Computrainer Real-World Comparison

Ok, now that I've had my computrainer for a couple of weeks, it's time for me to do an experiment. I'm going to create courses for a couple of the routes I frequrently ride from my house. I don't yet have the Topo-USA software that makes the courses automatically, so I'll have to enter the distance and slope information manually.

The purpose of my experiment will be to see how closely the computrainer courses match the real-world courses in effort (heartrate in this case) vs. speed. Power vs. speed would be an even better comparison, but as of now I have no real-world power meter, just the computrainer.

As I may have mentioned in an earlier post, my computrainer heartrate vs. speed data seems to correlate pretty well with the real-world data that I've collected -- of course the routes are varied for both, so the standard deviation at each heartrate is rather high. So now I'll build and ride my normal routes for specific-course analysis and post the results in a week or two. If the correlation is good, my next step will be to build the Tundra Time Trial course (on the Silver Comet Trail in Powder Springs) that I'll be racing on February 18th so I can get a feel for it ahead of time. If I find out that the correlation is poor, then there is no need for me to go through the exercise.