I have a 25 mile round trip commute on a fixed gear bike. I am having a hard time completing some of the more difficult training rides during the week because I am tired. I would love to start tracking my commutes in TR but I don’t have a power meter on that bike (and they really don’t make power meter crank arms to fit a fixed gear). TR keeps reducing my FTP because I can’t complete those tough rides lol. Any ideas? Can I manually enter those rides in and estimate my power? Will TR factor those in when suggesting training rides for me?
You could wear a heart rate monitor and then upload the rides to TR.
If the rides are impacting your hard rides, can you ride them easier or cut them back?
1 Like
Could get a pedal based PM like the assioma mx, if you wanted to go the power meter route of course
4 Likes
Are you using anything to actually add your rides to TR, like a Garmin Edge? Even with heart rate data, I’m pretty sure you’ll get some sort of TSS score. That combined with the post ride survey should contribute to letting TR properly adjust your workouts.
Another vote for the Assioma MX pedals. I love mine, especially as I can move them between bikes.
2 Likes
You need to train when you are not already fatigued. More is not more.
- Ride commutes really easy, flip to singlespeed and do a lot of coasting
- Manually enter solo rides for your commutes and record an RPE
- Find recovery days, train hard after a recovery day
2 Likes
Knowing the power is going to help, but you’re going to be just as tired as being on a fixie, theres nothing you can do except slow down.
Normally the nuclear option, but do you have to use a fixie ?
1 Like
My commute, roughly three days a week, is 27km each way. I’m lucky enough to have a power meter on the bike I use for that, so TR gets power and heart rate data for those plus the ‘how did it feel’ rating. TR adapts my scheduled workouts to take account of the commutes - the changes it makes based on whether I pushed a bit hard on the commute versus cruising into the office all seem sensible. When I forget to charge the power meter, or for some reason it doesn’t connect to my Garmin, TR still does a decent job of adapting trainer workouts based on the perceived RPE and heart rate.
There are lots of power meter options that will work for a fixed gear bike. Power2max do a great spider based one aimed at track bikes and there are lots of good pedal based options. All of those are a lot of money though, and take away from the simplicity of a fixie to some degree. Personally, I’d just make sure you are uploading the rides to TR, entering your RPE, and use a heart rate monitor. The system will then be able to do a decent job of keeping your training on track (especially on the fatigue management side)
1 Like
Thanks all! I don’t have another bike to commute in right now. I’ll upgrade at some point but it’s not in the budget now. I was able to manually add rides into TR with a TSS so let’s see if that helps.
will also look into the crank arm power meter options mentioned.
Hey @ngierut 
Sounds like your commutes make you tired so you can’t complete the training that makes you faster. (TR Workouts). If commuting by bike is the only way to commute, then I would maybe switch your training to a masters plan so you’re only doing 2 interval days per week, then the extra endurance day I would subsiute it with your commute. And then try to find at least one day that you are resting, because as of right now you are doing some sort of training every day (bike, run, swim).
If you want you can DM me and we can see to build a schedule that works and doesn’t just keep building fatigue.
1 Like
I run a spider based PM on one bike, pedals on the other, and crank spindle on another. Spiders are not single sided and can be relatively inexpensive depending on what crank you now have. You might check out Power Meter City to explore the various pedal, crank arm, spider options.
25 miles is a long way - have you got long flat roads, or a serviceable hill en route?
thanks!