Indoor Trainer speed equivalent of road speed?

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HarrisonK
Posts: 50
Joined: Sun May 27, 2018 8:20 pm
Location: Main Line, PA

by HarrisonK

I'm training largely indoors, on a trainer, for the next month. My goal is to be able to sustain 21 mph for an hour on a perfectly flat road. In order to maintain 21 mph on the road, how fast should I be riding on the trainer? In other words, what is the margin of error between speeds on flat roads with minimal wind compared to speeds on the indoor trainer without resistance settings applied.

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coriordan
Posts: 210
Joined: Thu Nov 16, 2017 3:30 pm

by coriordan

It has everything to do with air resistance and power, and therefore speed won't really be much use on the turbo as a given speed can take a change of effort based on gearing, how tight your wheel is to the turbo and even how hot it is.

One way you can do a test if you don't have a power meter is to get your HR and Cadence, find the right gear (90 rpm for me) and ride along at 21mph on said piece of road on a windless day until you pop. Record your HR for that workout and that will give you a 'guide' for your effort. Do some intervals, training sessions on the trainer then when you are fitter, you can repeat a similar HR/Cadence exercise on the trainer.

Generally speaking, doing 2x20 minute intervals is a good way to train yourself for 1 hour efforts.

Speed on an indoor trainer is a fairly meaningless statistic.

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onemanpeloton
Posts: 367
Joined: Wed Jul 12, 2017 11:30 am
Location: Edinburgh, UK

by onemanpeloton

I agree with the above

aim for an effort rather than a speed
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