Hey everyone, I understand that indoor rides may leave some dissatisfied with the distance travelled when uploaded to Strava. BUT… I recently had a ride upload as 0.54km for a 1 Hr 17min ride with avg 141w. Any ideas why?
Thanks in advance for ideas. TR support agent I got a hold of didn’t seem to understand the issue.
GPS on or off?
Off. My indoor rides before I had power we’re gauged by the wahoo speed sensor and power match (obviously) but, I’m not sure how TR or Strava calculate the distance info shown on strava when you use power.
Speed sensor battery dying? Maybe poor reception… say you moved to a new room or a new device to run TR app?
Ooh good idea, I’ll replace speed sensor battery and see if that works. The TR iOS app never seems to be accurate with battery life on the 2032 batteries and I forget to change them.
Thanks!
There is a setting for the wahoo trainer that I have to reset every ride indoors to make it give the power-estimated distance, which is a pretty accurate reflection of the ride. If I don’t set it, I get a random number based on the gearing used. The setting can be found in the wahoo fitness app where you configure the indoor trainer, even though I don’t use that to record the ride, and end up using the TR app. Wish it could be set to stay in that setting.
Based on a flat road?
I record indoor rides on my Garmin with gps turned on. It seems to be picking up speed from my Stages or Kickr. It also records a crazy gps track going nowhere around my basement.
It doesn’t feel ideal but I want to record some distance so the ride is reflected in my strava totals. I don’t use any of Strava’s flags, like “indoor ride”. Ideally, it would be nice to see total hours/miles and also get a breakout between indoors and outdoors.
Any ideas on how to accomplish that on Strava?
This happens to me when I use Wahoo ‘Outdoor’ ride on the trainer instead of ‘Inside’.
The OP isn’t using a wahoo trainer but instead a Kurt Kinetic.
My wife uses a Kurt Kinetic road machine with vector 2s power meter and a wahoo speed sensor as well. I assume your trainer isn’t smart so that really leaves your inaccurate distance down to the speed sensor in my opinion. The wahoo smart trainers are looking at flywheel speed to get distance which will change depending upon the gear you are in regardless of the power you put out. For example I can do the same ride as my wife on my KICKR in ERG mode and average a 100w more than her but she records a further distance because I am using a low gear and she has to change to bigger gears to hit her targets which means faster wheel speeds.
I’d look at your speed sensor battery as another person recommended.
I always keep an eye on the little box in the bottom left corner of the workout screen, telling me how many sensors are connected, it’s usually the speed sensor that drops out if I take a break.
More or less… Values are definitely faster than a route with tons of climbing, slower than if you make an effort to get super aero outside, so reasonable middle road estimate.
From memory, I want to say it’s something like 19mph for 200W average power rather than something like 13mph that it reports if you use the small ring at the same power.
Much less inflated than the zwift speeds I see on Strava which would have you think everyone is on a TT bike with an endless tailwind 
Not a direct answer but a workaround. You can edit the Strava entry afterwards to assume say 15 miles in an hour - which is around my normal pace outdoors. Adjust as desired.
Some data.
114 minute ride at 152 NP on a flat road* => real world distance 50.81 km (31.57 miles).
62 minute ride at 180 NP => Strava distance of 25.1 km (15.6 miles).
From last year, 98 minute ride at 152 NP on a Zwift road (desert route, claimed 77m climbing) => Zwift distance 50.07 km (31.11 miles).
*flat road – data in TR claims it was 194m climbing, but Strava says 28m, which is much closer to reality.
So, Strava is low for a flat road (extrapolating, 124 minutes at 180 NP would give 50.2 km Strava vs. real world 50.81 km in 114 minutes at 152 NP). Zwift is a little high (extrapolating, would give 58.24 km for 114 minutes at 152 NP vs. 50.81 real world, real world has less than half the climb). Pick your poison.
Changed speed sensor battery and still reads not correct. 1 hr workout, 149 avg power, 3.3km.
I wonder…
Maybe double-check the wheel circumference in the Wahoo Utility app. It’s possible that one of the many updates changed the setting on you.
What on earth? Is this TR estimating the difference in distance? This doesn’t sound right at all.
Don’t have the same experience on a KICKR bike.
I could be wrong but I don’t think TR does anything to calculate speed other than pass on the data to Strava. So if you ride outside, TR send the speed sensor or GPS based speed to Strava. If you ride on a wheel on trainer with a speed sensor then it sends the speed data from that sensor to Strava. In the case of my kickr in ERG mode, the wahoo utility app interprets the speed based off the flywheel speed. So if you use the small chainring as I do you don’t generate a high flywheel speed and therefore don’t generate a high speed. Now if I rode the big chainring in ERG I would likely go faster than my wife but I choose to ignore the speed and distance info in favour of what I believe to be a more responsive ERG mode experience using the lower flywheel speed. The faster that wheel is spinning may give better road feel but it will also take long to speed up and slow down and therefore could impact intervals with larger changes.
Not sure how the Kickr Bike works. I could very well be wrong about how TR handles speed in the app so if someone knows for sure I’d be interested in knowing.
As noted above, you can enable a setting in Wahoo’s app to estimate speed and distance using your power output rather than flywheel speed (gear) and this will affect what is sent to Strava and TR.
It’s a nice feature to give more realistic mileage equivalent to outdoor riding, but I find it constantly reverts back off on its own unless I check it before each ride.