No it’s awesome. Riding a STAC Halcyon, you have to ride in the highest wheel speed for inertia so every ride is 52-12 at 95-100 Cadence. The speed and distance just fly by 
4 Likes
This! I remember saying exactly this in other posts here. Just make the physic calculations follow a velodrome track. Zero elevation and wind changes to account for. This atleast gives a reasonable speed and one you can’t effect by changing gears.
1 Like
This is true, but syncing to Strava in the first place isn’t exactly something that makes us faster - I assume it was done to help spread the word about TR. A few responses in this thread talk about setting the rides to private or not syncing to Strava at all, which defeats that goal.
Having a simple physics model to give somewhat realistic numbers would stop this becoming such a perennial question and allow TR to focus on other things - which will make us faster.
I don’t think it has to be completely accurate. Like a power meter, as long as it’s in the ballpark and consistent, it will be usable.
2 Likes
Here’s my anecdotal evidence from my trainer vs real world, pre-TR subscription: the mileage reported from inRide by KK is within a pretty small margin of error with my vacation rides in flat, sunny Florida, based on RPE and heart rate. Example: If I ride the trainer for 2 hours at a 140-145 HR and 200 watts, and I try to mimic the same ride, outdoors while on vacation on a calm winds day, I end up with very, very similar mileage totals. Within about 6%. Sure, I’m not doing brain surgery based on that, but for “reporting to strava” purposes, its close enough.
That said, given that I’ve routinely ridden non-flat paved roads, gravel roads, and MTB, I’ve always worried about macro calculations based on hours (saddle time, or hours in HR zones) rather than speed or miles traveled. Nothing in my riding history has ever matched the gulf-coast vacation riding for lack of hills and consistent winds.
When I think back about the things that matter, mileage total difference on the term of a month or a year, probably doesn’t matter, just don’t take the mileage or hourly total calculation away from someone who wants it.
Having it on Strava makes some (me) faster. If I bail mid-ride or skip a day my buds know and give me a hard time. Even if they don’t I feel it gives me a bit of accountability.
Depends on what motivates you and who your friends are.
8 Likes
Very good point, I do find the idea of uploading a ‘less-than-perfect’ blue graph stops me from bailing.
4 Likes
But…I’ve gone as far as asking universities querying us about projects to have them build us a microservice that accepts a .FIT file, height and weight and returns the fit files with virtual speed/distance. No one has accepted that project yet though :-D.
Have you open sourced your fit serializer/deserializer?
Why not just make it a user preference/setting? A simple toggle to include or omit speed/distance data would likely suffice.
3 Likes
Isn’t FIT an open format with tons of open-sourced parsers already?
I really hope that you are going to return to the model, where the speed and distance are not recorded.
You are on a trainer and aren’t moving anywhere. There is no movement, there is no speed.
2 Likes
Honestly I don’t think you can win.
My workaround is to dual record and send the Garmin 530 file to Strava. No speed data because the 530 only receives Stages power data (no data from Kickr).
You guys “lose” in that case too, because I don’t get a TrainerRoad screenshot with sponsored link on those workouts (happy to post those). And I try and put the TR workout name with some attribution to TR, and I know that has resulted in two handfuls of new 30 day trials and some are still using TR.
File that in the “for what its worth” and as stated earlier I’d like to give TR some “air time” in my Strava feed but not at the expense of seeing artificially high speed data in Strava.
3 Likes
I’m more concerned about your strava followers if this requires constant explanation
9 Likes
I don’t use erg mode, just a KK fluid trainer with a power meter & speed sensor, so accumulated mileage is still something I’d like to keep track of for my bikes. one wheel revolution is still one wheel revolution
4 Likes
I assume a poll would end close to 50:50, due to that TR would need to let the user choose the option. Personally I am for keeping speed pushed to Strava. The distance might not be traveled as such but I have chosen a gearing which is very close to the gearing I am using outdoors. Due to that I do not over or underestimate the KMs that much.
I like to have my stats including KMs per year and from my point of view an hour of TR workout is worth each and every KM I add to my Strava stats.
7 Likes
I fought with this a lot last winter, I wanted zero miles as indoor. I did the zero-Size-tire trick (worked), recording alongside with a Garmin not paired to the kickr, using a magnet speed sensor without the magnet, etc. Generally it works but in the case of my Snap, it sends fabricated speed data embedded with the power stream so in general it wasn’t super reliable and was a hassle to keep things organized.
In the end I sent the strava entry from Zwift (because their speeds are the most “mathed out” for realism) and used the Garmin recording for TrainingPeaks/TrainerRoad/etc since it cleanly had only the data streams I wanted and discarded the TrainerRoad recording because I couldn’t reliable remove speed/distance from the file.
This x2. As with many options, some will want it, some will not. TR’s best chance for a ‘win’ is giving users the control. The current state is a locked setting unless you use a hack.
One additional reason for including “mileage” is for tracking wear on the drivetrain, tire (wheel on) and trainer. I like knowing through estimate so I can plan maintenance and part replacement.
I am sidestepping the issue with my parallel use of Zwift, that is what uploads to Strava. It’s estimated mileage is close enough for my equipment wear tracking needs.
14 Likes
I use a gear combination that roughly represents what I would choose in my area (big ring, lower top-half of the cassette i.e. a 17 or 16) and this usually gets me ~20moh, which is what most of my solo rides would equate to.
Close enough for government work and I don’t think twice about it.
4 Likes
I use Velo viewer https://veloviewer.com/ to look at my year long data in strava. With that web site you can filter between outdoor and indoor workouts
2 Likes
I haven’t found a good C# implementation.
Just my $0.02, but please don’t spend (waste) any dev cycles on this
10 Likes