Tacx Satori Turbo setup for Mount Ventoux

mark1973

Hi

I'm looking for some advice on setting up my tacx satori turbo train

I'm new to road cycling having been mountain biking for many years and having agreed to climb mount ventoux in May this year, late last summer I bought myself my first road bike and was really enjoying road cycling until I injured my knees (cartilage damage but not on the bike) which I'm still recovering but ok to cycle.

With limited time available for road training due the mix of work commitments, family and bad weather I decided to purchase a turbo to help me train over winter.

I have been doing a mix of interval training and long steady runs. My problem is understanding the resistance settings and want to find a setup that can emulate a 10% climb as any of the resistance settings (1-10) can be offset by changing gears and this is before you take weight and wind resistance into account.

If anybody could give a rough idea of which resistance setting to use to emulate a 10% climb irrespective of which gear i'm in and any other general advice would be useful too.

Thanks in advance to any help given

Mark

poynedexter

i'm no turbo expert but i would have thought you should choose a cadence to aim for, 80 rpm say. then bring on the resistance in terms of gears/ turbo lever. keep a note of these. then ride your turbo for an hr. in time work at increasing the gear/ resistance and add time if you can. you can experiment with cadence and use an HRM to monitor your efforts.

also do your intervals. ride outdoors too.

Tom Dean

mark1973 wrote:

If anybody could give a rough idea of which resistance setting to use to emulate a 10% climb irrespective of which gear i'm in

Why? Just concentrate on working at the right effort level. It doesn't matter what resistance/gear you use.

Froomes Edgar

Tom Dean wrote:

mark1973 wrote:

If anybody could give a rough idea of which resistance setting to use to emulate a 10% climb irrespective of which gear i'm in

Why? Just concentrate on working at the right effort level. It doesn't matter what resistance/gear you use.

+1

twotyred

+2 and make sure you have suitable gears to allow you to keep a cadence of at least 70 rpm on the day especially as you have bad knees.

mark1973

Hi

Thanks for the the responses and I take your points on board. I try to keep the cadence to between 80-90, slower if pushing a high resistance when doing intervals and yes I wimped out and bought a triple giving me a 30:30 so in theory I should be able to get up anything.

When training on the turbo I give it as much as I can be it a 45 min interval or longer ride, I was just looking for a general reference point. I.e. the resistance setting of 3 gives an approximate level climb, 5 = 4% climb, 10=12% etc.

Thanks again.

bobones

Do you have a rear wheel speedo or heart rate monitor?

I do virtually all my sessions on resistance level 5 and use the gears to vary resistance. I use speed, cadence and HR for intervals, but mostly I use speed as an analog for power (like trainer road). You can do an an 8 or 20 minute test and work out your FTP (not necessarily accurate, but it's a baseline you can use to measure improvement and base workouts on). You can then do intervals like 2x20 at threshold in a low cadence (say 70-80) to simulate a climb. Your speed on the turbo may be unrealistically high for a climb, but it doesn't matter as it is the power you're outputting that counts.

I used the graph on the Tacx site to get the power curves at each resistance level. On a mag trainer the relationship is linear so the equation is: power (w) = slope x speed (km/h) + intercept

This table shows the slope and intercept at each resistance level


From which you can derive a table like this showing speed at various power levels.


I also have a spreadsheet with these on them for setting up workouts on my Garmin 500.


No doubt it would be easier to just buy an ANT+ stick and use Trainer Road!