rashbre central: I finally get around to using the new improved Trainerroad with Sufferfest. All good. IWBMATTKYT .

Thursday 28 January 2016

I finally get around to using the new improved Trainerroad with Sufferfest. All good. IWBMATTKYT .


My cycling speed and effort results had been plummeting this year.

I've been using my Tacx Bushido turbo with Trainerroad and it has all been going the wrong way. I'd Googled the symptoms of overtraining and so on, but it didn't feel as if I'd been overdoing it.

Could it be a residual mince pies effect from Christmas? Another year on my personal clock? I'm also doing Dryathalon January (no booze) so that should compensate to some degree.

I'd cleaned the bike gears and then relubricated them. It did make a difference to the way the bike felt but no difference to the Garmin readouts. I even changed all the sensor batteries. No difference. Maybe it was me after all?

Then I tried one of the Trainerroad Sufferfest videos. Big Clue. It wouldn't play properly. I retraced my steps. I'd run the update to put Windows 10 on the bicycle laptop computer sometime just before Christmas. It was during that time when I'd mainly turbo cycled lightly whilst watching Jessica Jones and Mr Robot episodes.

The stuttering video was the clue that although regular movies played okay, there was something amiss.

Download the latest Trainerroad and I realised there had been a major update. The software has been completely re-written although I must have missed the memo.

The 'new' Trainerroad (actually November 2015) is easier to user, cleaner and smooth again. Sufferfest is again zanily challenging. The Sufferlandians' motto of IWBMATTKYT holds good. The pulsing music pumps out again at the right beats per minutes.

My scores shot back into the right zone. If anything slightly higher.

Trainerroad can be used as a horizontal strip across the bottom of a laptop screen, leaving plenty of space for either a training video (like Sufferfest) or for a Netflix, Amazon, iTunes or plain ol' DVD. I've used it in all the combinations and really like the fast startup so that a cycling session can be underway in seconds.

I'll have to put January's low TSS scores down to my lack of technical wizardry and make do with the knowledge that I'm on the way to this year's mileage target. Normal service has, as they say, been resumed.

No comments: