I am training for Ironman Louisville, but live in an area that is largely flat and does not offer great places to ride without traveling a couple of hours via car to get there. I have a Tacx Smart Trainer and a stages power meter (original model).
Which trainer app is the best to replicate outdoor rides? Zwift? Rouvy? Tacx? PerfPro? Something else entirely? It seems the more I look, the more options there are.
I tried uploading the IM Lousiville course into TrainerRoad, but didn’t like that it showed me power only and no speed. I’m looking for something where I can get on and know that I biked X miles in Y time at Z speed.
If you have a power meter your approach doesn’t make much sense or rather, it’s easily quantified without the software doing it for you.
Training impact is down to time and effort. You could ride 30km with a headwind, 35km in still air or 40km with a tailwind in a given amount of time and have an identical training benefit. So your power meter and a watch tell you all you need to know really. They rule out the confusion of misleading distance and speed figures.
If you have set targets in terms of distance and want to stick with that, figures provided by a trainer app are going to be no more useful than 10mins spent on BestBikeSplit and then deciding what speed you want to assign for a given power level. If you reckon 200W is worth 30km/h then a 90min trainer ride at 200W is 45km. Simple.
We’re used to speed, the best average speed is our end goal, but watching instantaneous speed as you ride is not a particularly useful tool to accomplish it.
In Zwift free ride mode with ERG turned on, you’ll get a sense of the same variability of power required when on the open road. So if you’re looking for the unpredictability of the open road in terms of effort, cadence, etc, instead of prescribed intervals, it is a pretty decent simulation
If your weight is correct the distance rode on Zwift will be decently comparable as if you rode that course outdoors (caveats are, Zwift ignores wind, CdA varies, etc.)
If you want to get a sense for the actual course you’ll be racing on, what I’ve been doing lately is modeling it in BestBikeSplit, and then exporting a file from BBS and riding it in TrainerRoad or Zwift on my Tacx Neo. This way you can ride the exact power profile you’ll be riding on race day.
If you want to get a sense for the actual course you’ll be racing on, what I’ve been doing lately is modeling it in BestBikeSplit, and then exporting a file from BBS and riding it in TrainerRoad or Zwift on my Tacx Neo. This way you can ride the exact power profile you’ll be riding on race day.
+1
Did this for a 70.3 I did last year - the exact same power profile as the race, same TSS, same VI - then a little run off the bike to see how you feel. Really helpful to know how that effort feels, IMO
You need to install the Workout Creator app for TR, and then follow the instructions above. Pretty simple to do, and as sch340 said, it’s invaluable to be able to ride the exact power profile, TSS and VI, and then run afterwards to gauge how it feels. for 70.3 CdA I ended up going through three or four iterations of the BBS plan, each time tweaking target VI and max power, until I had a plan I felt comfortable that I could run well afterwards.
You need to install the Workout Creator app for TR, and then follow the instructions above. Pretty simple to do, and as sch340 said, it’s invaluable to be able to ride the exact power profile, TSS and VI, and then run afterwards to gauge how it feels. for 70.3 CdA I ended up going through three or four iterations of the BBS plan, each time tweaking target VI and max power, until I had a plan I felt comfortable that I could run well afterwards.
I don’t know if you have actually done this, but at least when I used BBS to download someone’s 70.3 course to ‘ride the course’, it totally, utterly sucked on Perfpro (not trainerroad, but I suspect it would be similar.)
The small rollers and variations in the road are insanely annoying on a trainer. We’re not talking 20 second ups/20second down, we’re talking crazy spikes like 0% to 7% for a few seconds (the Kickr can’t keep up with all the changes) throughout the whole ride. Feels totally fake, as on the road you just roll through these variations, but on the Kickr it’s like your trainer went nuts on you - feels totally unrideable! I even used the “smooth course profile” function in perfpro which helped a little, but it still totally sucked.
I’ll admit the last time I did this was 2 years ago, so if people are getting it to work well right now, I’ll admit that I’m out of date. But I suspect this is the reason that you don’t see STers reveling in how great it is to ‘ride the race course indoors’ - in fact, almost nobody here claims to do it.
I will add that I think it would be worthwhile to manually input a workout that just uses long continuous grades to simulate the course, esp the big climbs - I’m going to make one for a hillclimb that I love doing near my house for when I have to it indoors. I’m just going to manually enter like 5-6 segments by hand rather than get that totally nuts spiky .gpx upload.
You could add an old school speed sensor to your wheel measure your speed. I also have a Tacx Vortex and use a Cat eye computer just to see how far I have gone (I know nowhere, but if I had been on the road) and my speed. Mostly just for my own entertainment.
Rouvy for sure. Courses with video from around the world. Train or race mode for each course. See and feel them. I live in Florida and trained for IM Norway (6500 ft net gain on the bike) training on hilly courses all over. Yes, a watt is a watt, but it gets old doing interval workouts all the time, and I’m not at all interested in animated courses. In the end, choose whatever works for YOU, but Rouvy is the best platform in my opinion for riding and viewing REAL courses.
