Only new to TR but I have found it hard to keep my cadence high without spinning too fast!!?? Maybe fly wheel tension is wrong or am I in wring gear. I’m training in erg mode. Also is my estimated speed based on the speed of my back wheel?
For gears on a smart trainer in ERG mode you can use whatever gear you want because ERG mode will keep resistance independent of flywheel or rear wheel speed.
Yes, speed and distance are based on how fast the back wheel is spinning (if using a wheel-on trainer).
@teamkennyg Can you clarify what you mean by “spinning too fast”? What kind of cadence and what power numbers are we talking about? Do you mean you feel like you’ve overspun the flywheel and there is no longer tension in the pedals?
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Exactly yeah. When I go into a recovery interval, I feel I have to slow down cadence to 70 or 75 just to feel the tension on the pedals again. I must say I’ve only done 3 workouts on TR so it could just be something I need to get the hang off👍🏽
- What trainer do you have?
- What gearing are you using in ERG (Front and rear gears)?
These matter greatly with some trainers as the resistance “ceiling” and “floor” can make it hard to hit high or low resistance values in some cases.
Either way, you can consider trying a test by swapping from whatever hearing you use now.
- If you are on the big ring, swap to the small ring and try a workout or two.
- Or swap the other way if you are on the small ring.
See if that makes any difference, because I suspect it might help.
I took a quite look at your recent ride (hope you don’t mind). There’s nothing out of the ordinary happening here. Phew, right?
It might help you to understand what is happening to your trainer in ERG mode as you go from high intensity to a low intensity interval. TR is sending a message to the trainer to sit at a prescribed wattage (which changes based on interval needs). Your gearing is giving some resistance and the trainer is giving some resistance. Both are controllable. You can change your bike gearing to give more or less resistance. If you give it more resistance, say by changing from the small to the big ring, then your trainer will compensate by letting off some of it’s resistance until it matches what TR is telling it to be at. So, if your gearing is fixed (mostly it will be if you’re in ERG), the slackening in resistance when going from high to low intensity intervals is the trainer catching up with the change in resistance which can take a few seconds.
To some degree, how long this takes can be controlled by you. If you have high gearing resistance (big ring up front and small gear at the back) then your trainer will have less resistance and the flywheel will be spinning very quickly and have a lot of inertia. If you reverse this equation and have less resistance on the bike (small ring up front and bigger cog at the back) your wheel will be spinning slower and the trainer will have more relative resistance. When the change down in intensity is called for by TR, your trainer doesn’t has more resistance to make the change with and less flywheel inertia to fight against.
@GPLama also has some really excellent videos that probably better describe this if you’re still scratching your head.
Hope this helps!
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That’s brilliant , thanks. I’ll check the gearing on big ring and try the other way. Not a major problem anyway. Very new to this but I had a day off yesterday and I’m chomping at the bit to get back at it tomorrow. I suppose I could be getting addicted to worse things:+1:t4:
plus 1 for these videos, they helped me a lot, especially during sprints and learning to ride consistently while letting the trainer ramp up the resistance.
For me most of workout do on small ring in the front, and high big cog rear but when I have under over - then I have to use big ring front, and small cog rear. It’s easier for me to keep power. It’s much lighter to keep wattage, like you are not so tired. Tested on Drivo II