Speed and distance indoors especially in ERG mode don’t make a lot of sense. Now that said some people love to focus on achieving specific distance goals. So an indoor approximation is great.
So indoor trainers output speed and distance. The problem is these trainers don’t know your weight or typical riding position or drag coefficient, rolling resistance and a host of other factors that equate to speed. Also speed and distance are based on gearing. While in slope mode this is not horribly off in ERG mode you can be in any gear and be going really “fast” or really “slow.” Because power is not depending on the gearing. There is a much more direct relationship between power, your weight and speed and distance.
So at TrainerDay we do not use this speed coming from the trainer but convert power to speed/distance. We also add maps to routes to your rides if you turn them on in our Strava settings, the climbs will slow your speeds a lot.
So you can turn off the maps if you want or only use interesting places which is flat. And you can further adjust your power to speed ratio to more closely match your distances outside using Drag Coefficient below.
