Trainer & Road Power Variance

[wcuracer]

I am curious to know if you train with power should you have two thresholds/zones i.e. one for outside on the road and one for inside on the trainer. I was outside today doing my steady state intervals to realize they were 10X easier than what I am doing on the trainer but seeing how I also did my threshold test on the trainer should I do one for outside also? 90% of my training will be indoors this winter so if the variance isn't much then I am not to worried about it.

Also, I am curious to know if rollers would offset the difference I feel from outside to inside based on power or is this just the lack of fresh air you have indoors?

[Josh Whitmore]

What kind of power meter are you using?
What kind of trainer are you using?

I've found that the trainer makes a big difference. The ones with the bigger flywheels feel more realistic when riding and also have a more similar power curve to outside riding. When pedaling the flywheel carries some momentum which can smooth out some pedaling in-efficiencies. Trainers with no flywheel need more constant pressure on the pedals all the way around the circle or they loose momentum quickly. Think of a trainer with no flywheel being like going up a very steep hill, if you let up for 1/8th of a turn, you have a blip in the power.

In any case, you can totally have 2 sets of power zones, one for the trainer and one for outside. You just have to test for both, since there is no rule for converting one to the other. You might be able to do some estimation by matching power to a particular heart rate. Say you do a 6 min interval at 170HR on the trainer - Record the average power. Next do the same 6 min interval at 170HR on the road - Record the average power and compare. With this kind of thing you might not have to do another 30min TT test.

[wcuracer]

Power Meter - Powertap 2.4

Trainer - Mag 500 by Minoura

www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BMAWCS/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_2?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B001KUSTJS&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=007AD4EZ1Z2PY5VQ9Q8F

(Laugh Away ;D)

Thanks for the input on doing the comparison; A much smarter way than another threshold test!

[mvi]

A very interresting blog post by Steve Tilford on the difference between road and trainer.
I copied it . Check his blog.

Indoor Riding
December 21st, 2009 · 5 Comments

First, I need to state that I despise riding indoors. I avoid it at nearly any cost. That being stated, I have ridden indoors a couple times this year. Back when I was roofing. No light available and no energy to get bundled up. Riding indoors isn’t the same as riding outside. Not even close. I ride the ergometer because I can stand and ride off my seat some to train. This makes it closer to riding outside. I hate watching people lock their gazillion dollar carbon frames into a stationary trainer. Sometimes all winter. Sometimes just warming up for a race. This is not good for your race bike. If you feel the need for this, go out and get a cheap aluminum or steel frame and use it for this purpose.

I have tried about every indoor trainer available on the market. When I was an intermediate (young junior) I started out on rollers. I didn’t have the money for Al Kreitler rollers, even though they were made in Kansas, so I had some Italian brand. I raced roller races every winter for years. From there it was a “squirrel cage trainer”. Nothing good there. When I rode for Schwinn they gave me a Velodyne. It was the first trainer that electronically controlled the resistance. You could put different chips into it to ride different race courses. I sold it to Andy Hampsten for a grand or so. He took it to Europe I think. I had ridden it maybe 4 times. I figured at that rate, I could buy 4 plane tickets to San Diego and train at 75 degrees. During this time, I bought a Tunturi erogometer. Even with everything new out there, I still ride the 25+ year old Tunturi ergometer. I got it at the bike show in the 80’s when Interbike was still in Long Beach. At the time, it was the cheap version of a Monark ergometer. We rode the Monark ergometers at the Olympic Training Center mainly because of Eddie B. Notice, because. Everyone hated ergometer tests. But, Eddie put a huge emphasis on them. One winter he picked a trip to South America exclusively from the results of riding indoors. I eventually became a expert at the tests (and fooling them).

I became an ergometer expert mainly because I spent a whole winter in Grand Forks, North Dakota, at the Human Nutrition Lab. The weather dictated that I ride indoors from November on. Plus, I was doing max and sub maximal VO2 tests weekly. That was over 32 V02 tests, plus all the training. Sometimes 2 or 3 times a day. Can you imagine, riding indoors 3 different times in one day. I must of been crazy.

