TR on Elemnt - Target Power

I have recently renewed my TR account and am trying to get to grips with my new setup.

Previously I used TR over the UK winter when the weather was not conducive to med-week riding and weekends were often curtailed. In the UK I had the benefit of a garage with dedicated turbo trainer bike on which I mounted my Samsung Tablet with a sound system and a TV on the wall. Using the tablet gave me a very specific power target with the Green/Red at a glance indicator to show how close I was to target.

I am now in a different country/city where the traffic and weather are not conducive to anything other than a very early Saturday morning ride. I don’t have the luxury of a dedicated TT bike/garage/TV/sound system and, as I am not scheduled to be here beyond the end of this year, I am not keen to invest in additional kit such as a tablet and mount. I have invested in a TT which I hope to take home. So I am using my Elemnt as the only head unit for using TR.

Having used it for a week and getting used to the small screen I am wondering why the target power is given as a range which is sometimes quite wide (0-100, 90-120 etc)? I am also wondering where I should pitching my measured power within that range?

It’s not difficult to hit the middle of the power range with a reasonably comfortable cadence and resistance.

Should I be pushing harder to try and get to the upper range of the target power band?

Am I overthinking this?

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I assume you’re using “Outside” workouts, which do give a range rather than a specific option. I don’t think there’s a way around that.

However, and reason you can’t use a phone for TrainerRoad? Stick on garmin disk will fit in a wahoo mount (in my experience) enough to hold a phone on a turbo. A separate case for the phone, with this stuck to it, and you get the TrainerRoad App experience for very little money.

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Yes I am using the Outside workouts.

I have looked for Garmin and Wahoo disks here but can’t find any. Ironically they are probably made here (Vietnam) or China but finding somewhere or a website which sells them is difficult. Amazon doesn’t deliver here.

I think the prescribed target is the middle of the range displayed on the Wahoo. During warm-up and cool down you will see a wide range - 1-120W is my usual first warm-up phase and the wahoo led’s indicate on target when at 60w. During later intervals the range narrows and is usually +/- 10w. So if the target in the workout description when choosing an outside workout says 218w I’d expect the range on the Wahoo to be around 208-228w. Personally I think if you aim for the middle of the range as you are doing then you’re spot on.

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