I am riding on a Wahoo Kickr Snap and recently had to change my tire. The old one and new one are both designed for trainer use, but the new one is a little wider and doesn’t have the same tiny triangle grooves in it. I calibrated using the Wahoo app but for every workout now, it just seems like too easy of an effort compared to those I did on my old tire type.
Is this in my head, or is there something that I can change? I looked around and did not see anything so I was thinking that maybe just calibrating is supposed to even things out.
Unless something is going wrong, I expect it is just perception being off. You are right about calibration. For wheel-on trainers, it’s mainly meant to account for the rolling resistance of the tire rolling on the drum, which can vary due to the tire, inflation pressure, force against the drum, tire composition, tread temperature… So, ideally, you do it after warming up the tire/trainer just before doing a workout. The trainer then includes this resistance when determining/controlling total resistance/power. In my experience, this has always worked very well. Calibration might be vary somewhat, but it has never been enough for me to feel it.
JGreengrass’s suggestion is a good one in any case, IMO. Establish a new baseline and work from there.
I remember when i first started using a wheel on trainer I had some variation issues and this topic helped me back in the day (from DCRainmaker) it basically says to check your trainer tyre pressure and drum pressure on your wheel on trainer and do a warmup first then calibrate. Am so happy I could change to a direct drive trainer, I could forget about those steps!
Old thread, but I think I’m running into the same problem. I put a new tire on my bike and haven’t completed a workout without skipping sets or reducing the power since. I thought it was maybe that I was carrying a low-grade cold, but I’m sleeping well and eating well (and testing negative for covid).
Then I thought why not compare my Snap power results to my SRAM powermeter hub - turns out the Snap is now reporting 30-40 fewer watts at the same effort as my hub powermeter. Previously it was maybe a 5 watt difference, sometimes more or less. Now it’s consistently way off. So I’ve been flogging myself way harder than I thought.
I’ve got a Full Frontal scheduled for Sunday. I expect my FTP to drop hugely - but now that I can blame the Snap, I guess I’m okay with it. My actual bike riding outside (when it stops being icy) shouldn’t suffer much at all
