UKC

Santa very cleverly took the somewhat heavy handed hints and got the wife a turbo (cycle ops fluid from those nice chaps and chapeses at sport pursuit). Just Been looking in the apple App Store and can't really see anything that jumps out, the cycle ops thing looks silly expensive but has a free trial . She is a proper strava junky and will analyse runs and rides to the n th degree. I had in mind something that connected to the iPad / phone via a blue tooth sensor that would give a program and stats for a training session but Santa must have run out of them . Any ideas ? ( and yes before anybody says it turbo training is boring blah blah blah .....but I intend to dance around in front of her in the lime green mankini that Santa left for me. Or I least I think it was for me as I'm the only one it nearly fits )

In reply to mike123:

not a direct answer but have a look at DCRainmakers site since he tends to be rather good on the tech reviews for data heavy training.

In reply to mike123:

The thought of you in a mankini has just broken my heart rate monitor baby

In reply to mike123:

Not so much a plan but on YouTube look up training programmes GCN. Plenty to keep her entertained. The hill training one is a killer.

I downloaded one app but it kept freezing, found it a bit laborious. Sufferfest are good training programmes too but you have to pay for them.

In reply to mike123:

Trainerroad might be an option.

You will need an ant+ or Bluetooth compatible speed sensor (e.g. Garmin speed and cadence sensor and an ant+ usb stick). Then you tell the program what turbo trainer you use and on what resistance setting. It estimates your power using your speed. They have power profiles for most turbo trainers.

You can see / record your power / cadence on the computer. It also has training plans / sessions to follow.

It costs about £7.50 a month I think.

In reply to mike123: Try trainer road. It's a great training tool to increase performance and measure progress.

In reply to mike123: thanks all, trainer road looks like just the job. What do people use to feed data from the bike to it ?

In reply to 3leggeddog:
Your welcome .

In reply to Rich7:

Personally I find Zwift far more exciting - and if you're on Strava Premium, you get two months free. As for trainerroad, you'll need a speed/cadence sensor on the bike (I use Garmin's newest offering and it seems to work well) and an ANT stick for the computer.

In reply to mike123:
Trainer road has kept me motivated on the turbo, I use the iPhone app and bought a cheap Bluetooth speed cadence sensor off amazon (about £18 I think) which works fine.

In reply to jasonpm:

I'm trialing SportTracks at the moment and will certainly buy. It's a one-off payment of $63 for desktop app only and $79 for desktop and web app. It recognizes quite a few of sports watches (like my Suuntu Ambit) and there are a lot of add ons you can install. I use TrainingLoad which gives you a very similar performance chart as TrainingPeaks does.
I too love stats and want to know exactly where I am with my fitness, training load and ultimately form for a race event etc.
Aall you really need if you're a data nerd

In reply to mike123:

+1 for TrainerRoad. It's the only thing that kept me on the turbo all last winter, and so far this one too. I tried the racing each other type ones, but while they were a novelty for one or two sessions, if you want to use the turbo to get fit, then structured interval training rather than just bashing one out for a half hour / hour are the way forward (so says my wife, fnarr)

As mentioned you need an ant stick for either your laptop, or your iPad/iphone (android not supported) and it costs about £67 per year at today's exchange rate. You then need a speed/cadence sensor for the back wheel to transmit to the App......and a heart rate sensor for the full suite of stats.

Trainerroad can automagically sync with Strava so you get to see the workout easy peasy - it shows nice graphs for speed and heart rate, but if you then sync to garmin connect you can then see the virtual power output.