Virtual Cycling.

spoke2cun

So the winter is nearly here. Its so hard to motivate yourself to go out into the cold, wet, darkness. Even with those great 'lighthouse' spotlights! Is there a program where you can attach all of the following. a) Rigging your bike up to a turbo and following certain stage races or a certain method of training, to your lap top and maybe watch it as you go along. Thanks.

smacl

Tacx VR, films, and training software cover the bases pretty well. You can get a VR setup from just under €400 if you shop around. Been using one myself for the last couple of years and find it good, though mostly use just the VR.

furiousox

Lots on youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyHxw0aFtAs

quozl

It's not VR but combining videos from http://www.thesufferfest.com/ with the workout/virtual power software from http://www.trainerroad.com/ gives a lot of that.

If your turbo is supported - ie they have power curve data for it - and you have an ANT+ cadence/speed sensor (such as the Garmin one) then with a cheap ANT+ usb dongle you can pick that up on your laptop. I got a USB dongle for <10e delivered from china - took about 2 1/2 weeks to arrive.

You can then watch one of the sufferfest videos while trainerroad displays your power data and target power for the current interval. Trainerroad has workouts for all the suffervest videos which already have the workout intervals entered so it automatically syncs with the video as it plays it.

The virtualpower stuff is going to be offset from your real power outputs depending on tire pressure, how hard you clamp the turbo down, etc. However if you setup the turbo the same each time then it's consistent which is what you need in order to use it to guide your interval efforts after doing a FTP test on it, or to measure improvement over time.

If you have a proper power meter then you can just use that instead.

I find the above excellent.

duffyshuffle

quozl wrote: »

It's not VR but combining videos from http://www.thesufferfest.com/ with the workout/virtual power software from http://www.trainerroad.com/ gives a lot of that.

If your turbo is supported - ie they have power curve data for it - and you have an ANT+ cadence/speed sensor (such as the Garmin one) then with a cheap ANT+ usb dongle you can pick that up on your laptop. I got a USB dongle for <10e delivered from china - took about 2 1/2 weeks to arrive.

You can then watch one of the sufferfest videos while trainerroad displays your power data and target power for the current interval. Trainerroad has workouts for all the suffervest videos which already have the workout intervals entered so it automatically syncs with the video as it plays it.

The virtualpower stuff is going to be offset from your real power outputs depending on tire pressure, how hard you clamp the turbo down, etc. However if you setup the turbo the same each time then it's consistent which is what you need in order to use it to guide your interval efforts after doing a FTP test on it, or to measure improvement over time.

If you have a proper power meter then you can just use that instead.

I find the above excellent.

+1

pdstck

turbotraining .co.uk is another good website to get training plans from and work away yourself or you can join site for about gbp 15 and do group sessions