You got all it wrong, Ladislav Mikoláš. You should not be thanking me.

It is I who should be thanking you. You and the Slovakian enterprise you represent.

This odd intro came to be because of an email Mikoláš recently sent to me. It was in response to a “Fitness Master” published about nine months ago that ends with a reference to cycling indoors on a road bike attached to a smart trainer while using ROUVY that’s as complimentary to ROUVY as it is crucial to the article.

Mikoláš thanked me for that on the company’s behalf.

As their website explains, ROUVY’s an app that lets you ride, train, or race indoors virtually on over 1,500 real-world routes. It does so by pairing real-life filmed video footage with GPS elevation data and then automatically adjusts your smart trainer’s resistance level while you view the scenery.

So when the hill you see on the screen starts, your smart trainer actually gets harder to pedal — and just as hard as it would be to climb the actual hill.

ROUVY merited mention for I had been using it once or twice a week and loving it for a whole host of reasons. The biggest one being a direct byproduct of my age and my pride.

For when you’re 65 and ride the roads with relatively younger guys — a few who are former pros or prior national amateur champions — and they decide to put the hammer down ... You and your pride become a ten-penny nail.

And I won’t lie. I’m finding it hard to forget that period of time when I was the rider holding the hammer. Yet no matter how many times I remind myself I’m 65 and should be able to crop out bad rides from life’s big picture, not being able to keep pace when it’s a competitive one bothers me for too long after the fact.

Now I’m willing to be uncomfortably confessional about all this because doing so could help you. For that to happen, however, I need to explain why I’m so thankful for ROUVY.

For even though Father Time, J-fractures of both femurs, and a broken pelvis have diminished my ability to pedal with power while seated on a bicycle, if I get my mind right, select one of ROUVY’s mountainous routes, do more standing than sitting, and give the effort my all, more often than not I meet with success. Sweet sweet success, according to the ROUVY Leaderboard and the standards I set.

Consequently, as I wrote to Mikoláš, “I’m totally hooked on ROUVY — to the point I sometimes hope for bad weather to justify riding inside.” This, despite the fact, “I’m totally turned off by most [new exercise] tech.”

Which is one of the reasons why I’m sharing this story with you. Not because you’re turned off by new exercise tech, too, but because I’m totally hooked on a way to exercise I wanted no parts of until about 18 months ago.

That’s because another guy who deserves my thanks — Lars Hundley, the owner of the cycling website I write for, RoadBikeRider.com — offered to send me a barely used smart trainer, a Wahoo Kickr circa 2019, for nothing more than the cost of shipping. Since my highly used “dumb” trainer, a Cateye Cyclosimulator circa 1999, no longer functions properly — and it is the twenty-first century — I eventually took the offer.

That it took me months to do so, however, is now as much a mystery to me as it must be to you.

To eliminate any element of mystery to this article, let me be clear. Even though it’s obvious I’d highly recommend you do so if you were to ask me if you should, I did not write it so you subscribe to ROUVY. I did so to make those of you who have recently been feeling less than motivated while doing your daily or nearly daily exercise envious.

Yes, envious.

I want you to feel envious of a guy who’s 65, exercised every day (except for eight during two hospital stays) of his adult life, and suddenly becomes “totally hooked” on a variation of his preferred form of exercise. For if that’s how you’re feeling right now, you might just follow his lead, and who knows?

You could experiment with some different ways to exercise — whether they be brand-new or old school — and find yourself feeling totally hooked, too. And as thankful as he is for feeling that way.

For when you come across a way of exercise that combines those two, congratulations my friend, you’ve taken your fitness to the next level.