I have this meaningless (but epic) goal of biking 10,000 miles in a year. I have about 70 days left to go another 2,300 miles which is definitely obtainable but most of the remaining miles are going to be tough since they are gonna be on the trainer from here on out. I realize that trainer miles don’t translate to road miles but I don’t care…I don’t counting them any differently. I do have a Stages PM so I don’t consider speed/distance my most valuable metric but a 10,000 mile goal has to be tracked somehow.
So here’s my thing…my trainer is the Cycleops Fluid 2. When I’m outside I can go a little over 60 miles in 3 hours and on the trainer the resistance makes me work hard to hit 50 in that same amount of time. I’ve tried a bunch of different variables to create a more accurate speed/power ratio such as a different wheel, cassette, trainer resistance, and tire pressure. Basically outside I will usually average over 20+ mph and have to press to hold 17 mph on the trainer. Anyone else have a this large of a discrepancy between indoor and outdoor speed on the trainer? I’m convinced it just is what it is with the trainer I have.
As a side note, riding this amount of miles has brought my half-ironman bike split from 2:45 to 2:18, so even though it’s not loaded with intensity it’s certainly made me faster. Once I’m done with all these volume building miles in Dec. I plan on doing more intense and shorter workouts through TrainerRoad.
if I were tracking trainer miles, I would do the following. with PM, note outdoors at 20mph avg is under 250w on road bike(closer to 210-230 depending on wind). so indoors(fluid 2 here, no speed indoors for me) if avg watts over 250, just count it as 20 mph no matter how high above 250w I ride(generally 280-320 indoors avg, lower end this time of year)
based on that, I am over 11,000 miles for year already but I am single sport
Similar to JeffP’s idea, you could figure out how many kilojoules (watts * seconds/1000) you burn in a mile. So if you do a 20-mile ride in an hour (3600 seconds) while averaging 250W, you’d calculate: 900kJ to travel 20 miles = 45kJ/mile.
So if we use 45kJ/mile value, we can re-express your 2300 miles-to-go as 103500kJ-to-go, and then you can start burning down that counter.
As for your original request: have you tried adjusting the wheel press-on-force? That’s usually the biggest difference-maker in terms of trainer resistance. If you have it pressed on lightly, there’ll be significantly less resistance, possibly enough less to get you into your 20mph goal. However, if you get tire slippage it could damage your tire.
Another idea is to add more fans. It’s possible you’re actually putting out less power on the trainer because trainers are boring and your body is overheating and thus not actually working as hard.
Another idea is to use virtual riding software like Tour de Giro and accumulate miles that way, though TdG would probably be a bit generous with speed and you’d have the opposite problem - we find people complain less if they go faster than real life than if they go slower than real life.
“And I would bike 5000 miles and I would bike 5000 more.
Just to be the man who bike 10,000 miles to fall down at your door.
Ba da duh da. Ba da duh da. Ba da duh da.Ba da duh da.
Ba da dum dida dum dida dumdida dum did alie.”
Good for you. The best I ever managed was 3,755 outdoors and another 2000-ish indoors. My best months were 37.7 hours outdoors in June and 38.0 hours indoors in December.
At 20mph that is 1 1/3rd hours per day. It suggest some epic weekends if you have a daytime job and do any running/swimming.
i literally asked the same type of question in my thread! glad i’m not the only one.
i was told by my qt2 coaches to multiply any indoor ride (timewise) by 1.2 to get my outdoor time. meaning if i rode indoors for 60 mins. it’s equivalent of riding 72 mins outside.
maybe you can multiply the miles by 1.2? or 1.15 to be safe?
i average 22mph outside for the same power it takes me to average 17.5 inside. so 1.2 sounds about right.
for your cause i think it would be “fair” to use that.
I average about 180 watts at 20 mph on a flat reasonably calm day in full race setup - helmet, wheels, clothes, etc.
On my Kinetic Road Machine with 120 psi in the tire and the suggested 3 turns past touch on the tension I average about 14 mph at the same 180 watts (Power Tap).
I have found that I can get closer (about 19 mph) by reducing the tension to about 3/4 of a turn past touch. Any less and I have wheel slip at anything other than steady state.
