The official TrainerRoad thread

cougie

Excellent advice ! Thanks !

napoleond

Can heartily recommend the suunto after two garmin stick / child related incidents.

markp80

dw300 wrote:

So come on .. who doing THE Tour this year?

I stuck my head above the parapet a couple of days ago but nobody picked up on it.
But yes, I'll be having a go, that's for sure!

cougie

I've signed up for the Tour (next year !) after doing the Evans/Sufferfest takeitindoors challenge the other week. Love those vids.

dw300

cougie wrote:

OK - I'm new to all of this - but with 99 pages of discussion I reckon this Trainerroad mallarkey must be decent ?

I've got a Cateye turbo - which is compatible with trainer road.

I've got the sufferfests.

I'm getting a garmin.

I think I need an ANT+ dongle to get the laptop to talk to the Garmin ? Whats the best price for those and any I should look out for in particular ?

Thanks

The Garmin head unit is not necessary.

You need a speed and cadence sensor (£35-40) and an Ant+ dongle. If you want a small dongle the Suunto seems to be the preferred option and may save you 10 bucks, but if your laptop and sensor are in any way far apart then the larger Garmin may have better reception and is about the same price range as the S/C sensor.

cougie

Thanks DW - I'd not got the Garmin exclusively for the turbo - I'll make good use of that on road rides. Cheers !

cerv50

Thought I would show that everything in TR land is not always great

Did Powell this afternoon which is the final workout for Intermediate base plan 2. God I suffered but wasn't going to give up even though I nearly bailed on it. Needed more recovery time between sets as 2mins was just not enough. As you can see from the link I carried on regardless of how much I wanted to stop but as I am not a quitter I turned the FTP% down a few times till I got it to a level where I could just about hang on. Very disappointed in myself I'm afraid to say...

http://www.trainerroad.com/cycling/rides/510420-Powell

I think I have reached fatigue saturation point and need to recover completely before attacking the next plan I have lined up for myself. I am going to take Naps advice and do 2 or 3 easy recovery rides to keep the legs turning before attempting my next FTP test in a week or so.

chadders81

cerv50 wrote:

Thought I would show that everything in TR land is not always great

Did Powell this afternoon which is the final workout for Intermediate base plan 2. God I suffered but wasn't going to give up even though I nearly bailed on it. Needed more recovery time between sets as 2mins was just not enough. As you can see from the link I carried on regardless of how much I wanted to stop but as I am not a quitter I turned the FTP% down a few times till I got it to a level where I could just about hang on. Very disappointed in myself I'm afraid to say...

http://www.trainerroad.com/cycling/rides/510420-Powell

I think I have reached fatigue saturation point and need to recover completely before attacking the next plan I have lined up for myself. I am going to take Naps advice and do 2 or 3 easy recovery rides to keep the legs turning before attempting my next FTP test in a week or so.

No shame in that. I've got the same FTP as you but I'm 14 stone.

dw300

cerv50 wrote:

Thought I would show that everything in TR land is not always great

Did Powell this afternoon which is the final workout for Intermediate base plan 2. God I suffered but wasn't going to give up even though I nearly bailed on it. Needed more recovery time between sets as 2mins was just not enough. As you can see from the link I carried on regardless of how much I wanted to stop but as I am not a quitter I turned the FTP% down a few times till I got it to a level where I could just about hang on. Very disappointed in myself I'm afraid to say...

http://www.trainerroad.com/cycling/rides/510420-Powell

I think I have reached fatigue saturation point and need to recover completely before attacking the next plan I have lined up for myself. I am going to take Naps advice and do 2 or 3 easy recovery rides to keep the legs turning before attempting my next FTP test in a week or so.

91% of your 1hr power for 1.5hrs .. that's fairly decent! Nothing it be annoyed about. I don't necessarily think workout like that are meant to be completed if that makes sense. It's more a measure of where you're at .. like how many reps you can manage before you blow up. Its a measure of your recovery between intervals. Or if you complete it as you did, it's about what power you put out in the later intervals. They're hugely demanding workouts especially when carrying a bunch of fatigue.

