Struggling to beat old Strava times

Anyone else struggling to beat old segment times?
I don’t understand why I’m struggling to beat old times. I don’t think it’s fitness related I’ve recently upgraded to wahoo kickr and still can’t get anywhere near old times. Old trainer was tacx vortex and calibration was spot on. Though I did notice a change when there was a firmware upgrade a couple of years ago. Any ideas?

Probably because they changed the gravel surface to make it slower (for reasons that escape me bcause it means that segments times now with sticky roads cannot be compared). It means you won’t beat your old times. These sections are jungle route (all of it). volcano exit towards the Italian village, the windfarm, and the front entry to the epic KOM. Probably others I’ve forgotten.

Your speed on gravel on a road bike is about 66% of its old speed.

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Wow. That’s mental. But thanks for letting me. Explains a lot. Cheers :+1:

Hi Gavin,

Any segments in particular?

Also, did you ever do an FTP test on the Vortex and one on the Kickr to compare it to?

Even when calibrated, the accuracy range of a Vortex is quite wide. Up to 5% claimed by Tacx, but anecdotally could be as high as 10%.

When I went from my Vortex to my Neo, I lost at least 20W from my FTP, probably a bit more. That’s more than enough to account for slower Strava times.

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Good point. Haven’t tried that but will give it a go cheers

It is usual to get times on segments that we didn’t really passed trough, for example if there is a fire road parallel to a technical descend with a segment, the top ten results on the leader board will be filled of slow riders descending the fire road official site

I used to have a tacx vortex. They are very generous on the watts for sure. I lost at least 20w when I upgraded trainer