How to ride a GPX file indoors on your smart trainer
The Moveee team
Free coaching · a real route for every ride
A GPX file is just a list of points and elevations — the universal language of routes. And here's the useful consequence: if you can get a route as a GPX, you can ride it indoors on your smart trainer, in 3D, with the real gradients driving the resistance. Your favourite loop, a bucket-list climb, next month's race course — all rideable from the pain cave.
Where GPX files come from
Almost everything in cycling can hand you a GPX. A few of the usual sources:
Strava
Export any route or activity as GPX from its page.
Komoot / RideWithGPS
Both export GPX from any planned route.
Your bike computer
Garmin, Wahoo and Hammerhead all save rides as FIT/GPX you can export.
A race organiser
Most events publish the official course as a downloadable GPX.
Drawn yourself
Sketch a route on a map tool and export it.
What makes riding a GPX indoors feel real
The trick isn't just drawing the route on a screen — it's linking the route's elevation profile to your trainer's resistance. When the GPX says the road tilts to 7%, the trainer should get genuinely harder; when it drops, it should let you spin. That's what turns "a line on a map" into a ride you feel. Look for an app that reads the GPX's elevation and drives a smart trainer in simulation mode.
How to do it
- Get your GPX from any of the sources above.
- Open a browser trainer app (Chrome or Edge) and load the file.
- Pair your smart trainer over Bluetooth.
- Ride — the gradient does the rest, and the ride records with full power data.
Do it free, with nothing to install
Moveee Indoor takes a route you've drawn or imported and rebuilds it in 3D from real OpenStreetMap and elevation data — the actual streets, buildings and climbs the GPX follows — then drives your smart trainer's resistance from the real gradient as you ride. It runs entirely in the browser, it's free while in alpha, and rides save with full power data to your Moveee training plan and Strava.
Any route you can export, you can ride. That's a lot of roads to get through this winter.
Sources 6
Where this article summarises a study, the study itself is linked — not a write-up of it.
- 1 GPX: the GPS Exchange Format (GPX 1.1 schema) · TopoGrafix · 2004
- 2 How do I export my Strava data? (Export GPX from an activity) · Strava Support · 2025
- 3 About OpenStreetMap · OpenStreetMap Foundation · 2025
- 4 Copernicus DEM — Global and European Digital Elevation Model · Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem (ESA / European Union) · 2024
- 5 Fitness Machine Service 1.0 (FTMS) specification · Bluetooth SIG · 2017
- 6 Web Bluetooth (Draft Community Group Report) · W3C Web Bluetooth Community Group · 2025
Your own roads, indoors, in a browser tab
Moveee Indoor pairs your smart trainer over Bluetooth and rebuilds a route you have saved as a 3D road — real gradients, ERG for the intervals, and the ride saved with full power data. Nothing to install. Free while it is in alpha.
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