Poor bike handling skills can't always attributable to lack of outdoor riding. I train with a small group of riders, male and female, for long distance events. There are a couple of riders in our group that I am never comfortable being near. They just seem to be "unstable" for lack of a better term. They ride outdoors all the time but never seem to have good bike handling skills.

Power meter. You can train with a power meter indoors or out. Not the case with a trainer.

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Power Meter City
Your Power Meter Specialists

I have both a power meter and Kickr. Knowing what i know now, i would not buy a smart trainer. its a nice toy to have but not necessary if you have a power meter. Basically you're spending money on a trainer that will shift your gears (ie make it harder or easier) for you.

if you want structure workouts, sign up for Trainerroad. there are over 800 workouts including full training plans for triathlons.
worth every penny

If you do go with the power meter (which I recommend, like almost everyone else here) then do your research on them before making a decision on which one to buy. For example, I bought a Stages PM only to find out it does not communicate well with my Garmin 920 if anything is in between the 2 devices. Stages blames it on Garmin and Garmin blames it on Stages. Also, the Stages PM can not send a signal through a BTA setup to a device on top of it. I had to put my Garmin 500 back on my stem to pick up the signal. Other than those 2 issues, which I have worked around, it is a good device. I am sure other PMs have their issues, so do your due diligence prior to purchasing to determine which works best for you. I'd start with DCRainmaker's PM review and go from there. Cheers!

Go with a cheap(er) Stages PM (~$400 used) AND get a cheap(er) Smart trainer like the Vortex Smart for less than $350. (http://www.bike-discount.de/...delivery_country=210)

this is what I've done and I couldn't be happier with the effect that it's had on my training, and performance! ...I just took 50s of my 40km TT times!

I have the opposite opinion of PM vs Kickr. I spent 2 years first with PM+Trainerroad and then in the past 1.5 yrs moved to Kickr+Trainerroad or other structured indoor workouts (pretty much all my bike workouts indoors are structured, either TR or Sufferfest.)

I really like the Kickr's control of the workout. With the PM, I'd still get a good workout, but for sure, there was a lot more variability, and most importantly, I spent a lot of time focusing on trying to pedal to the prescribed power. That becomes a bit of a drag when you're doing longer workouts - the Kickr completely alleviates this.

I like the PM outdoor data, but I find that I rarely use the outdoor power numbers as targets to GUIDE future workouts. I'm always using the PM to review what I ended up riding outdoors, but I'm never using it outdoors to 'ride 100% threshold for 10' x 6', as there are too many variables in terrain/traffic to make this doable outside, nor would I want to do it when there are lovely roads here to hammer on.

So for me, the PM ends up be a 'post-workout' data analyzer, whereas the Kickr drives both pre and post workout numbers. And since training is the key to a good race day, I'd gladly train with the Kickr even if I had to race PM-free.

This is good info. I have Cycleops fluid 2 trainer and I've debated getting a smart trainer. But I think I should focus on getting a power meter