Hmm, interesting. To offer myself as a datapoint, I am in a major metropolitan area of the US (I guess second largest market if that gives you a clue) and have consistently been getting the ‘No Ads Available’ message, so I wonder if there is something funky going on with Google’s end.
Yes, I am talking about cycling, just to be clear.
Hmm, how do I use the ERG + slope mode? I think I read about that on your blog… It requires a specific format of intervals.icu workout file, right? Just confirming since I do not see it explicitly as an option under ‘Settings’.
From what I can see from Google’s dashboard that it provides, Approx 50% of the time, there are no ads (of which, only 20% of ads are actually shown - which means, ads are loaded, but users are not viewing them to gain medals)
This post should help. Short version is, any watt that is <10 would be regarded as slope for that “interval”
Like all coders/ Engineers, they are not v adept at writing out these blog / informational pieces
Ah I see! Okay if I try out ERG + slope mode sometime soon I will let you know. For what it’s worth I have been using the slope mode on random courses to break up the monotony of my long indoor rides and it has been pretty nice. I will say the ‘downhill’ portions feel a lot harder than outdoors but I use smart rollers, so don’t really have a proper flywheel. I am sure it feels better on a regular trainer.
Also, for what it’s worth I have had ads pop up a couple times in the last week so I know it works now at least. Still surprised how rare they are though.
Both Uphills and Downhills are much harder than outdoors. In fact, any indoor ride (for me) are much harder than outdoors. There may be other factors, but to me, one big one is that you don’t really get much of a chance to coast.
Fun Fact, did you know that Zwift, even Downhill slopes are halved eg: -8% = -4% by default. something like that. I beleive it’s called “Trainer difficulty”. I’m gonna be replicating this as some of my indoor slope rides of my outdoor rides just seems so much harder vs outdoor.
re: ads - can’t do much about it. In fact, the more this app progresses, the more it seems that developers are at the mercy of Google Ads. One wrong more and Account Banned.
I use Trainerroad to control my smart trainer and always use “resistance” mode to set the power. Is there a way to use BreakAway in the same way? (resistance goes from 0 - 100, so a lot of options are possible.
I didn’t know TR offers “resistance” mode. I googled it a bit and read some, but still unsure how one does a Structured training using resistance mode.
Do you change the resistance level at every interval or just use 1 resistance level for the entire workout?
say in ERG
10m 50% FTP
10m 80% FTP
10m 50% FTP
how does this work for resistance mode?
The app currently offers Slope Mode, as i understand it, slope mode essentially is just resistance mode since it also needs users to manually change gears to reach the target resistance.
Is the Structured workout basically just gonna be like a Suggested Target, a Graphic (of the workout0 and then 1 set resistance for the entire workout (unless you change it).
is this how it works?
While I sounds interesting, this could possibly be a huge undertaking as the architecture of the app would needs changing.
Have you tried out Structured Slope Mode workouts?
Im thinking about this mode…
you say it’s 0 - 100? I think it’s trainer dependent, My trainer, I see it’s Trainer App shows 0 - 10 so that’s a big difference… I wonder if 1-10 == 1-10% slope
When I use my Edge 530 to control the trainer, I can also set a “resistance” target, but only 1-10. But the steps are way to big. With the slider 1-100 you can finetune the resistance on the trainer.
you can also keep the resistance at a set point and change your gearing for the interval. This allows for some interaction. e.g., you can ride at resistance 5 with cadence 85 to achieve 50% FTP, fro 70% ftp you then consciously shift down and increase your cadence to 95
When switching to resistance mode in TR I always liked to have the slide around 18%. This matched my preferred gearing and Z2 power. From there I would just switch gears and/or change cadence as the goal power required
Personally, the uphill portions feel pretty realistic. You are right about the constant pedaling thing for downhills, but I can definitely feel a lot of resistance being applied by my trainer that kind of feels off. Not a big deal as it is easy to change the resistance by using the + or - buttons for slope… and I think it is mostly because I have a tiny flywheel. Probably feels better on a conventional smart trainer.
Anyway, great work… I am here to stay so will keep providing feedback etc… Haha… too bad about Google Ads but I will buy medals as needed. Happy to support.
What Trainer do you have? FTMS? There’s supposedly a field that when queried will return the supported range of “resistance” from a trainer, but I don’t have an FTMS capable trainer but I will look more into this definitely.
BUt instead of using resistance, i will use Slope % first as that’s what I already have coded up and is confirmed working.
ON TR, when doing workouts on resistance mode, Is Power Matching enabled or disabled? I would guess that it’s disabled since unlike ERG, no actual power is being output by the trainer (hence, nothing to match). Its gonna be acting like a dumb trainer w/ those resistance dials correct?
Currently for SLOPE mode, powermatching is turned off by default for BreakAway: Indoor Training
Not very familiar with Zwift, but I guess this feature is pretty simple. Is it configurable by grade, or is it just a general slider for all grades?
If the former, that actually sounds like a good idea so people can adjust based on how their specific trainer/device feels on certain grades.
So for example, in my case I would just leave it as is for the uphill portions, but maybe reduce resistance by half on any negative grade. that is effectively what I sometimes do manually now.
I’m an everyday user of your App and I’m very much happy with it! Recently I tried to use SLOPE mode but my trainer do not react to the command. The app shows the x% slope but the trainer remains at minimum resistence; I tried a ramp 1% to 9% in 2min and nothing changed.
In ERG mode it works perfectly and resistance is modified to keep the Watts. Traner is Elite Direto, App on IPhone 13 (and no other devices w/ BT around).
Any suggestion?
Your Elite Direto, is it connected as FTMS or as ANT+FEC?
for FEC, I can confirm that it’s working (cos that’s my trainer), for FTMS, I believe that some have tried on the Zwift Hub and it works. I think @Toshiro also uses the SLOPE mode and it works on his trainer as well. Not sure what his trainer is tho.
Just to verify,
you went to SETTINGS
Change to SLOPE Mode
you go to TRAIN Tab
you start a Free Ride workout
You went from 2% grade to 9% (clicking the +/- button)
Next days I will better check. What I did is:
I made a workout plan in intervals.icu and I put a line such as:
3m ramp 1%-9%
The rest of the wo was in ERG mode (i.e. with % above 50%). So I try to mix ERG and SLOPE. Ideally I wanted to do FTP test with the hard part (either 20m or 2 x 8m) in SLOPE mode and the rest (i.e. warm up, few sprints and cool down) in slope mode.
So I did not change anything into the settings page (that is normally in ERG mode, but I thought it would change based on the wo command from intervals).
Thankyou for your support
Oh… you’re doing an ERG+SLOPE structured workout, yes, the goal is to change from ERG to SLOPE mode using <10% Power requirement in the workout builder.
I will test it out and see if anything has changed from my side. But please also do a SLOPE mode (only) workout and see if there are any resistance change just for confirmation.
