now that I’ve gotten used to riding the 40 mm Panaracer GravelKing SKs. The Conti necessitates the use of an inner tube, but I’m currently at the point where maintaining a tubeless setup makes zero sense anyway, and so I switched all my other wheels back to inner tubes. Not enough outdoor riding is happening for the sealant to circulate and permeate the tires, and they’ve simply gotten progressively worse at holding air because of it. For my current use case, keeping on top of tubeless sealant levels is a task I simply cannot be bothered with. I’ll just save the sealant for when outdoor riding becomes more frequent…which may take quite a while longer.