Is there a way to set this up to get distance travelled in addition to power? I have set my wheel circumference on trainerroad and stages gives a cadence reading, so it should be straightforward.
As you know cadence is pedal rotations and Distance/Speed is wheel rotations.
The difference is affected by your chosen gear… so thus TrainerRoad doesn’t know your speed, because it doesn’t know your gear.
Most agree that speed and distance on the trainer doesn’t mean anything anyway so just use power and be happy? 
Thank you - it is obvious when I actually think about it!
Shouldn’t it be able to calculate speed speed, distance based on wheel rotations? All bike computers seem able to handle that without issue.
The cadence from the Stages is picking up RPM of the crank arm and not the wheel. So no.
Right, I was thinking that TR would just pick up wheel rotation directly, bypassing the Stages to give a speed/distance reading. It doesn’t matter anyway as TR doesn’t show it, although the data is collected and can be seen afterwards.
You cant truly determine speed or distance on a trainer without matching the resistance of the trainer to the resistance encountered outside. So how ever many watts you consume at say 20 MPH outside, you need to match that at the same gear and cadence inside using adjustable resistance, otherwise the speed and distance metric is going to be skewed. Then of course as you speed up or slow down the resistance of the trainer is probably not going to parallel what you would encounter outside, so really without a programmable trainer you cannot accurately match this metric.
Right, I was thinking that TR would just pick up wheel rotation directly, bypassing the Stages to give a speed/distance reading. It doesn’t matter anyway as TR doesn’t show it, although the data is collected and can be seen afterwards.
How would TR pick up the wheel rotation? It just spits out the numbers that Stages gives it.
Here is your speed: 0 mph
.
Here is your speed: 0 mph
Exactly. Not sure why people give two shits about speed and distance on an indoor trainer when your speed is zero and your distance traveled is zero.
Power or HR or RPE should be all that matters on an indoor trainer.
I was confused. I assumed he would also have a speed/cadence sensor for TR to read