Turbo trainers and Strava

Rhod81

Evening all...

Im sure this has been covered in the past so without wading through pages, apologies...

Basically with the seasonal darkness, along with work and family life getting in the way :roll: , my mid-week riding is limited to a 3-mile commute to work (better than nothing).

I have a decent turbo trainer, a Garmin 510, heart rate monitor and Strava. Basically, what i would like to know is - with the addition of a speed/cadence sensor - what will i get out of strava? I like the data i get, and obviously there are elements of strava you wont get on a turbo trainer. Would i still get the basics such as time, distance, avg speed, max, etc etc. and in addition log it on my strava page as per a "real" ride?

Ive tried to find the info on the internet, but most info seems to be a few years old...

Ta

imposter2.0

It's not a real ride though....it's a turbo session, so distance and avg speed are irrelevant.

Rhod81

I realise that, but i was curious as to whether with all the bits n pieces, how much is your bike turned into a gym-style exercise bike, that do give you an idea of distance, average speeds etc.

On the roads i generally average 19-20ish, what if through lack of motivation of staring at a wall (though in reality itll probably be a dvd) my avg drops? Or without an idea of distance - which i would have thought it would be capable of - i wouldnt be able to go for a quick 10mile (flat, virtual) ride?

If distance wasn't logged, i could roughly assume id hit 10 miles in half an hour... But thats assuming my average remained as my real life average...

birdy247

Rhod81 wrote:

I realise that, but i was curious as to whether with all the bits n pieces, how much is your bike turned into a gym-style exercise bike, that do give you an idea of distance, average speeds etc.

On the roads i generally average 19-20ish, what if through lack of motivation of staring at a wall (though in reality itll probably be a dvd) my avg drops? Or without an idea of distance - which i would have thought it would be capable of - i wouldnt be able to go for a quick 10mile (flat, virtual) ride?

If distance wasn't logged, i could roughly assume id hit 10 miles in half an hour... But thats assuming my average remained as my real life average...

See this thread. Might be just what you are after!

viewtopic.php?f=40011&t=12996779

p.s. On a turbo, its all about power

imposter2.0

Rhod81 wrote:

I realise that,

You say that - and then everything else you say subsequently suggests that you don't...

Rhod81

Thanks for that Birdy.

And Imposter;

Imposter wrote:

Rhod81 wrote:

I realise that,

You say that - and then everything else you say subsequently suggests that you don't...

I meant i realise its a virtual ride, but i dont see as to how wanting to track average speed and distance could be considered "irrelevant". I would have thought keeping track of averages, be it speed, heart rate, whatever as extremely relevant.

imposter2.0

It's not a 'virtual ride' - it's a turbo session. On a turbo (assuming you actually plan to use it as a training tool), the only things that really matter are time and intensity.

Rhod81

Fair enough. So instead of hitting it for duration as a substitute for a proper ride, you say just hit it hard for intervals and short sessions?

OfficerDigby

In short recording speed/time (and therefore dist), cadence and HR on a garmin, whether it's on the road or on the the turbo it's the same info when loaded on Strava.

Albeit that GPS looks a bit different!

It's another debate whether the miles should be counted the same! You can try to set the resistance so you speed\
is similar to what you do on the road to make it less like cheating. Probably more relevant is the time spent working and at what intensity (as mentioned)

Or you can try to set the turbo up exactly the same each time and compare speed at different zone or whatever.

Or you can do the trainer road type things around.

Walls82

I use speed on my turbo as a benchmark when I'm doing intervals - the actual speed and therefore mileage itself is irrelevant compared to the real world but it helps you know your working as hard as the previous interval. Obviously if you keep your settings the same you can then compare sessions as well.

Cadence is useful as you can can improve technique as detailed here http://www.bikeradar.com/gear/article/t ... ers-16394/

As mentioned strava will show your speed, miles, heart rate and cadence all with averages - you can set the session as a stationary bike as well.

iPete

Cadence, useful
Hear rate, very useful
Power, extremely useful
Speed/distance, completely irrelevant but I guess if it was consistent you could use it as a benchmark but you really need power/heart rate to determine effort.

slowbike

iPete wrote:

Cadence, useful
Hear rate, very useful
Power, extremely useful
Speed/distance, completely irrelevant but I guess if it was consistent you could use it as a benchmark but you really need power/heart rate to determine effort.