I’ve tried adjusting tire pressure (the only other variable that could have an affect) with no repeatable results - probably because of tire heating due to increased friction.
Bottom line - If you are logging distance for some purpose (such as you stated) you need to simply run the required time at a known power output and do the math (for me 3 hours at 180 watts would be 60 miles). There just isn’t any other way in my experience.
Interesting. I thought it was just me, but I’ve always thought my trainer (Powerbeam Pro) doesn’t give the same amount of miles I would get outside for the amount of time/effort spent. But the variance isn’t as great as yours (maybe 1 or 2 miles per hour variance), and it seems to be less when I do high cadence work and more profound with low cadence and extended Z4 work. That said, it is what it is, and I log whatever miles it shows me.
Like others said, you should be able to correlate Kilojoules or TSS to miles pretty closely without a reasonable range of power. Just take an average of your outdoors rides and apply that to your indoor rides.
I have a magnetic trainer, so the resistance is more linear, rather than exponential like wind resistance so I have to adjust my gearing and resistance setting for certain ranges of power output. But I can get it fairly close. Close enough for meaningless mileage tracking. I really care about the TSS and the improvement in FTP and sustainable power at race pace…that I can run off of.
I have 2 Fluid 2’s from the same generation, one is low mileage while the other has quite a few miles on it. The more seasoned unit has a little bit more resistance. 17 indoor versus 20 outdoor sounds about right, maybe a little closer. I tend to use my trainers for light rides for recovery or to stretch out my legs because the pedal stroke at higher speeds on the trainer feels like dragging a car tire around.
Same for me on my KK RnR trainer: 3-4 mph difference vs a flat road ride at the same power (same bike, same Quarq for both).
However, road rides also vary considerably based on terrain, road surface, etc. I live in the SF Bay Area and do regular rides in the Santa Cruz Mountains where, for example, I’ll have a NP of 230W for 3.5 hours but barely average over 16 mph. By contrast, my 5:04 split at IMAZ (22 mph and change) was on NP of 195W (not in a draft pack or anything - I’m too slow in the swim to get caught up in those).
That’s why I use TSS and duration rather than miles for volume - between the mountains and the trainer, my mileage is underrepresented.
You can always target 10,000 miles regardless and consider the trainer part extra credit.
“And I would bike 5000 miles and I would bike 5000 more.
Just to be the man who bike 10,000 miles to fall down at your door.
Ba da duh da. Ba da duh da. Ba da duh da.Ba da duh da.
Ba da dum dida dum dida dumdida dum did alie.”
too funny…
that said, if i biked 10k miles in one year and then showed up at my wife’s door, i don’t think she’s letting me in.
I find that for a certain wattage, I typically ride at a certain speed.
So let’s say 230 watts usually gets me 20 mph outside, that’s what I’ll set up resistance to inside. So 2 hours (er…45 mins… two hours on a trainer is nuts) would net me 40 miles ( or 15…).
Trainer miles don’t really count in total distance ridden per year … how far did you actually go on the trainer? … 1mm?
With that said … Trainer “Time” does count.
If you want to hit 10,000 miles … go outside and do it. I did 11,750 last season and would have broke 12,000 miles if not for some ice and snow. Get outside, ride and do it right
“And I would bike 5000 miles and I would bike 5000 more.
Just to be the man who bike 10,000 miles to fall down at your door.
Ba da duh da. Ba da duh da. Ba da duh da.Ba da duh da.
Ba da dum dida dum dida dumdida dum did alie.”
too funny…
that said, if i biked 10k miles in one year and then showed up at my wife’s door, i don’t think she’s letting me in.
I got a divorce this year, so thankfully I don’t have to worry about the wife letting me back in
You have to give up/prioritize a lot of things in life to get to 10,000 miles…and then swim and run on top of it all. I don’t see myself going after that number again anytime soon!
Trainer miles don’t really count in total distance ridden per year … how far did you actually go on the trainer? … 1mm?
With that said … Trainer “Time” does count.
If you want to hit 10,000 miles … go outside and do it. I did 11,750 last season and would have broke 12,000 miles if not for some ice and snow. Get outside, ride and do it right
This. I easily get 10k per year and that’s usually with 3 months of extreme laziness thrown in.
but I am single sport