Add Speed & Distance to App

Feature Requests
1

Please add speed and distance to the app interface during a workout.

This is an important bit of training data and motivation for myself, and would really appeal to more general users who are only using heart rate.

I am able to pair with my Garmin speed sensor and that data gets sent to Strava on completion, so it seems like it’s already being captured, just not displayed anywhere.

My hope is that this is an easy feature to implement since the data is already there.

Even better if we were able to configure the fields we wanted to see, so if someone didn’t care about speed then having it as an option certainly wouldn’t hurt.

I think I’ve read a previous comment that speed data wasn’t seen as important to training. It might not be important in the same way as power and heart rate data, but it’s important to me not just as a motivator, but also to help me understand and roughly translate the work I’m doing in a particular gear to what my bike is doing. I use a crank power meter on my road bike with a resistance trainer.

Thanks for your consideration.

2

It’s probably easy for Bluetooth Speed/Cadence sensors but if you only have an ANT+ sensor it is not currently supported.
If speed can already be read from Bluetooth sensors, I suggest using Virtual Power. Try to find the Speed/Power curve for your trainer. And send it to Alex so he can build a database for non-smart-trainers.
Altough, if you have a crank Power meter, I don’t see much use of implementing this in the Trainerday app. Because being the owner of a crank power meter means that you have a Bike computer… Use that to record all data from your indoor ride and use the Trainerday app to visualize your structured training with Power from your Power Meter. Your bike computer almost certainly uses FIT file format and that format can contain a lot more data compared to TCX used in the TrainerDay app.
I already made my point in the App Expectations thread https://forums.trainerday.com/t/app-expectations/66/16
I don’t need another app that can do anything like a Swiss knife. I need an app that let’s me control my indoor structured training as best as possible. And TrainerDay is getting pretty close to perfect for my use case.
But please feel free to disagree with me…
I do see the usefullness to record Speed, but would display Virtual Power iso of speed. Speed is pretty meaningless on an indoor trainer because very dependent on the resistance setting.
And if you record your activity on the bike computer, you got it there anyway.

3

Personally, it also bothers me a little not to have speed and distance, because my Garmin tracking records the distance covered over the course of training.
Currently after exporting the TD activity to Garmin (by the zip) i have to enter an approximate distance because it is at 0.
For the Wahoo fitness app, it has the speed and distance values even in home trainer mode.

4

Don’t know if you fully understood my point: If you have a Garmin, record your indoor session on the Garmin in parallel with Trainerday App. It will record, speed distance and cadence from your speed/cadence sensor. And Power from your Power meter, and Heartrate from your strap and… any sensor compatible with your Garmin. Setup your Garmin screen to show what is important to you. And send the record from your Garmin to the analysis software of your preference.
The Trainerday app will only show your target and actual power, cadence and HR. Use that to make sure you’re doing according to the session. But don’t use the TCX/ZIP from the app.
Makes sense?

5

The problem is, I don’t have a Garmin bike computer. I just have a small Vivisport Garmin watch that doesn’t have a speed sensor option.
Finally, it is a point which is not too troublesome. Don’t worry about it. I can do without the speed and distance data.

6

Ok, now I get it. Vivisport tracks speed/distance only by GPS data which offcourse you don’t have indoors. Then it makes sense to want speed/distance in Trainerday.
What are you using to record/track data from your crank power meter?

7

I don’t have a crank power meter on my bike. I was using a Wahoo Snap home trainer with the Wahoo fitness app in ERG mode.
But now, indoors, I use the TD app because it’s great for tracking workouts, just missing the distance and speed values compared to Wahoo fitness.

Outdoors I use my Wahoo fitness app on my phone with heart rate, speed and cadence bluetooth sensors.

8

If the Wahoo Fitness app allows you to simply read data from your sensors without controlling the trainer, you could use it in the same way as a bike computer. Trainerday controls the trainer, Wahoo fitness app records the activity.
Check the settings in the app if it allows to NOT controll the trainer and only read power from your Snap trainer. Most of these apps can do that.
The advantage would be that all your recorded data (indoor/outdoor) comes from the same device/app and that gives better consistency.

9

On second thought: since both apps will use Bluetooth, my solution will probably not work because Bluetooth devices usualy only support one channel :disappointed:

10

Yes, I don’t think we can pair a bluetooth sensor with 2 apps simultaneously.
Anyway, don’t worry about it, I can do without these data.

11

I think the Wahoo Snap is a wheel on trainer, yes? If so then just put a hub based speed sensor on it and try to connect that to your watch. Then you’ll get your speed and by association distance.

12

Vivosport apparently does not support external sensors. Only built-in HeartRate and GPS

13

Ah, slight problem there then!

14

I agree with every word you wrote here :+1:

15

Not wanting to throw a spanner in the works here but I would suggest that speed and distance is completely irrelevant to a ‘training’ platform.
Your body is going to adapt to training and that training will consist of intensity and duration. Speed and distance are purely an output of this. Your body does not count the miles, only the stress you place upon it.

