Using computer on indoor trainer
 

Does anyone use a computer while riding on a trainer to track indoor mileage? How do you do it? I don't want wires running all the way down my frame from the handle bars to the rear wheel, and I thought the solution was a wireless computer with the magnet on the rear wheel, so I bought an inexpensive wireless computer and hooked it up, only to find that the distance from the rear wheel to the front of the bike was too far for signal to travel. Any wireless units that do work on the rear wheel?

Garmin 305 with rear wheel sensor or a Polar CS200 just to name 2 wireless computers that use a rear wheel pick up.

I don't know how anyone else feels, but to me indoor "mileage" is irrelevant. Put your bike in a 53x12 and (depending on resistance levels) pedal away at 100 rpm. Now try and do that on the road. I ride by time and not distance on the trainer. If you absolutely MUST use a computer, temporarily mount it behind you somewhere on the frame so you can read the numbers after your workout.

The cateye V3 uses a rear wheel sensor I belive

With Polar units, you can jack up the signal from the speed sensor to facilitate placement at the back of the bike.

I agree. I think what you should focus on on an indoor trainer is the workout. So to me, cadence is the most important quantity. Like the quoted poster says, do an x rpm ride for y amount of time. So any computers with cadence meter will do the job

I use the same basic resistance settings on my rollers all winter long. It is a constant. I set a goal every ride of say one hour or 20 miles or whatever. I try to change those goals to keep from getting to bored. Mileage is one way for me to track these daily goals.

I think that heart rate is the most important data when doing an indoor work out. but I thought to break up the boredom and as a way to add some goals, it would be fun to track my mileage, even though it's not the same thing has miles on open road.

On my trainer (KK Road Machine), trainer miles are a little bit harder than road miles. But that's not the reason I think running a speedometer is a good idea.

Trainer speed is related to power. For some trainers (like mine) that relationship is known well enough that you can "train with power" if you know your trainer speed.

If you have a good trainer (like mine) where resistance is not greatly affected by temperature, trainer speed will give a more reliable measure of effort than heart rate. HR is affected by heat (a real problem indoors), dehydration, even cadence.

I have a Road Machine and use it for this purpose, although I tend to factor in cadence and HR. So if I want to practice "hill repeats," I'll pick as speed (i.e., power) and gearing/cadence to hit the right zone. The nice thing is that work outs can easily be compared week to week.

Temp is pretty constant in my basement, although a fan is a must to limit HR variability.

A) Counting miles on the trainer is pointless. If you insist on counting something, you should count "effort" either as watts or heart rate, and "time". If you are training for a purpose, record time, watts AND HR.

B) Does the Garmin keep recording if you aren't actually moving? I have a 705 and CinQo on the way.... but it occured to me that I would probably want to keep using my Powertap on the trainer, because the GPS would detect no movement and the 705 would stop recording.

Does anyone have any experience with this? I'd love to use the 705 and the CinQo on the trainer to record power and HR w/o having to use the powertap wheel. It seems so... redundant.

how do you measure power?

With a power meter. They are pretty expensive. There are some that attach to the crank, others, like the PowerTap is a hub that goes on your rear wheel.

No, counting miles on a CRAP trainer is pointless.


53x12 @ 100mph on a KK trainer is 34.5mph and nearly 950 watts. If you can "pedal away" at that level for any length of time I look forward to seeing you at the Tour.

Some trainers also measure power... Blackburn has an ergometer for their fluid trainer, for example.

As with all my posts, I need to remind the participants that I am not an AIG executive; I don't have an unlimited budget to spend on biking. I have a basic magnetic trainer (one that received the best rating by Bicycling Magazine), and an inexpensive computer from Nashbar. Both serve me just fine. I don't care how good the trainer is, you'll never simulate road riding 100%, so my intent is not to equate the two, but rather just have some sort of means to track my progress, or set goals for myself, much the same as I do when road riding.

+1 There is no such thing as a mile ridden on a trainer. It is an arbitrary unit of measurement that can be defined to mean pretty much anything and has no correlation with effort. Conceptually, the computer can measure it because your wheel is rotating, but practically, you haven't gone anywhere.

Yes, you can set it to not auto pause.

Yes, I was using mine on the trainer this morning.

http://www.photoscene.com/kimandsteve/images/3527.jpg

Just record time, and HR if you have it.

Not to be a jerk but Ill count miles as a goal if that keeps me going. I have been doing this long enough to know what works for me.

Just buy a cheap Cateye Astrale computer and take about 5 minutes to run the sensor to the back wheel and crank to get speed and cadence. It takes about that long to take it off in the spring if you don't like the wires. If you have a Kurt Kinetic trainer that has an accurate correlation between speed and power (you can download the power to speed chart on their web site), you will have an accurate estimate of power output (it is correlates pretty well with my Powertap).

It is clearly more effective to train with some data on the trainer. In fact, it is pretty hard to do interval training in the winter without it.

Jerk :innocent:

I like that answer. Anyone who has ever ridden a stationary exercise bike knows that there is also useful data to use as motivation on the display, regardless of it's practicality. Maybe I'll install my new wireless computer on the front wheel since it doesn't work on the back, and use my wired computer on the rear wheel indoors. When I take the bike outside, I'll take it off and rely on the wireless unit up front. Thanks for the input!

Turn the resistance down far enough and it's doable.

I'll agree that it's useful while training, just not that it's useful to record... It is useful as a measure of intensity that can be compared to other similar workouts. It's when you try to start comparing that to actually riding on the road that it starts to become meaningless. If you have a trainer that more closely relates to actual effort then I'll agree that it's less of an issue, but I still won't consider that an objective measure of "distance" ridden.