When I got to the lab, I rode up to 5kp on the V02 test. The Sports Medicine DR. there, Hank, was kind of an ass. Maybe not really an ass, but a know it all about sports science, or so he believed. He would update me on my respiratory quotient and other important numbers in the middle of the test. Vocally predicting when I was going to fatigue. I hated it and decided to prove him wrong.

Riding a max V02 test is very hard mentally. There is no end. Except when you are done. It would be like climbing a hill that gets steeper and steeper and has no top. And, you know there isn’t a top. Anyway, I decided that I was going to ride 30 seconds further every week. That was going to be my ending point. When I did the test, I knew where the “finish” was. So, by the end of the 3 month period I rode nearly 6 minutes longer for the V02 max test than I did when I first arrived. Plus, the resistance was increased every 2 minutes, so I rode all the way thru 7kp, the hardest resistance on the Monark ergometer. It was an enormous amount of power difference.

I did this to prove Hank wrong. The last week in the lab, when I was doing my last test, I asked Hank why I had improved so dramatically on the V02 test. I thought I had him, but no. He already had an answer. It was because my fitness had improved. I didn’t even try to argue. I had flown directly to Grand Forks, N.D. from a stage race in Arkansas. Before that was the Coor’s Classic in Colorado ( nearly 2 weeks long). I was much fitter for bicycle riding when I arrived in September than at Christmas. I hadn’t ridden outside more than a handful of times in two months. But, I was an expert at suffering at ergometer testing. I realized after the process was over was that I had no idea how far or hard I could go riding indoors. It wasn’t the same as suffering outside. So many different feeling to overcome. It took months of riding indoors, day after day to become familiar with the sensations. I had made the mistake early on to try to compare my sensations of riding outside to riding inside. It is a completely different beast.

The day after Christmas I flew to the USOTC (United States Olympic Training Center) to start the season. The time in the lab had finally paid off. The first thing we did was ergometer testing. I aced the test. I had the highest power to weight ratio of any rider there. By far. This got me onto Eddie’s radar screen. It might have been part of the reason I made the spring trip to Europe on the National Team that year. I never have thought of that. But, to this day, I still believe that riding indoors should be considered cross-training and not bike riding. Sorry if you disagree.

[dobovedo]

I didn't quite follow how riding an ergometer/computrainer is supposed to be compared to riding a bike, indoors or out. Seems a bike on a trainer is a more direct comparison. And even that is the subject of great debate.

I don't ride with power simply because I can't afford the setups. I'd love to have that data, but it would be merely because I'm a numbers and graphs geek. I don't do any of this seriously or competitively enough to "train" by it.

That said, I do try to set up my bike on the trainer to be as close to outdoors as possible. I do it by HR and RPE. On my trainer, a cheapo Travel-Trak fluid, I have found that spinning easy indoors is easier than outdoors and going all out on the trainer is harder than outdoors. In other words, the range of difficulty is wider.

So I set it up with enough tension to find a solid middle ground. At a TT effort level, below threshold, I can hold roughly the same speed in the same gears at a similar HR as what I can do consistently outdoors on a flat, wind-neutral course.

That's still highly subjective, but it works for my level of training. I'll get a power meter setup when I win the lottery. ;D

One thing I found interesting about the article was the opinion that locking a carbon bike into the trainer was bad for the bike. I guess it makes sense. I use my old Bianchi Reparto Corse steel frame which has tons of flex. I've found it puts less strain on my knees compared to my stiffer titanium and carbon frames. Stands to reason that the increased strain on the body would also put strain on the bike frame.

[mvi]

I feel that a trainer put a strain on the rear triangle that it is not designed for. (which doesn't mean it will fail). My old Ti bike flexes a lot on the trainer, no damage so far.
I agree with Josh that a flywheel makes things more equal. I have a 20 lbs wheel I made with fishing sinkers (around the spokes) and some other tricks that normalized things greatly.. I think there is a 4th power in momentum of inertia and the diameter a weight is on. Made high intensity stuff many winters ago much more tolerable.