Ah, there’s nothing quite like riding in the great outdoors – the sound of tyres rolling on freshly laid tarmac, the whir of the freehub, the click of the gears, the companionship of your fellow cyclists. Except these days there is something quite like it: virtual cycling.
When the rain is lashing down and dark evenings are closing in, many of us are now eschewing the outside world and instead opting to climb onto a turbo trainer, plug into a laptop or tablet and explore the digital highways, which have come a long way from the early days of bad video quality, pixelated avatars and mind-numbingly dreary routes.
Now, virtual training apps offer everything from real-life footage to immersive augmented reality and engaging gamified worlds. Many include exact recreations of famous routes, which mimic everything from gradient to road signs, as well
