Sufferfest on roller trainers

Training
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I like that energy! And I agree about all the benefits of rollers. Unfortunately I don’t spend nearly enough time on mine compared to my Kickr.

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63

TBH even the rollers are no substitute for going out into some filthy winter weather, battering hail plus headwinds, and suffering like a dawg!

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64

Any tricks for getting Inside Ride with Smart Resistance to work with Sufferfest? Running them in ERG ( Sufferefest setting not IR setting ) Resistance is all over the place. It lags the power changes in Sufferfest. I have been using Performance rollers with resistance fans for many years and with Favero Assioma PM pedals for the last three years. I have 30 days to return them and would love them to work but don’t want to get stuck with them.

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Hi @Waters ,

A few observations with my Inside Ride rollers:

  • the power consistency is pretty good when the bike wheel speed/roller speed is reasonable high. The variation is maybe +/- 2 or 3 W. When I go to low cadence, or stand, or just use a very low gear for higher power targets, I do see power fluctuations of +/- 10-15 W around the target.
  • the responsiveness is much better with Bluetooth than with ANT+. This is not isolated to the Inside Ride rollers - I believe that it is in the way ANT+ handles sending the power setpoints. There have been plenty of comments about the power changes lagging by a few seconds when using smart trainers connected via ANT+.

A question - are you using the Inside Ride predicted power directly, or are you connecting the Inside Ride smart resistance unit to your power pedals? I don’t have a power meter of any sort, so I just use the Inside Ride predicted power. I don’t care about absolute accuracy (I’m not comparing to anyone else) but I do care about repeatability, and they seem to work well for me in this area.

Any chance you could share a screenshot of the power profile from one of your workouts to show the problems you’re seeing? I could at least then compare with some of mine to see if there’s anything else I can suggest.

66

I may have unrealistic expectations here. I have Di2 on my bike so the rapid changes in Sufferfest are easily met; slight delays in resistance changes via Smart Power will be very different from my ability to quickly change by shifting. I will try via Bluetooth and see if it changes response time. What concerned me more is odd resistance behavior when at a given wattage. Not sure it is worth $ 1300.00

67

I don’t think any trainer will be as fast as a gear change when it comes to changing power. I do change gears in some workouts, especially if the power changes are large, like in Revolver or Violator.

Do you have experience with other smart trainers to compare the Inside Ride roller power change speed and power stability to?

DC Rainmaker made some observations about the power stability of the KICKR ROLLR in this article. See his discussion in the ‘Responsiveness’ section. I suspect that some of the issues he describes will apply to any roller-based trainer.

From a value-for-money perspective, that will always be a very personal decision. I really like the feel of the rollers - for me, it’s as close to actually riding on the road as I can get in terms of bike and body movement. So that covers $945 of the cost. The extra $300 for the smart resistance unit is, again in my opinion, worth the money as it turns the rollers into a decent smart trainer. I don’t find that a little bit of power instability detracts from my training experience. But I understand that you may have a different perspective on these issues, so may make a different judgment on this.

3 Likes
68

Gave them another try today. Power lags considerably. I talked to a friend with a Kickr who said power changes are almost immediate. I tried numerous settings with the Smart Resistance but nothing improved the quirky power changes. Tried changing RRS # with little change. I would expect to have very few gear changes if the unit controls power and cadence. If I need to change gears to meet targets it defeats the purpose. I’m not unhappy with my old rollers and the only thing the Inside Ride ones give me is the ability to stand but that is not a game changer.
I am hoping Inside Ride can work this out.

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@Waters, did you try using the Bluetooth connection?

If you still see the lag on Bluetooth, then it does sound like some sort of issue with the smart resistance unit on the rollers. I do change gears occasionally, but only for really large power changes.