Which camp are you in? Zwift or TrainingPeaks? I’m guessing Zwift but alas, TrainingPeaks rolled out a feature a while back that I love and wanted to talk about.

It’s called GPXplore and lives inside TrainingPeaks Virtual, and if you have a race on the calendar, it might be the most practical addition to your training toolkit that you didn’t know existed. Until now, of course.

The concept is simple: take a GPX file, like your race course, an upcoming group ride, a route you’ve never done before and ride it on your indoor trainer before you ever show up in person.

Its not an estimated simulation but the actual elevation profile, rendered through satellite imagery and 3D graphics, so you feel the gradient shifts, the long false flats, and the climbs exactly where they sit on the real course. Think Rouvy, but without the separate subscription. It’s already inside TrainingPeaks Premium.

Recon Before You Go

Most athletes do some version of course homework. If you do Unbound Gravel, you obsess over the course, and if you are doing Ironman, you look at the course map 32 times leading up to race day. Or if you’re a freak like me, maybe find an outdated YouTube video of someone riding the course or talking about it. I watched like 10 video on Ironman Lake Placid before race day.

GPXplore replaces all of that with something you can actually pedal through.

Just upload the race’s GPX file, load it in TrainingPeaks Virtual, and go. It is the single greatest advantage you can get and by the time you’re on the start line, you’ve already ridden the course — and that mental edge can be huge.

The feature also includes a built-in World Routes library, with iconic climbs already mapped like Alpe d’Huez, Passo dello Stelvio, Sa Calobra in Mallorca, the Koppenberg, and a handful of others.

That is useful for training and bucket-list goals, but the custom GPX side is where the real race-prep value lives.

Today It Became Even Easier

GPXplore just got meaningfully better too. When the feature launched, riding a custom GPX required you to first create an event in TrainingPeaks, then attach the route to it. It worked, but it added friction and an annoyance for athletes targeting one-off races or coaches managing athletes pointed at different events. Plus if you’re not very tech savvy, it was a pain.

The update removes that step entirely. Now you can add any GPX file directly to your Routes Library inside TrainingPeaks Virtual and select it as a route from there. No event creation needed. Add the file, pick the route, ride it.

Who Gets the Most Out of This

Team races and group events are the obvious fit — everyone loads the same GPX, you do a shared virtual recon ride, and your whole crew walks into race day with the same course knowledge. But the Routes Library update makes this just as useful for individual athletes on their own schedules, especially if you are an athlete racing a regional gravel event no one else is doing.

GPXplore is available inside TrainingPeaks Virtual, included with a TrainingPeaks Premium subscription. Download TrainingPeaks Virtual, navigate to Routes, and it’s there waiting.