Did my first group workout today and highly confused. As far as I know I was in ERG, neutral chain position and I did not shift. At points it would prompt me to be at 90w for recovery - the only way I could maintain 90w was to keep my rpms low. This was on 0% grade. As soon as I picked up cadence watts shot up. Riders around me looked like they were spinning away. At other points it would prompt me to keep rpm’s at 80 which I did but it would reduce power and the screen was in red yelling get your power up. To get power up I had to increase rpms and then it would tell me to slow down. UGH. Needless to say did not get the star. I must be doing something wrong. On climbs my rpm low but that was logical to me and I was able to maintain target watts - sprints seemed to go right as well as long as I gave it a beat before accelerating. Just seemed like my rpm’s were low the entire ride even on flats and during cool down when I intuitively want to be around 90 rpms or spinning an easy gear…
I posted an identical question today- had the same experience. On my avatar I’m spinning, but the screen shows me at zero rpms, then jumps to 40 then 80. I had no idea if people were riding away from me or not. I still don’t understand how to figure out who is in the workout and who is just riding that same route. So nuts.
I did another group workout today and other riders on my group ride all have small orange screens in front of each rider. Thats how I tell who is with the workout.
I was having my same problem with watts rpm again today. To hit low watts ,<150w I have to pedal slow rpm to get there which is counter intuitive to me. When high watts are required 250w or higher I have to pedal very fast rpms to see watts increase but do not feel enough resistance which is why I am able to have high rpms. I only hit 450w once. I feel like with the higher watts my smartrainer should be applying some resistance in order for me to achieve so my rpms should be lower. It seems backwards. At any rate to get into the sweet spot which was described in workout as 150w I did shift into an easier gear which allowed me to get my rpms around 90 and stay at 150w. Last effort and it finally felt right. I am going to leave my gear ratio there for next workout and see if thats the problem.
The workout I did was 30 secs high/ 30 secs rest. Impossible. So much switching of gears up and down to try to quickly slow trainer. I have never hit 250 watts-my max was 195. Can’t imagine 450- don’t think it’s possible for me to hit that high wattage.
If you found a ratio that worked-perfect. Problem with interval training is the constant changing to high/low.
@ Jackie BECK
As far as I know I was in ERG
The first thing is to be sure. Check if you’re on ERG mode : use UP ARROW during the game ; you should see “ERG ON”. If that’s not the case (so you would see “ERG OFF”), it’s normal that you’ve to spin more to develop more watts, since you stay on the same gear all the time.
Phillippe. What are those up and down arrows for during the ride? Is it to increase or decrease the watts required. Then there are the other arrows. When I’ve used those arrows, I have never seen anything referencing ERG
The UP ARROW is 1 of the 4 arrows on any keyboard
https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/a/arrowkey.htm
If you don’t see the ERG button, ingame, you have to activate it in the workout module:
Phillippe. That video was awesome. Thank you so very much. What I meant by the up keys is the ones on the game- on my iphone. But seems to be related to ERG mode and what I learned in the video.
I did a group workout yesterday and everything worked as it should - I believe the problem before was that I was not in ERG even though I toggled it on for my last solo workout. I guess it doesn’t stay when you choose a group workout so thank you Philippe for suggesting the arrows. I was able to switch it to ERG on when the blue menu bar popped up.
Also helps on my brand trainer when doing an acceleration to wait a sec to feel the resistance and then accelerate. It takes a beat for the trainer to respond. If I accelerate too soon I can never hit the watts.