I’ve been forced off the road bike for a couple of years due to patellar osteoarthritis and severe PFPS and even riding on a roller with 0 resistance for 10 minutes caused my knees to hurt badly the next few days. I finally reached a state where the mechanics of my knee cap improved enough to do gentle rides for 1,5 hours a day without any noteworthy pain.
Now here is the point: The docs said I am not allowed to push hills for some months so I commute to work using my e-bike (20 miles, high support to just keep my legs spinning) and additionally I want to progressively load my knees on the road bike on the rollers, using my power meters to determine the wattage. I renewed my TR subscription to use the calendar as a training diary, but not for intense structured workouts, but to get some insights on how my knee pain develops, how much load they tolerate etc. I am still interested in FTP, fatigue detection, TSS, though.
My plan was to just upload all rides (e-bike commute rides and soon my road bike rides with power data) into the calendar. But will these e-bike rides skew the calculations of some features like fatigue detection, AI FTP etc.? For example: If TR doesn’t know I was riding an e-bike with lots of support, will it think I am super fit due to my lower heart rate? It doesn’t know my heart rate is low because I got a motor supporting me after all…
I don’t think speed or elevation are factors. When occasionally borrowing an ebike (without a power meter), I simply use a HRM and let TR generate a hrTSS. TR will see that you went on an easy ride, not that you are a hill climbing monster, I’m sorry
@spinnnout is right. We don’t use speed data in your fitness calculations. If your e-bike has a power meter, it likely only reads the power you’re producing. That’s how it knows how much assistance to give you.
Otherwise, using HR alone is a good idea, as that’s usually a good representation of effort.
I use a turbo levo for occasional recovery MTB rides. It is amazing how much fun you can have while staying in zone 2. It also helps skills with the higher speed and the ease of sessioning a trail. It’s fun riding to the trail, it’s fun on the single track, it’s fun on the descents (big brakes, big suspension) and fun on the climbs (too much fun). I have it set up to deliver all the power but only proportional to the human power. The built-in power meter does report human power, not total power, and is good enough for what it’s for. Also, works great with TR.
@eddie and @spinnnout : Thats good to know… I am far away from being able to train normally and I am sure that the knees will collapse before I hit any reasonable load, but at least I can try to slowly push it up and ride some hours while knowing the data is fine. I’m a little data nerd even though it doesn’t make any sense in my current state.
@Saddlesaur Thats a good idea, still have my Assioma Duos from my road bike. My smart rollers do measure watts quite well, too (almost no difference to the Assiomas) so I could just put them on the E-Bike.
@ukbloke That is great! My bike does that, too, but getting the data into TR is just annoying. It got a Bosch performance line CX motor and it does record the watts produced by the rider, too. But if I export it to Trainer Road via Strava, the watt data is gone. I need to record the ride using the Bosch Flow app, export it as FIT file and import it into TR manually. The GPS look really messy and I am not sure about the accuracy of the measured watts, but maybe I should just attach my Assiomas and compare both readings.
Either way, chances are high that I won’t be able to do proper training without knee surgery first so I am sure that the best I can do is riding the E-Bike for a little fitness at least. But I am not loosing hope just yet.
That is strange. My Levo syncs its data to Garmin Connect, then to Strava, then to TrainerRoad and the power data is intact in TR. If the power is recorded correctly in the FIT file (e.g. visible to Strava), I don’t see why this wouldn’t work. You could export the FIT file from Strava and inspect it with fitfileviewer.com to see if there’s anything unusual about it.
(I wondered if Bosch was doing something proprietary here with their “Live Data Interface” nonsense and recording power in special Bosch ConnectIQ records, but it doesn’t look like it to me. For example, they don’t require you to use a special Bosch ConnectQ app.)