Agreed ... however

your heart rate will fluctuate and is delayed in reaction time
not everyone has a powermeter

So if you stick with the same setup on your turbo you with speed & therefore distance you can get an idea of the intensity you're riding.
I try to set up my (basic) turbo to the same resistance as riding on the flat, then I have a rough sort of comparison. This winter I have a PM to be able to gauge my efforts too.

Who cares if you add turbo distance to your miles ridden total - it's your data, do as you please - is 2000 turbo miles any less valid than 2000 road miles? It depends on what you're calling valid - each has it's own merit.

threespeed

Hey you!

Stuck indoors on your sweaty turbo trainer?

Yearning for the buzz of real-world competition and effort comparison that can be had on Strava?

Why not download a virtual course for the London Marathon to your Tacx turbo, ride around it in a virtual 'race' with other shed-ridden plodders all staring at a video of the route on your computer screens, and then upload your data to strava complete with the downloaded GPS file so that it looks like you were blitzing the real segments? Who knows, you might even grab a KOM or seven!

An example: http://www.strava.com/segments/3943581?filter=overall

At first glance, at least the top 20 or so f*ckers on this segment leaderboard seem to be potential elite or pro-level riders (average speeds 25 mph+ for over an hour, heart rates 130-140 bpm) except for the minor detail that NONE OF THEM WAS ACTUALLY RIDING A BICYCLE ALONG THE GROUND OUTDOORS.

For some reason I find this even more annoying than when idiots upload their 'ride' recorded while driving around in their car/moped etc. The only question is - should I feel any remorse if I start mercilessly flagging them?

cougie

Its not strava you need for the turbo. I'd go with Sufferfest or even better Trainerroad.

Turbos are hard work and I'd not want to do my outdoor rides inside. Far better to have a shorter harder ride on them than attempting a 6 hour ride at a low level.

jgsi

Sounds like someone is getting motivated from Strava... did they not tick "this is a game" button?

bolingbroke

threespeed wrote:

Hey you!

Stuck indoors on your sweaty turbo trainer?

Yearning for the buzz of real-world competition and effort comparison that can be had on Strava?

Why not download a virtual course for the London Marathon to your Tacx turbo, ride around it in a virtual 'race' with other shed-ridden plodders all staring at a video of the route on your computer screens, and then upload your data to strava complete with the downloaded GPS file so that it looks like you were blitzing the real segments? Who knows, you might even grab a KOM or seven!

An example: http://www.strava.com/segments/3943581?filter=overall

At first glance, at least the top 20 or so f*ckers on this segment leaderboard seem to be potential elite or pro-level riders (average speeds 25 mph+ for over an hour, heart rates 130-140 bpm) except for the minor detail that NONE OF THEM WAS ACTUALLY RIDING A BICYCLE ALONG THE GROUND OUTDOORS.

For some reason I find this even more annoying than when idiots upload their 'ride' recorded while driving around in their car/moped etc. The only question is - should I feel any remorse if I start mercilessly flagging them?

Had no idea people were doing that. Agreed, incredibly annoying.

jgsi

cougie wrote:

Its not strava you need for the turbo. I'd go with Sufferfest or even better Trainerroad.

Turbos are hard work and I'd not want to do my outdoor rides inside. Far better to have a shorter harder ride on them than attempting a 6 hour ride at a low level.

tut tut, you'll never be a Sufferlandrian Knight with that perspective ;-)

jgsi

bolingbroke wrote:

threespeed wrote:

Hey you!

Stuck indoors on your sweaty turbo trainer?

Yearning for the buzz of real-world competition and effort comparison that can be had on Strava?

Why not download a virtual course for the London Marathon to your Tacx turbo, ride around it in a virtual 'race' with other shed-ridden plodders all staring at a video of the route on your computer screens, and then upload your data to strava complete with the downloaded GPS file so that it looks like you were blitzing the real segments? Who knows, you might even grab a KOM or seven!

