Here’s my situation. I recently bought a new bike and plan on having my old bike constantly on the trainer. The problem i have is i plan to move the power meter from old the bike to the new bike, and plan to not have a power meter on the old bike, just using the Kickr for the power meter readings. Is there anything should be concerned about with using the kickr as the power meter, or should i be putting the power meter on the old bike when training inside?
Sorry if this question is redundant or answered in a different thread.
I’d strongly recommend you do a few rides on the kickr with your power meter attached where you record both the power meter data and the kickr data.
This will let you learn the gap between the power meter and the kickr (if there is any) so that you can understand the difference between a 300 watt effort outside on your power meter and a 300 watt effort inside on your kickr.
Once you’ve documented a handful of rides in this way you can take that power meter outside and never put it back inside with relatively impact.
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Makes sense, i’ll do that. Thank you for the input. Does it need to be a 300w effort, or is a longer effort at 220w ok?
Sounds good. If I find an offset is necessary, would I just adjust the intensity going forward?
David
No. The point @trpnhntr is making is that each trainer and power meter have their own unique power curve. They are likely to be close, but not necessarily identical. If between your Kickr and your PM you discover that you have a consistent wattage gap you can factor that in when you’re riding indoors vs outdoors or vice versa. So, if you get going on a 200 watt x 5 min interval on your Kickr (while recording on your PM) and you discover that your PM was reading 210, you know that 200W on your Kickr translates to 210W on your PM. So, the next day you do and outdoor ride and you want to replicate the same workout, you’d need to ride your 5 min interval at 210, not 200.
Things to remember: Make sure you spin down your trainer after 10 mins or so. Calibrate your PM at the beginning of your ride. Remember that riding outdoors introduces a ton of other variables like wind, elevation, rolling resistance, etc.
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You don’t have to adjust intensity based on this if you’re tracking your ftp on trainer road consistently with the kickr
I’d recommend doing some varying intensities with your comparisons. Something like the ramp test will give you variety of comparison points across the powers you will frequently encounter
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Thanks again for all your help.
I guess what I’m trying to understand is how I would adjust the settings to view the same wattage indoors and out as to be consistent?