I just noticed we have similar weight and power now. My new guess felt pretty much spot on. I did a similar 3 minute interval workout so I felt your pain. Only 6 intervals for me.

http://www.trainerroad.com/cycling/rides/511283

cerv50

I think its a mental thing with me too. When I do the 1 hour sessions you can see the vertical yellow line progress through the session and it looks good as it works its way across. With the 90 minute ones it is so much slower and you can still see what is left to do. With Powell the intervals got harder for each one and in my brain I was suffering before the pain even hit my legs.

Thanks for the words of encouragement, it is much appreciated Going to rest up TR plans for a few days as my legs are spent then come back fighting :twisted:

dw300

100 pages!

ChrisSA

Life got in the way of my club ride, so Local Hero in the new pain cave. New house has garage so bike permanently setup in there. Seems odd starting with 2 layers on until warmed up and then I'm just in shorts as usual. Tends to get a bit chillier during the rest intervals though.

Had to knock the %age down to 90%; usual triathlete excuse of I ran yesterday and running tomorrow!

markp80

dw300 wrote:

100 pages!

Must be cause for a celebration!

markp80

cerv50 wrote:

Thanks for the words of encouragement, it is much appreciated Going to rest up TR plans for a few days as my legs are spent then come back fighting :twisted:

I always find Carter a good one to keep the legs going when I need a rest.

Cheers,
MarkP

napoleond

Great track session last night, hit my highest HR ever. Only other time I hit it was in a lab test.

Garryboy

Anyone using Trainerroad with more than one trainer?

I'm using a combo of turbo (jetfluid pro) and rollers (cyclops alu rollers) - but the power profiles aren't giving consistent results across the two (not surprising I guess!).

I think rollers in particular are much more sensitive to rider (and bike) weight and tyre pressure. Tyre pressue I can change easily - my weight not so much!

I've posted a question on the TR site about creating power profiles for trainers like rollers that take rider + bike weight into account - but wondered if anyone else was using turbo & rollers with trainerroad, if so how do you find it?

goul

I tried moving from a Elite Volare Mag Force Elastogel 2 to a Kurt Kinetic road machine. The Elite gave me a massive (and unjustified) FPT value - good for session-session comparison, but >35% different to the Kinetic.

MartinGT

I think I may have to give this a try.

Looks smart.

I have

Garmin 500 with Cadance & HR.
Tacx Flow

So will have to get a At+ Dongle and think I shall go for the Suuto one.

Anything else I need?

DaveL

A fan and a towel

Dave

ChrisSA

A bucket and sawdust.

cerv50

MarkP80 wrote:

cerv50 wrote:

Thanks for the words of encouragement, it is much appreciated Going to rest up TR plans for a few days as my legs are spent then come back fighting :twisted:

I always find Carter a good one to keep the legs going when I need a rest.

Cheers,
MarkP

Thanks MarkP , will give Carter a go later today

Palisades

I've been using TrainerRoad with the sufferfest. Since doing Rubber Glove, resulting in an FTP of 242, I can't match the power figures that trainer road is suggesting. I can keep up early on, but then the higher efforts destroy me and power drops. This has been with The Hunted, Angels and Fight Club. It beat me tonight. I stopped 20 minutes in.

So, what's best to do, stick with the same FTP and struggle to match it, getting demoralised in the process or drop it either by % or FTP?

Please help!

DaveL

Personally I would drop your FTP by 5 or 10 at points at a time until you can complete the workouts.

Just out of interest, have you done one of the TR tests? If not try one when your rested and see what figures you come up with

Dave

Pumpkin Positive

I had a similar experience last week with "The Hunted".

I re-tested my FTP earlier on in the week and it had gone from 292 to 326 in about 1 month. It seems like a big jump but I started from a low base as I'd been off the bike all summer due to illness and I'm only just getting back to my previous form.

Anyway, the first session with my new FTP was "the Hunted" and it was perhaps the toughest static session I've ever done on a bike. I had to keep knocking the FTP % by 10% in order to finish.

