Originally Posted by wjclint

Sorry but I have to disagree (yes I am a new rider and less than a year ago I didn't even have a bike but . . . .)

I have read multiple threads on here about how "speed" and "distance" on a trainer are irrelevant and how anyone that thinks otherwise must be a Fred, or just dumb, or whatever. I agree completely that speed and distance on a trainer do not relate to speed and distance on the road - (thank you Captain Obvious I could have figured that one out by the fact that I started the trainer session in my bedroom and was still there when I was done).

But they do relate to power and work for those of us without power meters. For example if I do two trainer sessions of exactly 60 minutes and all I monitor, as suggested in the above post, is heart rate all I know in the end is that in workout 1 my average HR was 150 and in workout two it was 160. But what if I also know that in workout 1 I went 20 "miles" but in workout 2 I went 15 "miles"? Well I have learned something about the workout that I would not have known if I didn't monitor speed and distance.

Also, if you know the power curve of your trainer model you can directly convert speed or distance to power with the correct formula. As long as you keep your tire psi the same and clamp down to the trainer with the same pressure each time you have a pretty good power meter without actually having a power meter. If you don't know your speed or distance you don't have the variable you need to convert your trainer's power curve to watts.

All information is good and useful as long as you know what it means and as long as you only compare apples with apples and not with coconuts. So I keep track of speed and distance when I do trainer sessions using my Garmin 305 with GPS off and the GSC-10 on and compare those numbers with other workouts and convert the distance tracks to power using the power curve for my trainer. I don't compare trainer sessions with road rides.

If you are worried about talking about speed and miles on a trainer making you look less roadie and more Freddie then just say how many times on your trainer you made your wheel of x circumference revolve a complete time in y number of minutes (which is of course what speed and distance on a trainer are). Then explain how you converted those revolutions per minute to watts using a 3rd order polynomial.