I have been off the bike for 6 months due to a nasty bout of vascular labyrinthitis. My balance has been compromised and the only way I can ride without falling off is on the turbo. Sad times. I have been using turbo crank to gee me along (http://www.turbocrank.com/mobilebeta/index.php)
but I have nothing to compare it too as up until now I was a turbo virgin. Can any one give general details for a comparison, like, if I average 18mph on an hours turbo how does that compare to distance if I was on the road. I know there are more variables on the road, but if we say rolling road with light wind?
I may be asking the impossible.
Thanks and remember however bad your ride is, at least you’re out there.

You have my sympathies and my respect in equal measure my friend.

Speed is less of a relevant measure than heart rate to be honest and this would be a good time to do some work outs based around that.

If it helps, my max HR on the turbo seems to be 190 and I tend to try and average 166 over a 60-70 minute session, where the ramp up is from about 140 onwards (so to get to an average of 166, I tend to ramp up and spend quite a lot of time at 160+)

Once you got some bench mark data under your belt you’ll start to learn what you can do. Once you know you can do it on the turbo then when you get back on the road or mountain bike, if you’re hurting at say less than 85% of your max, you’ll know that whatver your body is saying your heart still has more to give. It’s quite a rewarding experience really.

Difficult to compare. Worth having a look at something like TrainerRoad and do some workouts with virtual power. It’s quite a good way of measuring progress too with various power tests (though you can do the same from speed as it’s directly related to power on the turbo.) If you do work with power then you can use things like NP, IF and TSS to compare workouts. You can also join the STW group and compare your workouts to fellow STWers too.

Thanks for the info folks. I will continue to wish for rain (sorry). Makes it easier to be stuck inside. 🙂