Our Thursday rides are back and this time we’re riding them from the spare room. To get everyone rolling, Stamford Cycling has teamed up with ROUVY to offer an extended ROUVY free trial worth around five weeks: the usual 7 days free, plus your first month at 100% off.
When we paused the Thursday evening ride at the end of the summer, I knew it’d leave a gap. It wasn’t just the miles. It was the chat at level crossing, the regroup at the top of the drag out of Ketton, the pint at The William Cecil afterwards. Thursday was the bit of the week that belonged to the club.
So here’s the good news. Thursday rides are back from 15th October at 7pm. Same crowd, same social spirit. The only difference is that this time the start line is your spare room, your garage or that corner of the living room you’ve been promising your other half you’ll tidy.
Affiliate Disclosure: This offer comes from Stamford Cycling’s partnership with ROUVY. We don’t earn anything from free trial sign-ups, but we may receive a benefit if you pay for a subsricption.
Why we’re going indoors on Thursdays
Honestly? It’s the dark. By mid-October the sun’s gone before most of us have finished work and once the clocks go back on Sunday 25th October it’s pitch black by teatime. We said it when we paused the Thursday ride and it still stands, we’re not going to run a club ride on unlit lanes around Rutland in the dark, however good everyone’s lights are.
But an evening off the bike every week until March? No thanks. Winter is where a lot of us lose our legs and if you’ve ever turned up to the first spring Sunday Social feeling like you’re towing a caravan, you’ll know exactly why a weekly midweek ride matters.
Indoors fixes all of that. No lights, no gritted roads, no wet kit draped over the radiator. Just 7pm, clip in and ride together.
Why we chose ROUVY
We looked at the main indoor apps and kept coming back to ROUVY, for three reasons.
It’s real roads, not cartoon ones. ROUVY uses video footage of actual roads with the elevation data matched to it, so when the road kicks up, your trainer does too. For a club that’s built around the lanes of Rutland, riding a real place just feels more like us.
The ride still feels like you’re with a group. This is the clincher. On a ROUVY ride, everyone follows a ride leader’s avatar and the app keeps the group together behind them. Strong legs, tired legs, first-ride-in-months legs, nobody gets spat out the back. That’s exactly how we run our outdoor rides and it’s rare to find an app that does it by design.
It runs on most things. ROUVY works on Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android and Apple TV, so you can probably ride on something you already own.
I’m still working on creating my ideal indoor setup, which for now consists of borrowing Mark’s spare turbo trainer and strapping it my mountain bike, which could make for some interesting efforts on our first ride planned next week.
How the ROUVY free trial works
Normally, ROUVY gives new riders a 7 day free trial. Through Stamford Cycling, you get that plus your first month at 100% off, so roughly five weeks of riding before you pay a penny.
Sign up before the 15th and that covers every Thursday ride through to mid-November. Plenty of time to work out whether indoor riding is for you.
How to claim it:
- Go to ROUVY’s free trial page
- Enter your email address. The 100% discount on your first month is applied on top of the 7-day free trial.
- Set up your account by pressing get started underneath ÂŁ17.99 price table. Select keep monthly plan and proceed to checkout where the ROUVY free trial discount is confirmed.
- Download the ROUVY app on whichever device you’ll ride with.
- Pair your trainer (and heart rate strap if you’ve got one) in the app’s settings.
- Do a quick 10 minute spin on any route to check everything’s talking to each other before Thursday. Trust me on this one.
One tip: once the free period ends, your subscription rolls on at the normal monthly price (currently ÂŁ17.99 a month for a single rider in the UK). If you’re not sure you’ll stick with it, pop a reminder in your phone a few days before it renews. And even if you cancel, ROUVY lets every registered rider keep riding up to 20km a month for free, so you won’t be locked out completely.
Our first Thursday ROUVY ride: 15th October at 7pm
- Date: Thursday 15th October 2026, then every Thursday through the winter
- Start: 7:00pm sharp (join from about 6:50pm to warm up)
- Platform: ROUVY
- Length: 60 minutes
- Pace: Let’s see how it goes!
- Find it: In the ROUVY app, open Events, search for Stamford cycling and hit Join Event.
- Chat: We’ll host a video call, so it’s not just you and the sound of the fan
Join around ten minutes before the start so you’re in the warm-up pen when the group rolls out. Once it starts, just follow the ride leader. The app does the hard work of keeping everyone together.
What you’ll need
You don’t need a fancy pain cave. You need:
- A bike and a trainer. A smart trainer gives the best experience because ROUVY can change the resistance to match the gradient. A basic turbo can work too if you’ve got a power meter or a speed sensor — check ROUVY’s compatibility list if you’re unsure.
- A screen. Laptop, tablet, phone or TV.
- A fan. Not optional. Indoors there’s no wind to cool you down and you’ll be surprised how quickly you overheat.
- A towel, a bottle and a mat under the bike to save the carpet (and your relationship).
If you’re not sure whether your setup will work, ask in the club WhatsApp. There’s a fair bit of turbo knowledge knocking about in the group and somebody will have had the same question.
The Sunday Social isn’t changing
Let’s be crystal clear: our Sunday Social is still on, outdoors, every Sunday through the winter (unless it’s frosty). Same time, same meeting point, same cafĂ© stops. Thursdays go indoors; Sundays stay on the road.
If anything, a weekly turbo session will make those cold Sunday mornings out past Tinwell and round Rutland Water feel a fair bit easier.
Quick questions
See you on Thursday
It’s not quite the same as rolling out of town on a summer evening with the light going gold over the fields. But it’s Thursday, it’s the club and it beats sitting on the sofa wondering where your fitness went.
Claim your ROUVY free trial here, get the app sorted, and we’ll see you in the warm-up pen at 6:50pm on the 15th. Join our Strava Club for ride reminders and route details each week.
Affiliate Disclosure: This offer comes from Stamford Cycling’s partnership with ROUVY. We don’t earn anything from free trial sign-ups, but we may receive a benefit if you pay for a subsricption.
