mrfreezesdefy3

Since we're having such an unusual rain fall here in the south east my road cycling has taken a bit of a hit and I decided to take a spin Class at my lbs in the evenings , I'm going to do an endurance \wattage test Friday so that I can bring my bike when I come ,and the resistance is supposed to be computer controlled thru a roller ,but last night I just used the stationary bike the instructer led us thru an rigorous gradual graph increase ,with a lot of out of the saddle riding on the chorus of a lot of music . At half an hr we were at 120bpm (was the prefered) heart rate , then a recover 5 min ride with an increase again to climax back at 120 bpm then cool down ride n stretching
My question is on an 2 hr or 1hr 50 min ride I usually go 17.5 mph and 1300 ft gain and 30 miles avg or 34 miles avg , so during an hr of this how do I record my mileage on my strava ,
Note that I was sweating like it was July , it was better than just sitting on a trainer in the house ,he was a pusher , ,but do I assume I just did 15 miles for every hr at spin class?? Any advice would be appreciated thanks in advance ,

pdedes

recording mileage is primitive. time and effort are what count.

Maelochs

Speed and mileage in a spin class have little relation to road miles. Primary = no aero resistance. Spinning can be great exercise and it helps real riding ... but it is not comparable. If you spin long enough you will have your own database of spin results, and will have context to evaluate your performance numerically--but you can tell from your own experience how hard you are working.

tarwheel 

I count spin time as mileage, based on my average pace and level of effort. You're using the same muscles and burning an equivalent amount of calories if you exert yourself. I could care less if others consider this "cheating." I track mileage for my own purposes, to assess my training and control calorie intake and weight. For my purposes, mileage is a more useful metric than time or calories (which are hard to count).

PepeM

+1 I apply that both indoors and outdoors.

Machka 

You don't.

You didn't actually go anywhere.

Indoor training (on a trainer or rollers or spin bike or stat bike or whatever) is all about time.


If I do note it on my cycling spreadsheet, and feel like assigning a distance to it, I go with a speed of about 16 km/h (10 mph) ... something fairly low. After all, there are no hills, no wind, nothing technical like dodging potholes and traffic.

chaadster

A couple of things...

First, if you're going to be having wattage and computer controlled resistance regularly, using your bike, and your bike does not have a power meter, then that info is coming from the trainer it's mounted to, and most likely, it will be generating a recording of your ride data, and probably transmitting it via ANT+ or Bluetooth as well.

Given that, you could either get the instructor to email you the ride file, or you could use a device of your own to connect to the trainer data stream, e.g. a smartphone or Garmin (or similar) computer head unit. (Heart rate info is part of this, too, though it comes from the strap and not the trainer.)

Secondly, if none of that is true for whatever reason, you could simply manually create a ride in Strava and enter the time, mileage, and whatever other data you can/want from the readout or whatever you've got to work with there.

spdracr39

I figure the lack of wind resistance is equalled out by the lack of coasting. I do record the mileage but mark it as indoor cycling. I don't care what other people see anyway because I use my statistics for my own reconciliations. As stated above speed and distance are irrelevant to spinning. The goal you are looking for is in your heart rate cycling up and down for intervals or steady zone 2 state for endurance over a prescribed period of time nothing more nothing less. You're heart rate will also always be higher on the trainer because of no cooling air flow which makes you run hot. Your body automatically increases your heart rate to remove excess heat making comparing outdoor rides to indoor spins irrelevant also. Also as stated above after a few spins you will have a database to look at and you can compare the trainer rides to see your improvements.

merlinextraligh

this:

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chaadster

It sounds like the OP is going to have power data, so that floats to the top of critical data, IMO, though it's contextualized with HR.

But yeah, there's no doubt that Pdedes nailed it in the first reply; trainer/stationary rides matter (in assessing conditioning), and on the same terms as road rides do: duration at effort [power, HR].

Puttering along at 10mph is about as useless on the road as it is on the trainer. Do the work, do the volume, and you'll get somewhere whether you're actually going anywhere or not.

10 Wheels

Mileage Only counts when you pass up road kill.