An example: http://www.strava.com/segments/3943581?filter=overall

At first glance, at least the top 20 or so f*ckers on this segment leaderboard seem to be potential elite or pro-level riders (average speeds 25 mph+ for over an hour, heart rates 130-140 bpm) except for the minor detail that NONE OF THEM WAS ACTUALLY RIDING A BICYCLE ALONG THE GROUND OUTDOORS.

For some reason I find this even more annoying than when idiots upload their 'ride' recorded while driving around in their car/moped etc. The only question is - should I feel any remorse if I start mercilessly flagging them?

Had no idea people were doing that. Agreed, incredibly annoying.

Hang on, something does not compute here... it must be the same for a lot of turbos, but I can be busting my gut in supra threshold efforts for a workout lasting an hour.. eg Sufferfest Downward Spiral.. and at the end of it average speed is like 10mph, because speed is used in the power curve of the trainer but bears absolutely no relation to real speed on the road.. so I can only assume these guys are on rollers where true speeds are recorded.. fair play .
To be clear my Turbo work is logged but hidden.

ai_1

Imposter wrote:

It's not a 'virtual ride' - it's a turbo session. On a turbo (assuming you actually plan to use it as a training tool), the only things that really matter are time and intensity.

iPete wrote:

Cadence, useful
Hear rate, very useful
Power, extremely useful
Speed/distance, completely irrelevant but I guess if it was consistent you could use it as a benchmark but you really need power/heart rate to determine effort.

Speed (i.e. wheel speed) and "Distance" are not inherently irrelevant. It very much depends on the turbo trainer you're using and how you're using the data.

I would agree they tell you nothing about equivalent real world riding if you use a trainer with variable resistance or a resistance curve that's not consistent or somewhat representative of a real ride. However I've found that my Kurt Kinetic Road Machine does in fact require similar effort to achieve a given speed as I need to put in for the same speed on a flat calm ride. That comparison is based on my typical HR for sustained periods at different speeds on the turbo and on the road. So I've decided I'm happy to consider a turbo km equivalent to a road km for measuring training volume. I don't measure my road training in time and intensity so I don't want to treat the turbo differently if I don't need to....and i don't.
The other important use for speed in real time (as opposed to uploaded to Strava/Garmin,etc) is as a measure of intensity for short intervals. HR significantly lags changes in intensity making it useless for specifying effort levels during short intervals. On the other hand you can pick a speed figure and so long as nothing else changes that will provide a useful stable target. In this case it doesn't really matter what trainer you have or whether it corresponds to effort at that actual speed outside. All that matters is that you can define a known, repeatable effort level by specifying a speed and keeping everything else the same.

P.S.
I said above that effort on my turbo is equivalent to the equivalent speed or distance on an actual flat ride. I should clarify that I'm talking about physical effort. Psychologically I find the turbo considerably tougher.

threespeed

JGSI wrote:

I can only assume these guys are on rollers where true speeds are recorded.. fair play .

I'd assume that as the software has access to a GPS file of the course that includes elevation data, the turbo varies the resistance to match the air drag and gradient you would hypothetically be working against at every point. In an ideal world with no wind, potholes or traffic lights, of course. All fine and dandy, but why would you then upload it to a site for real-world activity logging with no indication that it was a turbo session?

http://www.strava.com/activities/114957044

If you'd asked me to look at the above activity for anything dodgy before I knew about this phenomenon, I would have had to conclude from the data that it was an amazing all-out training ride by a grand tour-riding pro athlete who had either managed to close half of central London's roads to traffic for the day or changed the physical properties of matter to allow him to pass through solid objects.

But it's not - it's a bloke in Denmark playing a computer game in his back bedroom.

bobmcstuff

Can you not flag rides like that? I appreciate that would be a never ending task.

bahzob

Couple of points:
> I've done lots of training on a turbo through winter. I use a power meter and on the basis of this can quite clearly say that: If you take a bit of care during setup (esp tyre pressure): Speed/distance is a perfectly acceptable alternative to power when using a turbo. If you don't have a power meter then I would strongly advise getting used to recording speed/distance and using that to set some PBs/judge effort. e.g. the best distance covered in 20 minutes could be used to estimate FTP level and set speed based zones just as if you had used a power meter. It may just take a bit more trial and error (depending on turbo) to get the numbers spot on but doing 3 minutes "VO2" at target "speed" will have the same training benefit as doing 3 minutes at target watts.

