How to ride a GPX file indoors on your smart trainer

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:

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

1. Get your GPX from any of the sources above.
2. Open a browser trainer app (Chrome or Edge) and load the file.
3. Pair your smart trainer over Bluetooth.
4. 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.