Of course I completely understand that speed and distance are metrics that people can track and monitor but I’m not so sure it really matters with indoor riding.
Like I say just my two cents :man_shrugging:

16

Thanks for all the great thoughts here everyone. I never wanted to add speed and distance to our files but after listening to everyone I realized people are different and I saw the value. @gvharper I assume you turned on speed and distance for your strava? We also include it in our dropbox files and push to TrainingPeaks. If you are using TCX files from the app itself it does not include speed and distance.

In general I don’t want to do this request either. :slight_smile: It’s better to focus on the must have, not the nice to have to keep that app simple and affordable. But…. for example it might be motivational for some people to say ok I am going to ride 30km today. Like Nate from TrainerRoad said speed and distance are vanity metrics indoors. I like to appreciate not all of us are serious racers and a bit of vanity might be ok :slight_smile: Many software platforms are focused on the hard core crowd. Being an indoor training/performance app at some level we are too, but I like just sitting and watching Netflix on a easy ride. And if I need a Peloton class to motivate me for intervals so be it… TrainerDay is great for tracking and watching random stuff.

17

Connect to dropbox, Strava or TrainingPeaks and download your workout from there. They have speed and distance in them. Just not in the app. Then you can download and upload to Garmin…

18

Appreciate you considering it.

To clear up any misunderstanding, I’m specifically asking for Current Speed & Total Distance displayed during a workout on the app.

Training by Speed in place of power or HR is another subject, which I also added as a feature request.

There is no reason having Speed/Distance as options would need to have any effect on anybody else’s preferred training methods. Ideally it would be optional.

Ultimately, having customizable data fields/displays is the only way you’ll appeal to and suit the needs of a wide variety of individuals.

I am already using my Garmin head unit at the same time, and it displays current speed and distance. I sync my TrainerDay workout with Strava, and it provides speed and distance. Neither of these addresses being able to see my current speed and total distance during a workout in TrainerDay.

This is just my personal opinion and preference, and I can’t speak to what is important to everybody else. But I like having current speed displayed as I translate everything I do on the bike back to being on the road or trail.

Truly hoping TrainerDay goes the direction of appealing to a wider variety and greater group of users, from casual users to racers. A rigid training app will always only appeal to rigid group of hardcore users. There are plenty of those out there. A flexible app can appeal to the millions of people who do not, and will never, invest hundreds/thousands in gadgets and just want to hop on the bike and ride. Appealing to that wider audience could make the lower price model of TD a success. And with a few simple settings/options for customizing how we want to train, could be clean and effective and still appeal to the most hardcore.

Again, just my $0.02 :slight_smile:

I can think of at least four people right now who have basic resistance trainers who I would recommend the app to if they could just hop on with a speed sensor and ride. They would be the type of people to pay $3-5/mo and happily work out a few times per week while watching TV. They will never buy power meters, track training stress, don’t care a whole lot about data, aren’t racing, and won’t spend $20/mo on software. But there are lots of them out there.

Seeing how fast you’re going when you’re on a bike is one of the most basic metrics in cycling that has been around forever. Speed matters! :slight_smile:

1 Like
19

I appreciate the deeper insight. I am not disagreeing with you let me provide a little more understand of my side.

Swappable fields is slightly expensive feature to implement because you need a field designer page. I also believe this is a minority request at this time but I have heard of others asking so I might be wrong. Regarding yoru friends, I believe the best solution for dumb trainers is not showing speed and distance but to convert speed and distance to virtual power. This allows them to train just like if they had a power meter (or similar anyway). VIrtual power is a request I definitly want to do and a popular request. If they just want to record and see their speed than using a bike computer or other software is fine. Our app is more about structured workouts which makes a lot more sense with power.

When you say speed matters, I could ask which is harder 30km/hr or 10km/hr? The answer is we don’t know… We don’t know if you are going up hill or downhill. Without some indication of gradient speed is hard to quatify. Outdoors pedalling harder is not necessarily related with going faster but might just be a steeper hill… :slight_smile:

I fully understand your point and I am not disagreeing that people without power meters outdoors appreciate and relate to seeing speed and distance indoors. If our app used a fixed arbitrary graidient like 0.5% (like we do with our converter)…

Today, most of the riders using our app have power meters outdoors and relate to power. I also agree 100% regarding lots of apps focused on racers. I am happy to provide value to the fitness rider. And I am passionate about presenting a more health focused approach to performance. We will just watch the votes and think about the associated cost with developing this and see if it makes sense.

Thanks agin for your insights.

20

In my oppinion, @Alex is completely correct. Having Virtual Power based on speed gives you more information than just Speed. It better reflects the intensity. It will probably only take you one or two workouts to match that displayed Power number to an RPE felt on the road. And you can’t do this with Speed only, because you can have the same RPE with different speeds when on different resistance settings…

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