Okay, I read somewhere that if you are using Erg Mode that you should change your User Profile and tack on the weight of your bike to your own body weight for calibration and accuracy purposes.
Anyone heard of this? If so, what’s the rationale and expected accuracy benefit?
Yes, I saw that in the .pdf instructions for the Coaching Software or Multi Rider Software (I don’t remember which one). I don’t imagine it makes a huge difference, but it makes sense since both you and your bike are being affected by gravity on the uphills.
Also, I used to just get on the CT and calibrate right away, but a friend I ride with sometimes recenty showed me that the calibration changes quite a bit if you warm up the tire/resistance unit (with about 5-10 minutes of pretty easy riding) and then do it.
Paul, the calibration can change a ton during your ride too. I recommend getting one of the trainer tires it seems to keep that at a minimum.
I do all of my riding in Erg mode, the only exception being when I do my monthly 20 min FTP test. I tend to check the calibration of the CT about every 10-15 minutes, and yes, I do find that it can change throughout a training session. Does anybody have any ideas on how to minimize this drift? It is not really a problem when I am in Ergo mode, but as I am not about to check the calibration half-way through a FTP test, it would be nice to know that the calibration drift is reduced to a minimum.
I am curious what level of drift you are all seeing. In my testing, after 5 minutes the CT has warmed up enough to hit the calibration plateau. After that it can drift plus or minus about 0.1 after long periods of time (say 1/2 hour – rechecking the cal immediately it is only different by 0.01-0.02). I wish I knew the watts per rolldown offset curve, but that seems to be classified info.
Depends if you have a trainer tire or not. My continental trainer tire warms up in about 5 min. Initially I get a value of about 3.4, but after warm-up I get a number like 2.50. I usually check after the workout too and almost always get a similar # to the one after the warm-up.
I think there might be more variability in the non-trainer tire, but not sure.
The manual says to warm-up with some tension… ie; warming up in the ‘UP’ mode doesn’t provide enough resistance to allow the proper warm-up.
You can always check mid workout as well, except in ERG Videos, where if you pause you will be out of sync with the erg file.
BTW if you don’t re-calibrate after the 5 min. workout, your workout will have ‘overly enhanced’ power numbers… ie; the numbers will be better than your actual effort. It doesn’t really matter I guess, but I like to compare progress over time to see if I am actually getting better… and I don’t want the improvements to be fictitious 
Echo the trainer tire experience. I tend to go for 10-13 minutes to be sure, and I ride loaded…not just in cal mode during warmup, but some power load applied, about 140-170W at my current fitness. Higher load will warm tire faster. Verbose detail here (ergvideo forum).
You can always check mid workout as well, except in ERG Videos, where if you pause you will be out of sync with the erg file.
When running in compcs, there is a button for pause/recal in ErgVideo Player. Multirider, no pause function supported, since MR pause/resume (f10) was shown unreliable, not all ct’s came back in sync. Unpublished, unsupported function in multirider I stumbled upon.
Paul
Echo the trainer tire experience. I tend to go for 10-13 minutes to be sure, and I ride loaded…not just in cal mode during warmup, but some power load applied, about 140-170W at my current fitness. Higher load will warm tire faster. Verbose detail here (ergvideo forum).
You can always check mid workout as well, except in ERG Videos, where if you pause you will be out of sync with the erg file.
When running in compcs, there is a button for pause/recal in ErgVideo Player. Multirider, no pause function supported, since MR pause/resume (f10) was shown unreliable, not all ct’s came back in sync. Unpublished, unsupported function in multirider I stumbled upon.
Paul
Paul I run the erg player in multi-rider function, but when I ran it in CS mode, I had trouble pausing… as it un-synched the video erg file. ie; when I was supposed to be going at a certain % of threshold it didn’t make the power requirement change until a fairly long delay… is this something that others have had issue with? I like the multi-rider mode much better than erg as you can adjust the threshold mid-session which is very nice.
I use a Continental trainer tire for all CT workouts. Drift is not that bad, but there is some. For example, if I have a value of 2.5 after the initial warm-up, the value could be between 2.4-2.6 if I were to check at a later time. I find that in Ergo mode, when I set the new value, the wattage may go up or down by 5 W. This is certainly not a big deal, and probably reflects the precision of the CT, however, it would be nice to have greater confidence in the value when trying to determine your FTP.
I will pm you. Thread drift to specific ergvideo support question I think unwanted.
Paul
The number I have seen from Computrainer on their forums is 1/2 watt per 0.01(lb) change in calibration at 25 mph. It should scale linearly with speed.