Reserve - 20th Anniversary Challenge - Raid Pyrenees 6K (Easterly 800km Route)

I'm super excited (well not really lol) to share that 2024 will mark the 20th year of Tacx Real Life Video with the introduction of Fortius Software that at the time was the first in the world to do a video based simulation that used both grade & distance data! I've been working hard to create something truly special for everyone - a challenge that really pushed us to the limit to film on Bertha. This project is something that, as a lifelong cyclist, I'd personally love to take on over a whole winter & hopefully one day for real.

I wanted to capture the spirit of what we achieved with the BluRays, providing a journey that keeps riders/customers engaged for weeks and months as they work towards the clear goal of reaching a well known destination which in this case is the Mediterranean!

Choosing the route was a deliberate decision. Last year, we passed through the Pyrenees twice during our regular film trips. By filming in the opposite (traditional) direction to 2013, starting this time from the Atlantic, the entire route will be almost entirely new to our collection 'if' we decide to publish it. The whole route is meticulously planned to be scenic and filmed in great weather conditions.

I recently dedicated a few very long days to meticulously edit all the data/ride to determine how many stages it would be... and it turns out, it will span 24 stages with a total of 21,000m of climbing and descending! The first 100km offers a gentle introduction to the hills, winding through the beautiful Basque countryside.

Looking forward to embarking on this incredible journey with all of you via the screengrabs from the various stages as I do an edit in my spare time over this winter for 'possibly' publishing next winter.

Top Replies

Phil70 8 months ago +1

Back to the longest indoor ride we have ever produced, heading over the 2nd of the proper mountains the Col du Soudet, next comes some smaller backroad climbs before we move into the regular passes used…
Phil70 8 months ago in reply to andre77ab +1

andre77ab said:
That would lead to the biggest Challenge in the app

I should be the biggest challenge in indoor cycling :-)
Phil70 8 months ago in reply to Michael Corn +1

Michael Corn said:
I was a very early user of the early hardware and after the problems with these systems ~2006, I was invited to be tester and have been doing so ever since. I went through a few of the…

All Replies

0 Phil70 over 1 year ago in reply to IliaNSK

Wow that DVD was filmed in 2005 I think, good to see all the original rides in a list, I had forgot some of them like that Ardennes MTB thing.. it was really a time of experimenting. We used in 2005 a machine vision camera with what was at the time the latest HD sensor inside it. It got us much better quality & deeper colour then you could get with a SD tape based camera. It was also much easier to get a stable image being quite small.. downside was I had to write command lines into Linux every 10minutes or so to create a new folder to to record to…or something like that. We automated this by the following year haha

0 Phil70 8 months ago

Back to the longest indoor ride we have ever produced, heading over the 2nd of the proper mountains the Col du Soudet, next comes some smaller backroad climbs before we move into the regular passes used most often in the TDF

0 andre77ab 8 months ago in reply to Phil70

That would lead to the biggest Challenge in the app 32 points at least

0 Phil70 8 months ago in reply to andre77ab

andre77ab said:
That would lead to the biggest Challenge in the app

I should be the biggest challenge in indoor cycling :-)

0 Phil70 8 months ago

12 years ago today Tacx put on the market our first real challenge, Think it was something like 250km!

0 Michael Corn 8 months ago in reply to Phil70

Phil-

You have done a spectacular job over the years. I remember the Fortius well. It sends chills up my spine to remember the 110VAC Fortius power supply spontaneously self-destructing on shut-down. I was a very early user of the early hardware and after the problems with these systems ~2006, I was invited to be tester and have been doing so ever since. I went through a few of the power supplies, but Tacx eventually figured out the problem with 110 volt units.

Keep up the good work.

P..S. I played with the Imagic Green software as well using the Imagic trainer.

0 Phil70 8 months ago in reply to Michael Corn

Michael Corn said:
I was a very early user of the early hardware and after the problems with these systems ~2006, I was invited to be tester and have been doing so ever since. I went through a few of the power supplies, but Tacx eventually figured out the problem with 110 volt units.

Keep up the good work.

P..S. I played with the Imagic Green software as well using the Imagic trainer.

Mike, you are probably the longest-running Tacx Beta tester (I'm guessing also the oldest ;-) ) , especially now that Bert is sadly no longer with us.

The early Fortius had some cutting-edge tech for the time; the first prototype actually pumped excess heat to an industrial light. I thought that light idea was utterly brilliant as you could visibly see the effort just as you can now with the lights on the Neo.

The worlds first prototype of a 'slope & distance' based video simulation used that green Catalyst software as its base. I think the first prototype of a slope/time based simulation was in my garage haha.. Anyway we had a good 20years, especially now I can also take a road bike & actually ride/recce in many of the places we used to film from our small sports roadster ;-) !

Pic is from filming that 1st BlueRay Ultra long Challenge in the Alps 12 years ago :-)

0 IliaNSK 8 months ago in reply to Phil70

I also used Fortius. My neighbors were glad! It is still at home, but disassembled. And how happy I was when I bought Neo. I could ride into the mountains.
I bought my first Fortius trainer just because it was virtual.
Thanks for the great job!
My distance on the trainers is greater than on the road.

0 Michael Corn 8 months ago in reply to Phil70

Yes, the Fortius put power back into the grid, which was both its novelty and its weakness. The power supply had to perfectly synchronize itself with the grid and if it was off, that was a problem. US 110 VAC systems are different than European 220 VAC. But, now, with my Neo2T Smart and Flux2 Smart, it's pretty much trouble free.

I've always felt that quality videos were the heart of the system. You can turn off every other bell and whistle (except maybe heart rate and watts) and have a great ride.

Back in 2006, the current TDA would have seemed like a fantasy. Now, current users tend to take it for granted and are unhappy if the slightest feature or nuance is not quite right.

Although I got some free videos, I also bought a lot of them. I bought over a 100 Tacx and third-party films, which probably cost at least $2k (much more valuable dollars compared to todfay). Today, a user can pay $15 a month for virtually unlimited access to a huge library that streams well and is very high quality. You can buy a decent 50" 4K TV her in the US for $200, and voila, you are really set.

0 Phil70 8 months ago

Well into the classic Tour de France climbs now having passed the toughest challenge of the route the Col du Tourmalet. Its been a very long time since we have had this side in the Tacx collection!

Not the Aspin this time ;-)