Riding with your Virtual Pacing Partner, Bernard

Bernard is your professional Virtual Pacing Partner in FulGaz! He loves crushing watts and eating hills before breakfast, all while never showing any signs of weakness across his digital face.

To enable your Virtual Pacing Partner, first select your ride, then tap on the "down arrow" next to the RIDE button.

Ensure that REACTIVE is selected, then select RIDE WITH VIRTUAL PACING PARTNER from the list. Bernard will now be activated on your ride!

Bernard’s time will be displayed in a "virtual leaderboard" on the ride side of the screen. Here you can see his current watts/kg and the time difference between you both. You will also see Bernard’s “dot” on the elevation profile at the top of the screen, giving you a visual indication of how far ahead or behind he is on the course compared to you.

Setting up the way Bernard rides with you

1) Basic Bernard

If you’ve selected Ride against Bernard and set his power, this is “Basic Bernard” mode. For simplicity, in this mode Bernard weighs the same as you.

All you need to do is switch him as outlined above and set his power number. Bernard will then lock in this wattage and ride at this number for the entire ride. Flat roads, uphill, downhill. He will hold this wattage like the seasoned pro he is. 

2) Advanced Bernard

You may notice with “Simple Bernard” he is not always that realistic. If you set him to 250 watts he’ll hold that uphill and down the other side also! You’ll never see him soft pedalling! Bernard’s Advanced Power Settings enable you to adjust how he reacts to climbs and descents.

To access these settings, go into your FulGaz app's settings, then Virtual Rider, then select Bernard Advanced Power Settings.

The default settings have Bernard pushing harder uphill and easing off when going downhill (he will back off or even coast the descents). You can adjust his weight and aerodynamic drag as well as a percentage power increase/decrease depending on the gradient of the road.

The standard values are rather good, but you can tweak them to suit your own style or how you would like Bernard to ride. If you find Bernard powering away up steep climbs, reduce the top percentage until you can keep up. Likewise for descents. It can take a bit of "trial and error" but once you get him right, he will be your faithful domestique for life.

He works hard for you, so be sure to shout him a virtual espresso at the café! 😎