I don’t know if you have actually done this, but at least when I used BBS to download someone’s 70.3 course to ‘ride the course’, it totally, utterly sucked on Perfpro (not trainerroad, but I suspect it would be similar.)
The small rollers and variations in the road are insanely annoying on a trainer. We’re not talking 20 second ups/20second down, we’re talking crazy spikes like 0% to 7% for a few seconds (the Kickr can’t keep up with all the changes) throughout the whole ride. Feels totally fake, as on the road you just roll through these variations, but on the Kickr it’s like your trainer went nuts on you - feels totally unrideable! I even used the “smooth course profile” function in perfpro which helped a little, but it still totally sucked.
I’ll admit the last time I did this was 2 years ago, so if people are getting it to work well right now, I’ll admit that I’m out of date. But I suspect this is the reason that you don’t see STers reveling in how great it is to ‘ride the race course indoors’ - in fact, almost nobody here claims to do it.
I will add that I think it would be worthwhile to manually input a workout that just uses long continuous grades to simulate the course, esp the big climbs - I’m going to make one for a hillclimb that I love doing near my house for when I have to it indoors. I’m just going to manually enter like 5-6 segments by hand rather than get that totally nuts spiky .gpx upload.
I’ve done it several times, and it works flawlessly for me in both TrainerRoad and Zwift. The problem you’re describing is a function of your trainer, not BBS, Zwift or TR. One thing I discovered a while back is that my trainer (Tacx Neo) is FAR better at evening out spikes and holding a target power in erg mode if I’m in a “small” gear (i.e., 34/25 rather than, say, 50/11). Here’s what one of my BBS rides in Zwift looked like.
You need to install the Workout Creator app for TR, and then follow the instructions above. Pretty simple to do, and as sch340 said, it’s invaluable to be able to ride the exact power profile, TSS and VI, and then run afterwards to gauge how it feels. for 70.3 CdA I ended up going through three or four iterations of the BBS plan, each time tweaking target VI and max power, until I had a plan I felt comfortable that I could run well afterwards.
Amazing! I’m on week 8 of the TR Full IM high volume build. I have a 4:15 ride next week. Would love to create the Chattanooga course and ride the 1st 4:15 based on TR FTP and see how far I get. Does this have to be a smart trainer to work? I’m using a classic KK road machine and power meter
Amazing! I’m on week 8 of the TR Full IM high volume build. I have a 4:15 ride next week. Would love to create the Chattanooga course and ride the 1st 4:15 based on TR FTP and see how far I get. Does this have to be a smart trainer to work? I’m using a classic KK road machine and power meter
I’m not familiar with your setup specifically, but if you’re already using TR with that setup, then riding a BBS course in TR wouldn’t be any different. It would essentally just be another ‘custom workout.’
I went back and re-read your post, and I think I understand the problem. What you’re describing is that you’re trying to ride the actual .GPX profile of a course. I’m guessing that the trainer is going to try to simulate every single change in grade. I can imagine that, with any sort of lag, that would get really annoying.
That’s not what BBS does. BBS already applies some ‘smoothing’ to the elevation profile. For example the 70.3 CdA profile I showed above had 98 ‘segments’ or individual blocks where the power profile changed. These were each typically 1-2 minutes long. If BBS got any more granular than that, your power target would be changing every few seconds and it would be nearly impossible to follow. So, when you’re riding a BBS simulation, the power target isn’t changing continuously, it’s changing every minute or two, which makes it both easier to ride in TR or Zwift, and easier to follow on race day.
I went back and re-read your post, and I think I understand the problem. What you’re describing is that you’re trying to ride the actual .GPX profile of a course. I’m guessing that the trainer is going to try to simulate every single change in grade. I can imagine that, with any sort of lag, that would get really annoying.
That’s not what BBS does. BBS already applies some ‘smoothing’ to the elevation profile. For example the 70.3 CdA profile I showed above had 98 ‘segments’ or individual blocks where the power profile changed. These were each typically 1-2 minutes long. If BBS got any more granular than that, your power target would be changing every few seconds and it would be nearly impossible to follow. So, when you’re riding a BBS simulation, the power target isn’t changing continuously, it’s changing every minute or two, which makes it both easier to ride in TR or Zwift, and easier to follow on race day.
That sounds a lot better. The last time I did this was 2+ years ago, so my memory of what I did is spotty, but I did try and run it through BBS to get a trace, but I’ll bet I didn’t use BBS and that would give me the jumpiness I got.
1-2 minutes per segment would work great - I’ll def give it a try in the future. Thanks for the heads up!
Amazing! I’m on week 8 of the TR Full IM high volume build. I have a 4:15 ride next week. Would love to create the Chattanooga course and ride the 1st 4:15 based on TR FTP and see how far I get. Does this have to be a smart trainer to work? I’m using a classic KK road machine and power meter
I’m not familiar with your setup specifically, but if you’re already using TR with that setup, then riding a BBS course in TR wouldn’t be any different. It would essentally just be another ‘custom workout.’
This is awesome! I have a race setup in BBS. And it is now a custom workout!
