If you do get rollers, I suggest doing it now. There is a bit of a learning curve to riding them.

I have a set of the cheap Performance brand Travel Trac rollers. They work well for my use and would probably suit your needs. And I agree that it is probably a good idea to get some practice on them.

I've also seen some very narrow rollers with a front fork mount that are designed for race warm ups. I think they pack up pretty small. That might work well for your needs. Here's one: https://www.feedbacksports.com/shop/...table-trainer/. It's pretty pricey though.

I've been drooling over those ones...but $450ish ain't cheap. :) I think my eventual warm-up set-up will be those, but I need something in the meantime.

If you want to do much more than 200 watts at 90 rpm you probably need rollers with resistance

Problem with rollers is you need flat ground. If you're parked in a field or grassy lot a trainer will be easier. Just something to think about.

is the stages power meter protection plan worth it?

^ probably not.. They fixed the battery door problem which is the only issue I've had.

Just leave the trainer-compatible skewer on full-time so you don't have to swap anything pre-race.

my stages had power drain issue. upon search, this is somewhat common. currently going through the warranty process.

Maybe. They do fail and break sometimes.

sure but i think that would be covered under warranty, no? this is more for crashes and damage, at least that what i've gathered. it's probably worth it though.

It's pretty low risk area IMO, but it's your $$. I didn't buy it when I purchased two Stages for us last year. Glad I didn't because two sets of warranty replacements later we sold them.

what'd you go with instead?

Wahoo Kickrs inside, HRMs outside. Made winter oh so enjoyable. Plus I spend a month at sea per year - the kickr will save my bacon.

I'm not really out of the market, but have been fine by RPE/HR so far. Ideally want a Pioneer. Just need to save $ for it (remember whatever I buy, double it). We are dinks, just dogs and we rent.

I somewhat prefer doing indoor anaerobic work. No need to watch for traffic, plan routes (there aren't any good ones), or worry about differences in FTP between us and me ending up miles down the road.

I broke one on my cross bike (cracked the pod), and had another fail out of warranty. I was an early adopter so they had comped me the protection plan, which covered the out-of-warranty fail. The cracked one still mostly works, but I'd have replaced it if I had the protection plan.

ordered it. the beginning of the end.

yeah that's what I do. Kurt Kinetic Road Machine for the trainer. There should be a glut of used trainers on the market because zwift.

Wahoo kickr snap question: I bought this smart trainer a couple months ago and enjoy it for the most part. Issue is that the resistance generated when just under target seems high. For instance if I have target resistance set to 200 watts and I am at 180 it seems to generate a high resistance (feels like 300 watts!) until I get back up to 200... if I happen to drop down to 150 watts I have to be out of the saddle mashing the cranks to get back up to target wattage. I've done multiple calibrations and tried different iOS apps. Current favorite app is Cycleops virtualtraining.

Thanks for any thoughts on this.

I had that problem the first day I had the SNAP, did the firmware update and advanced spin down,and haven't had it since.

A calibration spin-down might help, as valygrl mentioned. I use a Kickr with VirtualTraining, and I've noticed that it's sometimes a bit heavy-handed in erg mode; but I don't know if this is just a limitation of the trainer or a software issue with VirtualTraining. I've found that hard intervals (above threshold) can be really difficult, because you've got to keep the cadence up; otherwise resistance will go up and you end up getting bogged down. It doesn't help that sometimes the Kickr has 'dropouts' where it momentarily reports a much lower wattage and causes the app to raise the resistance quite a bit.

Interesting, as the complaints I see are the opposite, that the Kickr reads high compared to reality. Definitely keep the firmware up to date and run the calibration, but don't do this every time. Set it once and ride it for a while.

he's talking about in ERG mode.. if you let your cadence drop too low...it indeed feels heavy. I too experience this at very low cadence levels. I really wish they would release the app that lets you adjust slope like the old days, although my kickr currently is matching well with my vectors..stages read about 5w higher, but then I'm left leg dominate too.

I thought he might have been referring to his unfamiliarity with erg mode but that doesn't negate the need to get it working right first.

Yes, I have that issue - Kickr SNAP reads 15-20 watts above powertap, so I have to increase the target wattage to in the app to reach the actual wattage. TrainerRoad has a nice watt matching feature to handle this internally, but Zwift does not (yet), so I have to put in fake higher FTP.

I think it was the firmware update that really solved my issue, not necessarily the spindown. But if you get bogged down, if you come to a complete stop before re-starting, the brake will release and you can get going again. I had the same issue with computrainers in a class I used to take.

Thanks all for feedback. I've done multiple calibration spindowns with identical results. One thing I haven't done is check for firmware update. Will do that and report back!