Training With A Dumb Trainer?

photonic69

Hi All

No, not with a personal coach with an IQ of 67, but a Minoura B60-R which has manually adjustable resistance.

https://www.bikeradar.com/reviews/training/indoor-trainers/resistance-trainer/minoura-b60-r-turbo-trainer-review/

I’m currently using it a bit like a fluid trainer and keeping the resistance fairly low but just using the gears which I find gives me plenty of range. No steep inclines but plenty of long draggy hills or stiff headwind situations. Doing a fairly unstructured program of intervals and SweetSpot sessions. I have a HR monitor, speed and cadence sensors and a Garmin 820.

My time is limited to around 40-50 minutes per morning 5 days a week.

What can you suggest so I get the most out of this setup without investing in a new smart trainer? The speed/cadence sensor is an old Garmin gsc-10 so I believe won’t work with Zwift etc.

TIA

Nic

carl_p

I use a dumb trainer but with a power meter. It may be possible to find the power curve for the Minoura enabling you to convert speed to power. An example is here

http://www.powercurvesensor.com/cycling-trainer-power-curves/

It won't be perfect but it should be consistent each time you ride. Once you have that you can determine your power zones and design some routines around that. Zone 2 rides say 40-45 mins steady effort and 95 cadence will be great base training.

Plenty of interval routines you can add to that as well using speed as a proxy for power watts.

davidof

If you check those power curves carl_p posted I'll add them to wattzap.com and you can train with that. I've just tested wattzap on a Raspberry 4, which gives a cheap option for smart training.

https://youtu.be/CsnG21Dx9cU

bobmcstuff

Your trainer appears to be compatible with TrainerRoad https://www.trainerroad.com/equipment-checker/

(which means they've basically done what davidof is suggesting above, and tested the power curve for that trainer)

I trained by this method from 2016-2019 and had good results, I certainly got a lot faster...

photonic69

Great. Thanks for all the input guys. Very useful stuff. Glad to see that they suggest leaving my trainer on the L setting as this seems most similar to actual road riding. The H setting is very intense! Sorry I had not replied earlier. Got roped into some redecoration projects at home over the last two weeks so haven't even seen my trainer recently, let along ride it. I will try all the suggestions and update this as I do. Got some newer speed and cadence sensors coming for my birthday soon so that will help connect to my laptop instead of having to buy a ANT+ dongle as well. Like the look of the Raspberry Pi set-up. Good excuse to buy a newer model then my project one can be relegated to another security cam ;-)