With the weather slowly getting nicer (hit 45 yesterday!) and a new bike coming this weekend I’m trying to get a plan for the spring/summer. Typically I just subscribe to a training program during the winter and cancel/pause it over the summer when I ride outside. I’m really liking TR and would like to keep my old bike on the trainer year around and continue to use it for the more structured rainy day ride.
However I’d like my outside rides to still “count” (I know it wont with AT (yet) but at least TSS (I think) would be nice to have). I don’t plan on doing training rides outside so they’d be unstructured. The bike would also have a different power meter (crank arm) vs the indoor one using power from the wheel on trainer so they’ll be “off”.
Suppose the third option is to just keep them separate and keep track of TSS in Strava. If AT (and AI FTP of course) ever comes for unstructured rides I’m wondering if the power meter difference will impact that.
Not sure if I’m missing something or overthinking but just wondering how you guys handle this as I’m sure I’m not the only one doing this.
Any resources on the above? I’m not finding much out there.
But if I understand correctly…I put my new bike on the trainer with it’s power meter and do a ride. Get creative with some analysis using the above tools and figure out how much higher the power meter is than the trainer. Assuming it’s 5% I’d edit the trainer to read a 5% higher trainer and then it’s “equal”?
Yup, basically. Some PMs let you go in and enter a manual scaling factor or offset. It may also just not be enough to really care. Like in the long run will it really matter if you look back and your 2 hour endurance rides say 95 instead of 100TSS? Probably not. I have 3 bikes with 3 different PMs (Road with a Stages L, Gravel with P2M and MTB with P2M) and I do structured stuff on all 3 and have never noticed or even attempted to measure a difference. They feel close enough so that’s good enough for me.
So maybe I’m just overthinking this then (habit of mine) and it won’t be that big of a deal, especially until it starts being used for AT which my guess is will be smart enough to figure that difference out. I also stumbled across a thread that mentioned rides imported from Strava us their TSS so I could just have a different FTP on that and it’s set.
I do think it may be worth comparing them if you want to just to verify but I wouldn’t sweat a difference of <5%. Most PMs these days are pretty good and will most likely be pretty close.
I don’t think TR uses Strava’s TSS value. I’m fairly certain that TR will take the raw power data and recalculate TSS.
Good info and what I assumed was correct. Was trying to save myself the $50 a thru-axle adapter for my Kickr Snap costs and just not put the new bike on the trainer but I think my curiosity will get the best of me and I’ll end up doing it to get a baseline as suggested.
