Ride in your easier gear (small ring and largest cog). The speed will come down.

When power is held constant, how many times you turn the cassette depends soles on your gear ratio. Wahoo Kickr measures speed based on the number of revolutions the cassette makes per minute (or some time interval). Your turn the cassette less at an easier gear.

What he said ^... speed on a trainer doesn't mean anything. Ignore it. If you want to estimate miles ridden for training log purposes use a guess based on time/effort.

well, on many trainers it does. they simulate a speed curve that is pretty average, which is handy if you track miles, you can just keep tracking them.

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

I'd say based on the number of posts that crop up on here asking about or discussing wildly unrealistic speed outputs from trainers where it's not relevant to effort if you have to pick a generalist approach it's that speed on a trainer is not your important metric. If it's all you've got and it is correlated somehow to actual outdoor speed than sure.

I'm kind of surprised the Wahoo can't do a good job of this. Maybe it just isn't in the right mode?

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

I rock 35 mph with like 150 watts on my chinese knockoff trainer... I think that means its time for a harder trainer

I'd like to hear from some Wahoo Kickr tech folks on this. Some trainer ought to be a bit more realistic about speed....

I have a TACX trainer and usually average about 25 mph on the trainer. Since I've never heard my name called at Kona, I'd suspect the speed should be ignored. I train mainly on watts, with HR second. I race mainly by HR and how I feel.

-Rober

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"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." ~Anne Frank

All the Wahoo Kickr really knows is the power, right? The rider can elect to generate that power using any combination of cadence/gearing they desire and without that knowledge the Kickr is in the dark on what the wheel speed (or it's set level of magnetic resistance to achieve that power) means.

You can take the power and using a supplied set of external variables (elevation, grade, rider weight, cda, crr) produce a reasonable speed estimate, but that would be a function of the software interfacing with the Kickr, not the Kickr itself.

I have a Kickr and basically settled on a gear that for most of my riding on the trainer produces an average speed comparable to the same effort outdoors. Keeps the mileage logs sane without any real effort, but I had to find that gearing myself.

Is there not a different resistance mode?

Cyclops has done a pretty damn good job of tuning their trainers such that the speed for a given power output matches a reasonable real-world cycling speed at that power output. Seems like wahoo ought to be able to figure that out, or at least do better than what OP is describing. Have others experienced this or is OP missing some resistance setting?

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if it is counting cassette rotations it can internally assuming 700c or 650c wheels to compute a virtual speed and should be able to supply a realistic power curve given that speed.

There is nothing preventing that from working right except, like you say, proper programming or hardware that can supply sufficient load.

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

I have a Power Beam Pro and this is what I do also. I can push 300 watts at 11 mph or spin out in 53\12 if I want, but I tend to choose a gear that will average around 18mph for tempo work.

I'm sure the OP is in ERG mode and is trying to shift gears when the power jumps for the next interval instead of just staying in the same gear\cadence and letting the trainer resistance set itself. It take 6-10 seconds to increase of decrease the power levels.

Good software up front (PerfPro, TrainerRoad, whatever) would be the appropriate place (in my mind) to store a user profile (weight, bike, position), and any relevant course data (if riding a simulated course) and make those calculations. The actual rotating speed of the rear wheel doesn't get us anywhere on it's own. If we have to calculate lets use the most straight forward approach, which is given known rider/bike/course data how fast does x watts move us down the road?

Maybe the best example to illustrate why it should be done elsewhere (other than the Kickr) and how multivariate the correct output is would be this: ignoring gearing and all that business picture the following scenario:

You push x watts/y wheel speed on your trainer and have come up with some formula to get an accurate ground speed from that. You can do this in your aerobars or sitting up with your hands on the pads. Same visible output to trainer. Clearly different real world speeds, perhaps by a factor of several mph.

Point being the Kickr (or another trainer)'s job is not to calculate real world speed. Let's not ask it to do something it will inherently be bad at.

Sounds like we just need the trainer to interface with Bestbikesplit and use it's estimated CRR and CdA values for aero and sitting up, then at a preset speed of 14-15mph it assumes you're sitting up vs. aero.

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TrainingBible Coaching
http://www.trainingbible.com

It doesn't have to be bad.
It certainly shouldn't be confounded by changing gears.
Certainly this is arguably unimportant, since the thing measures power anyway, thus who cares about speed...

unless you are doing course simulations then you care.

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

Are you using the Kickr as an ergometer? If so it is simply going to provd 220w of resistance no matter what gear you are in or how fast you are pedaling.

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Jordan Oroshiba --- Roadie invading Triathlete space for knowledge access

Exactly. ERG mode is ERG mode. If you want to do your 400w interval at 90rpm/9mph or switch into a totally different gear and do it at 90 rpm/33mph, it makes no difference.

In the case of this not being erg mode, something is indeed going wrong as something has set the resistance too low.

I use the wahoo app in sim mode (bike type "road bike in drops") to control the kickr, which gives me a speed a little under my outdoor speed. I like sim mode since I don't have to fiddle with my ipad for different intervals just change gear (up or down) to get the power/cadence called for.

The CompuTrainers tend to be a little more sensitive to a lot of gear changes, especially with heavy loads, which made it pretty easy to start speeding up and eventually running out of gears. This had me come up with the Cadence/Speed control function, which from the simple side temporarily threw you into course mode and forced you to slow down while maintaining the same power. Once you got the speed down and the watts at your current prescribed load then it would go back into ERG mode and you could get back into a rhythm. However, if you didn't know to then keep your gearing the same then you mostly likely got thrown back into Course/Speed control mode on your next big push and probably ended fairly frustrated.

With PerfPRO, KICKRs do not have the speed/cadence control option since for the most part it added unnecessary overhead to the ANT communication. But I can see if you're pushing the big watts in a big gear along with some gearing/cadence changes then it could happen even with a KICKR.

You can read more about course/speed mode here:
http://ppst.co/19qkDdA

Take a look the tips I have listed and that may help. At the very least experiment with picking a middle gear and keeping it there. Once you're in that gear and get up to your natural cadence then the trainer should adjust and maintain power and consistent speed.

Hope that helps,
Drew.
http://perfprostudio.com

Thank you guys for your replies. I will try this out next ride!

And yes everything was done in ERG mode.

I'll say my Kickr is spot on for speed, if one were to care about speed on a trainer. Obviously in ERG mode on the Kickr, there is a line with whatever power it is set to that your gearing and cadence will have you simulating a climb, a level road, or a descent.

Of course I do take the time to calculate gearing for most of my workouts, and when I don't, I tend to use a lower gear