Indoor Training with power using TrainerRoad or ????

[EricKeller]

I subscribed to trainerroad and I now appreciate the value of a subscription service. They have to treat you nice or you'll go elsewhere. Zwift is more like I have trained in the past, and probably would work for me now, but I decided to go with the more number-based approach of trainerroad. I tried using Golden Cheetah for a while, but they don't owe you a damn thing and it didn't work that well controlling the trainer. I had the trial of perfpro, and it was ok, but I was new with my trainer and couldn't separate out the problems with the trainer and the program. My experience with trainerroad says it was all my fault, and I have definitely thought about going back if I get tired of sending money to trainerroad.

The fact that trainerroad works on my phone (with a few glitches that I seem to have mostly worked out) is a real bonus. Turn on a bad movie on netflix and ride the workout.

So far it's working, I lost 10 pounds in the first month and I'm working a lot harder on the bike than I have for a long time. Hopefully this will have positive results on the road, but my long term goal is to maintain a healthy weight and good fitness, so that's going my way right now. I have bike goals, but my experience in the past was when I achieved those, then I would slump and get fat. Working over the winter was tough.

[Bewheels]

More info on this...which might be old info for many...

In my previous post I mentioned how cool it is to interact with 'variable terrain' on a trainer.
Yesterday I did one of the Zwift workouts. When Zwift is in workout mode it ignores the terrain. It does so in an interesting way.

Say you are doing 6 min intervals at 200 watts and you are using 53/19 gearing to do it. In Zwift workout mode you maintain that gearing/cadence/effort regardless of terrain. So now you are in your 53/19 at 200 watts up hill and downhill. The smart trainer remains steady in its resistance, it does not increase resistance going up hill and reduce it going down hill like it does when not in workout mode.

However, you are still in the game with the other riders that are in the game...so to speak.
Zwift works off watts per kilogram. So if maintaining 200 watts puts you at 2.3 w/kg, Zwift makes the in-game speed adjustments. So spinning a 53/19 uphill will have you at say 8 mph - and downhilling at 40mph.

While it is pretty cool how this all works and it makes it so that you can stay within your prescribed workout zones more easily, personally I would rather have the terrain interaction as part of the workout just like when you are not in workout mode. Let me adjust things to maintain the prescribed zone. A big part of the interest of Zwift for me is that variability of resistance while sitting on a trainer.

You can keep the terrain interaction aspect of Zwift and do a prescribed workout by not putting Zwift in workout mode. But Zwift provides workout feedback while in that mode that is good to have.

You can read a little more about the workout modes here. They mention how ERG mode works as well.