On 3/22/2025 1:32 PM, Mark J cleary wrote:
I have my Tacx Flux 2 fluid trainer that I have been using. Mostly in
the erg mode set the power and pedal you ass off. Sometimes I will
bypass this and just use my Garmin 945 and hit free ride. This pretty
much means that you are in the non erg mode.
Today I uploaded a real ride I did out side to the watch. Then using the Garmin 945 I choose the option "follow the course." And sure enough it
did exactly that and just like the course the resistance changed on the
hills up and down. It was pretty good to see you do compared to real activity.
Very novel approach to breaking up the "winter" doldrums!
Comparison against the real ride I did on Strava. The Strave ride shows
much less power and I think in general Strava for me in the flatland underestimates power. My power was 124 today and on the real ride only something like 96.
That doesn't surprise me. Unless I'm mistaken, the simulated route
accounts for grade (calculated into the resistance algorithm), nothing
more. It doesn't take into account road surface and head/tail wind.
Also, am I the only idiot that finds riding out of the saddle on any
indoor trainer is frankly awkward and not worth the effort. I am not a
Zwift user or any paid subscription. I find just riding trainer with
metrics enough.
The only problem I ever had sprinting on a trainer was when one I was
using actually broke and I ended up on the floor. Other than that no
problem.
I see a number of people commenting about sprinting with rollers. Yes,
that's hard. After 4o years of riding rollers I still can't do it. Of
course it can be done, and I've known people who _weren't_ notably good
road riders be able to do it and blow us all away in roller races. It's complicated by lateral resistance - one of the challenges to riding
rollers is that the smooth drum provide no resistance to lateral motion
of the tires. One small lean/twitch and the front wheel shoots off to
the side.
People that don't have good innate balance will have a difficult time
riding rollers. I'm one of those people. It took me several months to
keep the bike up, and I that was after setting them up in a door frame
so I had something to lean on and pull the bike back. I can ride
unloaded rollers somewhat effortlessly now (40 years later) but still
can't ride no-handed, can't sprint, and have a really hard time trying
to ride the TT bike while in the aerobars.
A while ago I retrofitted my rollers with a mag unit, and that actually
made things significant easier. There's something about needing to put
more power down that makes the bike more stable - or maybe it's just me.
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