Something of a frustrating ride tonight. I’m not sure what I had my settings on for the previous ride, but tonight I suffered again from the pedals / Garmin cycling computer reporting a significantly higher power figure than what The Sufferfest registered, and as such, my workout was probably of a higher intensity than it ought to be.
Now, this was only an Active Recovery ride – 30 minutes, very light spin, 107w target, with 90rpm.
I couldn’t do this. At 90rpm I was in the 130w range, and dropping my rpm to hit 107w meant I was crawling at about 70rpm. This seemed at polar opposites with the on-screen text, advising a high cadence.
The other thing was the speed indicator. God knows why, but these indoor cycling apps do like to lie about speed. The Garmin reported I’d covered ~5km in the 30 minute ride. The Sufferfest, with it’s virtual speedo, had me down at ~10km. Which is accurate? Does it even matter? I don’t know. It’s all quite confusing.
I’m debating my next ride.
It’s either the 4DP test, OR it’s another structured workout, but using the Levels 1-9, rather than the ERG mode option. It might be that this works better. Although it might be that instead, I thrash myself and then spoil the 4DP ride.
The alternative to another workout using levels instead of ERG is to do the 4DP test, then see if that has any impact on the figures that I’m supposed to be hitting.
I’m thinking if I set TSF to use the Favero Assioma pedals, then my 4DP / FTP figure will be accurate even if the damn thing insists on using the Tacx Neo 2 values … which at this point I am seriously beginning to question the accuracy of. And it turns out, I’m not alone in this.
So yeah, basically, I’m out of my depth. I think the next ride should be 4DP. Worst case, it’s a spectacular failure. Best case, it fixes the problem. Somewhere in between, maybe that’s where I’ll end up.
The alternative to all of this seems to be to manual create a few workouts and run them from the Garmin, and ride around on GTA 5 or inside RGT. My God, why does this have to be so complex? The Sufferfest indeed.
