Recreating Routes in Your Living Room

It’s an common adage: practice makes perfect. But it’s difficult to prepare for races when the actual route takes place halfway across the world. Or if your schedule doesn’t give you appropriate time to hit the course.

Whatever the reason, indoor smart trainers (like the KICKR) have helped riders access unique training plans that can dynamically recreate courses and conditions in high detail. In conjunction with Best Bike Split, for example, riders can access a complex physics engine that takes into consideration power data, course info, and race day conditions to carve a perfect plan of attack.

For triathletes, this is crucial training; Getting as close to real conditions in your workouts can shave off valuable time when rubber hits the road on race day. When each second counts, you can’t afford to throw away training time to incomplete sessions.

So are you looking to maximize your training time for a race? Reach a new PR? Take on your first triathlon? Recreating these routes for your training is simple; just grab your KICKR, start up the Best Bike Split program, and follow the steps below.

How to Set Up Best Bike Split on Your KICKR

Step 1: Create a race course within Best Bike Split. Most Ironman courses are already included (just a simple search for them should pull them up) or you can build your own custom route.

Step 2: Choose a race plan based on your FTP to provide an optimum bike split OR plug in a target time and BBS will load a plan based on those specific targets.

Note: Once you have your race plan, you’ll notice it looks a bit like a cue sheet; there is target wattage or speed to hold for X Miles information available.

Step 3: After you save your race plan, navigate to your ELEMNT and authorize BBS. It will sync your course down in the “Routes List.”

Step 4: Now get on your KICKR. There are 2 ways to utilize this new race plan.

If you want your ELEMNT to control it in simulation mode, just select the route and it will augment the KICKR based on grade simulation (insane KICKR CLIMB session, anyone?). You’ll also have your target power/speed to hold just like you will have to do on the road.

If you want to see the BBS race plan while you train, just select the BBS custom screen on your ELEMNT for live updates on your progress and targets.

So where will you train first in your living room? Let us know how your session with BBS + your KICKR goes in the comments and stay posted to our blog for more on getting the most of your KICKR.