I find that with a compact chainring bike on the KICKR the gearing is “too realistic” in that I can’t hit more than about 48 mph downhill because my RPM gets too high. This is exactly how the actual compact-chainring bike would behave on a real road. However, it would be really handy if there was a setting to raise overall smart trainer resistance to simulate a standard chainring on a compact bike.
It seems kind of silly that I should actually have to go buy a physical 53/39 set of chainrings to improve a virtual experience
48mph / 77km/h… I struggle to get anywhere near that virtual Zwift speed on downhills with standard rings as it isn’t about the speed of the flywheel but the resistance it gives you to push back on. Even a 55 tooth would ‘spin out’ on a Kickr and not give you any more virtual Zwift speed, so ‘simulating a standard ring’ might not give you the result you’re after.
A 50/11 is a bigger gear than a 53/12, so make sure you’re running a 11 tooth cassette if you really want to spin the flywheel up on the descents (although likely won’t result in more speed).
