Technology is not your friend

I had one of those days today. One of those days that you spend in front of technology staring at the sky imploring WHY?????

Really it was just one incident, but it was a fairly frustrating one. The incident was the indoor bike session that I ran down at Front Runner this morning. It did not want to play along.

I am fairly new to the technology that Front Runner uses to do their indoor bike sessions. While I have been around indoor trainers for years, that exposure has been solo, rather than in a studio environment. I am comfortable with the hardware, ie Wahoo Kickr Snaps, and have been very impressed wit them so far. However, I am less confident around the software used to control the Snaps. It isn't that complicated, but it is new to me. It is fair to say that I am a little nervous around the set up as I am becoming familiar with it.

However, I also like to think that I am fairly tech savvy and so while I was nervous around the set up, I was also pretty sure I would be fine to run the session. In the end I have done it before and it really isn't that complicated. Should be right. Right?

Nope.

The difficulty today was that no matter how hard I tried I just could not get all 5 of the trainers to play along. I thought I had them all set up properly and calibrated, but the system just refused to work as intended. No matter how I fiddled, the resistance on some trainers would be too high, others too low. If I made the session a bit easier for the people suffering, the others ended up just spinning along. If I made it harder, some people had a good session while others ended up nearly passing out. I just couldn't win. Some of the trainers just seemed determined to misbehave. A slightly annoying session to say the least and one that had me running around like mad the entire time trying to figure it out.

However, as frustrating as it was, I am also pretty sure it wasn't my fault. As far as I can tell the hardware and the software was set up correctly. Well as correctly as possible.

The set up at Front Runner is quire new and so we have been experiencing some teething problems, particularly when we have a full house of 6 trainers. We are actually aware of the issues and have been working to fix them, which we thought we had done. I think it has to do with the number of ANT channels available to run the Kickr Snaps. We had increased the number of channels available for today, but it turns out we hadn't quite cracked the nut and we might need more. I think we are on the right track though. It is just a bit frustrating to think you have solved a problem only to find out that you haven't and instead spend the next 70 minutes trying to triage the issue.

Still, you live and learn. Next indoor session we are going to limit to 4 bikes as this seems to be the magic number at which we have no problems. Between now and then I am going to increase the number of ANT channels and have a play with a full house of ANT devices and see if I can get them work all together.

I guess these dynamic sessions where you are constantly thinking on your feet and adjusting as you go are all part of the coaching experience. It certainly wasn't that bad today, but I will be happy if the next one goes a bit smoother.