Achill Keem Bay ride v3

"I'm not doing the long place-to-place filming anymore."

That is a shame Phil, does this mean it is being shelved completely?

Phil

great to see the amount of filming that you have done here and the ability to cycling any route on it will be pretty cool.

The climbfinder image shows the climb that I was talking about in the middle of the island.  It tops out just short of 20% in sections and what makes it worse is, that as you turn the corner into the less steep section, you usually catch the prevailing gale off the Atlantic and it doesn't feel any easier.

Pity about the longer routes, as I used the Raid earlier in the year for some sustained training.  Not sure 'enjoyed' would be the first word that I would use to describe the adventure

Kevin

I have done this wonderful ride yesterday, but I've had no issues. My version is 4.75.

Malfukt said:

That is a shame Phil, does this mean it is being shelved completely?

Mal, to me, long place-to-place routes that keep customers tied up in Tacx Apps for months or a whole winter need a fairly straightforward 'progress map/profile' and some basic scoreboards to really create that retro Tour de France feeling. Those simple additions (which Garmin now owns through the event timing company they acquired this year, which features a progress map-based app, no less) would make it incredibly easy to run events and full winter challenges for every type of rider. I reckon the problem is they fixate on the headcount for, say, a stage of the Raid Pyrenees... overlooking that those starters on the Raid are shelling out for a Garmin sub for the whole winter, and sometimes two... it's a huge multiplier (six or twelve months) that's simple to miss if you're just glancing at the raw numbers per stage. An event would tie a lot of riders to finishing it....tie customers to TacxApps

The way I'd see doing a long place-to-place is this: I hop into the event tab in the App, pick my age group/trainer type plus e-bike or real deal... set off, and suddenly I'm up against everyone who's kicked off before me in that filtered bunch. On my progress map, all those prior efforts kick in right alongside me, and I'm attempting to finish the thing in the fewest days/weeks/months... some fellow sufferers like Naza will just sit on the trainer all day and streak ahead, and after a week or so that peloton of 'over-55s real-dealers' that started with me thins out, and I'll spot names of riders hanging around me opening the door to making new friends... I might even have pulled in mates from my Garmin account (hey, a reason to actually add friends on there?).

Anyway, I'm fairly certain none of that'll ever happen in Tacx Apps now (I've been banging on about spot-on the same stuff to Tacx since 2011, back when we did that RDGA on the Blu-rays, Mal, lol). Which makes all the extra graft to build a super-long place-to-place feel a tad pointless, like the Raid Pyrenees ultimately became. Just now they do a challenge & there is actually a really freaking cool virtual mass participation race going on with all the performances spread over a day & then the following days as the riders thin out with just the super serious hitting the later stages first, there is a winner & nobody knows who it is including the winner.... nobody can see this virtual race but it's happening haha. There is a rider from Tacx thats taken 2 years to get half way through the raid....he might be the slowest, but there might be a rider called Brian thats also taken two years & is just ahead of him on the same climb....nobody knows, but the data is there just waiting to be displayed...for this thing to be what it was supposed to be....a light harted fun battle against Brian to finish before he does haha!!!! 

What we've filmed over this last year is pretty much the polar opposite of an ultra-long indoor cycling slog, so no place-to-place, no scoreboards or progress maps needed. We've now got well over 1000km locked in for this new feature, so I can't see myself even thinking about filming something like our Raid Pyrenees again. Not without a shared vision for it

Thomas said:

have done this wonderful ride yesterday, but I've had no issues. My version is 4.75.

Thats good to know, it might be something with the beta version. Was this on IOS/mac or Windows?

It was the Windows version and I've

used a downloaded ride.

Kevinm said:

The climbfinder image shows the climb that I was talking about in the middle of the island.  It tops out just short of 20% in sections and what makes it worse is, that as you turn the corner into the less steep section, you usually catch the prevailing gale off the Atlantic and it doesn't feel any easier.

Pity about the longer routes, as I used the Raid earlier in the year for some sustained training.  Not sure 'enjoyed' would be the first word that I would use to describe the adventure

I did see the climb, we were camped at the foot of it for a few days, figured to attempt to make this thing into something not too challenging! 

For the Raid, i think the potential to add some basic tools to be able to enjoy the Raid is there,  but there is no way Im going to ever ride it without even a progress map 

Assume you were camped at Keel?  Mind me asking when the routes were filmed?  The Keem bay route seemed to be filmed early in the morning to avoid the traffic that builds around there in the summer.

On the Raid, I did it when the there were problems with TDA saving rides, which meant the progress indicator did not work and no-one in support could retieve the situation, so I ended up keeping my own tally and finishing wihout any recognition!

Kevinm said:

Assume you were camped at Keel?  Mind me asking when the routes were filmed?  The Keem bay route seemed to be filmed early in the morning to avoid the traffic that builds around there in the summer.

click on the strava image (not sure if Garmin Connect also have a heatmap for Ebike rides?) & you can see it was the morning of the 8th May 2025 .  You can also just about make out the little turn off the route in Keel to the campsite. We had almost two weeks of great weather (did have some really windy days).