I'm not sure whether TR overestimated my FTP in the second test (I'm pretty sure 292W was too low for me as I was completing most sessions with relative ease) or whether "the hunted" is just a particularly hard session.

http://www.trainerroad.com/cycling/ride ... The-Hunted

Johnebgood

'The Hunted' is my favourite Sufferfest (can you have a favourite Sufferfest????). I know I am hitting form / soon time to bump up FTP when I can just match the workout all the way through on TrainerRoad. The idea of completing it (or any Sufferfest) with ease just isn't right...

And hi to everybody on here...long time TrainerRoad user...long time lurker on this thread...first time poster....

napoleond

Hiya!

michaelede

http://www.trainerroad.com/cycling/ride ... t-Revolver

First ever sufferfest session, made almost unbearable by the constant frame dropping (the video was running about 10 minutes behind by the end) this is even after down grading the video to Ipod resolution! Guess my old xp laptop is past its prime
So time to look for a replacement laptop (not that it will just be used for TR but it is a reasonable excuse!), anyone have any suggestions for a cheap Windows 7 based laptop that will cope? I am so out of the loop on computer tech it's untrue

Thanks.

amaferanga

Pumpkin Positive wrote:

I had a similar experience last week with "The Hunted".

I re-tested my FTP earlier on in the week and it had gone from 292 to 326 in about 1 month. It seems like a big jump but I started from a low base as I'd been off the bike all summer due to illness and I'm only just getting back to my previous form.

Anyway, the first session with my new FTP was "the Hunted" and it was perhaps the toughest static session I've ever done on a bike. I had to keep knocking the FTP % by 10% in order to finish.

I'm not sure whether TR overestimated my FTP in the second test (I'm pretty sure 292W was too low for me as I was completing most sessions with relative ease) or whether "the hunted" is just a particularly hard session.

http://www.trainerroad.com/cycling/ride ... The-Hunted

Are you measuring power or guesstimating it on a turbo? If the latter I'd suspect that's the issue. Even if you're measuring power, an apparent 34W jump in FTP from a single test should be confirmed by either a repeat test or just general riding before you actually alter your FTP in your analysis software. If your FTP really is 326W then riding a solid hour on the turbo at 300W should be quite easily manageable.

I see a lot of people on this thread struggling with their sessions without really thinking about how big the error is from their pseudo-power. I'm sure someone's even using an Elite Supercrono fluid which is so inconsistent it's almost comical that anyone would even try to produce a power curve for it.

Pumpkin Positive

Amaferanga, thanks for your reply.

I'm doing the sessions on a wattbike so power should be fairly accurate.

Last night I did this http://www.trainerroad.com/cycling/rides/520367-Donner which felt 'right' (tough but manageable) and I managed to exceed my power targets. I think I probably didn't go as hard on the original test as I should have done (it was my only my second session on the wattbike) and I'm still getting over an illness which had me off the bike (and piling on weight) all summer.

markp80

Palisades wrote:

I've been using TrainerRoad with the sufferfest. Since doing Rubber Glove, resulting in an FTP of 242, I can't match the power figures that trainer road is suggesting. I can keep up early on, but then the higher efforts destroy me and power drops. This has been with The Hunted, Angels and Fight Club. It beat me tonight. I stopped 20 minutes in.

So, what's best to do, stick with the same FTP and struggle to match it, getting demoralised in the process or drop it either by % or FTP?

Please help!

Rubber Glove is a standard 20 min FTP test, so I would assume that the FTP you get from it is valid.

Remember, the rest of the Sufferfest videos are really tough workouts. If you find you can't do them, that doesn't surprise me, particularly if you're not well rested. That's sort of what they're meant to be like - pass the bucket rides, not day-after-day workouts. Personally I tend to do all Sufferfests with the software set at 95% if I'm doing them regularly, but keep my FTP as per FTP test.

If you do any of the standard TrainerRoad training plans or workouts, then I think you'll find your FTP obtained from the Rubber Glove FTP test will be correct. Try some of the standard sweetspot, over-unders or threshold workouts, and see how you feel with them.

That's my take on it, anyway.

Quick edit - Give Thunderbolt a go, which is 5 intervals at FTP and see how you get on. I find this quite a tough one, but it's certainly do-able, and should give you an idea where you are with your FTP. Don't expect it to be easy though.

Cheers,
MarkP