Sometime between late December and now I have noticed that the “feel” of my trainer is way off. It feels like I’m pushing against an invisible pile of mush rather than putting force down on the pedals. I don’t think it ever used to feel like this but maybe I’m just remembering differently. I did update the firmware sometime in December to the latest (I can’t recall how out of date I was unfortunately, but I don’t think I had updated in long while).
Mine occasionally feels weird since mid Jan or so. Felt like it lost power sometimes and I did have to stop in the middle of a tempo ride because if just stopped resisting. Has been fine towards end of Jan.
We’d recommend trying out your KICKR Core with a few different training apps if that is possible. That can help you determine if the problem lies with the trainer itself, or with a particular app you are using.
In any case, we’d also recommend reaching out to Wahoo Support if you haven’t already.
So the plot thickens… maybe…
I tried turning off power smoothing and increased the gearing to try and get that wheel spinning. I noticed that sometimes the wahoo cadance would register as 160 when I’m pretty sure it meant 80. I also noticed that the power had some crazy swings.
Overall the bigger gearing made things feel a bit better but I still noticed that sometimes I felt like I was always on the edge of the ERG spiral of death.
I do use Zwift but I not with erg so I don’t notice it at all. More investigation to follow.
With respect to cadence, the trainer does a decent job estimating it, but the method is definitely fallible. It looks for “pulses” in power as we are not perfectly smooth machines most of the time. These subtle changes in the power stroke align with cadence most of the time and makes for a decent measure at the level of accuracy most care to track.
Noting that, it is very possible to get bad cadence data with a particularly smooth pedal action. This is even more likely with a higher flywheel speed if you follow it well with your pedal input. So major deltas to your actual cadence are expected when the system doesn’t “see” the expected rise and fall in power through your stroke.
That would have been my recommendation – check your gearing.
Lower gears typically make you muscle through the entire pedal stroke as if you’re on a climb whereas higher gears utilize the momentum of the faster flywheel speed which feels more like you’re pedaling downhill slightly.
I tend to sit about 2/3 - 3/4 of the way up the cassette as I feel like there is likely some benefit to utilizing more muscles and pushing/pulling through as much of the pedal stroke as I can.