> Re turbo>Strava. I use a Cycleops VR trainer and noticed it had a "sync with Strava" option. I ticked this just to see what would happen, expecting it just to upload the data a normal trainer workout with power/HR. I was somewhat gobsmacked when I logged onto Strava to see it was appearing as a "real" ride e.g.
http://app.strava.com/activities/228355534 I was even more surprised/guilty to see that I was appearing on the leaderboard. This is just stupid but really think if finger pointing is going on it should be directed at Strava. It's opened itself up to allow other products to sync with it and such data should be flagged as coming from a trainer so that it is excluded from leaderboards. (I changed the tag manually so now I think I have been removed, but left this example up to report bug http://app.strava.com/activities/228081511/segments/5385692989

napoleond

I upload my Cycleops VR rides to Strava to see how I'm improving. Strava for me is just that. The inly time I actually compare myself to other cyclists is when I have a number in my back. If peopke get upset by that then that's their perogative. I actually find it pretty damn accurate compared to actual rides on routes I've done.

whojanicanackerov

What Cycleops system are you using Nap. The jet fluid pro, Powertap and software.or are you using the power beam
ant+ set up.Either way how did you find the initial set up and Is it easy to use.

napoleond

I have a powertap. Set up? An utter doddle!
It's cycleops virtual training. Just need a pooter and an Ant+ stick.

I've just ridden up Ventoux...

https://www.strava.com/activities/229017349

whojanicanackerov

Cracking stuff!!
I`m interested but i don`t quite understand the system.
Cycleops has for sale at £260 the virtual software but also charges a set fee per month.
Is this case of you have to buy the software at £260 then pay a monthly fee also.
Or can you just pay monthly or the one of fee of £260
Just a little confused. :roll:

bahzob

NapoleonD wrote:

I upload my Cycleops VR rides to Strava to see how I'm improving. Strava for me is just that. The inly time I actually compare myself to other cyclists is when I have a number in my back. If peopke get upset by that then that's their perogative. I actually find it pretty damn accurate compared to actual rides on routes I've done.

Er? I think you are being a touch ingenuous. You can see how you are improving perfectly well within Virtual Training,both in absolute terms and relative to others who have used broadly the same equipment so the comparison has some basis in reality.

Be honest. The main reason for uploading stuff onto Strava is to compare yourself with others and flex if you think you have done well. Which is fun, but not if the data is screwed up by rogue data like the stuff loaded by VR.

If this isnt the case then I'd suggest you flag your rides on Strava as being done (as they actually were) on a trainer.

napoleond

I don't compare myself with others as it depresses me - I'm below average.
It's difficult to check the segments in virtual training.
Plus, it provides some amusement for my friends who follow me on Strava.
They are marked as being done on the turbo.

napoleond

whojanicanackerov wrote:

Cracking stuff!!
I`m interested but i don`t quite understand the system.
Cycleops has for sale at £260 the virtual software but also charges a set fee per month.
Is this case of you have to buy the software at £260 then pay a monthly fee also.
Or can you just pay monthly or the one of fee of £260
Just a little confused. :roll:

I just pay the subscription, no upfront cost.

whojanicanackerov

Their seem to be the powerbeam way of using cycleops vitual trainer and the powertap and normal turbo system
Whats the difference between them both does anybody know?

napoleond

whojanicanackerov wrote:

Their seem to be the powerbeam way of using cycleops vitual trainer and the powertap and normal turbo system
Whats the difference between them both does anybody know?

With the powerbeam, it had a motorised resistance unit that adjusts itself to match the gradient of the road. With the powertap you have to adjust resistance yourself using the gears (if you want) but obviously the more power you put out the faster you go. I tend to have a certain gear for each gradient range.