VwFix

I use Trainer road, I have it sync with my Strava automatically. It does tag the rides as Stationary bike.

mrfreezesdefy3

Thanks guys

Dan333SP

OP- Your spin class was targeting 120 bpm as a max heart rate? I don't know anything about your physiology, but you mentioned that you're doing an FTP test so I assume you aren't untrained. For most people 120 bpm is the equivalent of an easy recovery pace. Were you using a normal HRM or was it one of those "hold on to the metal pad" things that are notoriously inaccurate?

Anyway, I admit that I track mileage based on time on the trainer. I don't have a rear wheel magnet so I just assume an average of 15 miles per hour on the trainer, so I can shoot low and not artificially inflate my yearly total.

dr_lha

Actually you can, trainer "miles" count on Strava, except against Challenges. For example if you have a weekly mileage goal, and upload trainer data to Strava, it counts towards that. It's at the very least a useful reminder to myself that I need to put in a minimum amount of training miles.

Of course Strava also records power, cadence, time and all that other stuff which is more useful when training.

WalksOn2Wheels

Trainer "miles" don't count on Strava, but the time required will show up on your activity YTD graph on your Strava homepage. So no, they don't "count" but the time and effort is accounted for this way and that makes the most sense to me.

dr_lha

Well with my setup they do "count" - towards both yearly and weekly mileage counts.

In fact I have to use Veloviewer in order to figure out how many road miles I rode this year, because Strava just quotes my cumulative "real" riding + trainer miles.

Dunbar

I would record the miles roughly equivelant to a similar effort on the road. So 150 watts average for 2 hours I would find a similar road ride and log that many miles. But I'm one of those silly people who tries to hit a yearly mileage target (this year it's 10k miles.)

WalksOn2Wheels

I think it's because I specifically marked mine as trainer miles as there is an option when you upload the activity. I was recovering from ACL surgery and did basically only trainer miles for two or three months.

dr_lha

Yes and my trainer rides are all flagged as "Stationary Trainer" (as Strava figures out automatically when you upload a TCX file with no GPS data, and now as is the default when TrainerRoad uploads to Strava) and as I said, when you use Veloviewer, I can filter them all out to get my "real" miles.

I wonder what we're doing differently? My Strava mileage total for the year reads around 4000 miles, I only did 3000 of those on the road. I can't figure out how in Strava to filter those trainer rides out.

BTW "two of three months of only trainer miles" is what I call "Winter"!

mrfreezesdefy3

I was just going by what the leader said we never put any thing on , I know I was way higher than 120 , that hour was increased by every song in 5 min intervals and during the chorus you got out of the saddle , each time a song changed you turned the knob at the half way pound it was way more than 120 , the lbs said you had to do the stress \ wattage test to be able to use your road bike on their trainer , I need to get a heart rate counter like fit bit ,I can tell you it was worse than riding my rd bike because there was no coasting down a hill and it was hot as hades in there , but it beats sitting on the couch n drinking beer n eating chips I ain't gonna gain that 70 lbs I lost back n I do feel as if I'm in the best shape of my life after being on the bike 11 months ,

Nachoman

I normally never count, or even record, trainer miles.
But I'm just bouncing back from a cycling accident and may end up using 'only' my trainer until the new year, so I'm sort of interested in figuring out how to do this.

WalksOn2Wheels

To be quite honest, it's been a while since I did any trainer miles and I was assuming this was the default. I thought there was a thread on here a while back about a guy complaining because his trainer miles weren't showing up. A google search tells me that I'm wrong (certainly wouldn't be the first, or last, time).

One possible solution to separating the miles would be to assign a separate profile under equipment as "trainer" rather than "Madone" or "Roubaix" or whatever you might have a bike saved as. Assign each trainer ride to the "trainer" bike profile and you can look at your mileage totals at the bottom right of your profile. It will ONLY be cumulative for the equipment profile, so it won't give you a YTD breakdown or anything, but it will keep it separate and make it easier to subtract from your current YTD total if it's as recent as a few months.

VwFix

Also if you tag your trainer miles as stationary bike on Strava, veloviewer allows you to see road vs trainer miles also.

woodcraft

I count spin classes, where I work harder than on the road.

Noted on Strava as spin bike- about 17% of total miles.