Set indoor bike as an outdoor bike

General Discussion
1

I have a MekBelt SM-36 which comes with cadence and speed sensors that connect automatically to Zwift App, right away.

My summer “Outdoor” bike is a GT Avalanche 3.0 for which I replaced the MTB wheels for Road, 26inches DIA.

I would like to match results from my Indoor bike to my Outdoor bike ride to be more realistic. I will be buying a CatEye Pandrone Stealth with no GPS for the Indoor so I can verify the speed of the flying wheel.
I’ll be also wearing a Garmin HRM-Pro Plus which is a BLE sensor.

Is there somebody who see any problem with the kit and
Is there anybody who can advise me on how to set Zwift the right way because right now, the only wheel I can set in Zwift is 33mm wheel on a Zwift TT bike.

Just want to make sure both Indoor and Outdoor situation are the most realistic I can get.

Thanks everybody.

2

Match what “results”?

I tried to do this a few years ago until I stopped riding outside. In general this is what I found (YMMV):

  • It is easier to generate high power peaks outside…
  • More opportunities to coast outside for micro-recoveries…Zwift discourages this in their algorithms
  • Zwift really does not model wind…so workloads outside can be higher

If you are trying to match speed…you really cannot… Outside frictions are different than Zwift frictions. You can get within a mph or two on flat roads but it is difficult to know on Zwift when the road is actually flat. Even when reading 0 gradient there is always a slight up or down. It is an effort in futility.

What you can do is track rides in Strava, Intervals.icu, Golden Cheetah, etc…and track some of the metrics…I am not super knowledgeable about these (TSS, etc) so hopefully someone else will chime in.

Good luck.

3

Thanks for the reply.
I will keep trying but I agree with you that it will always be different.
I was using a basic Tacx before and I was able to ride at 45Km/m to 50, naturally with no wind in my basement.
For now, I only want to know how far out I am from real life and see how I can try to tweak my kit a bit to resemble real life outside

Thanks again for the reply.
Appreciated.

4

Note that I have a power meter on my bike that I am able to compare to the trainer: P1 pedals.