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Tracking speed and distance on a spin bike

Former Member over 4 years ago

Can anyone help! I've recently got the Garmin Venu. I am a spin instructor and looking to see what I can use to track speed and distance or if it's even possible most questions on here have been regarding turbo trainers which you can obviously still attach something to the wheel but can't do that with a spin bike as it's not a proper wheel if that makes sense TIA

0 tmk2 over 4 years ago

Depending on the type of bike several options are possible.

Some smart spin bikes transmit speed data which can be captured by the watch. This is the best solution, but such bikes are rare.

Another option is attaching a speed sensor, but as you already noticed, it is not easy to attach on most spin bikes that do not have real wheels. You could try attaching a speed sensor to the crank arm, but this means that speed will be directly related to cadence, and in a general case will give you different readings than speed indicated by the bike. So in many cases getting speed on the venu from a spin bike is quite simply not an option.

0 SylvainGa over 4 years ago in reply to tmk2

Well, if you interpret the spin bike as a single speed (fixed gear) bike, the cadence is directly related to the speed so that could be an option.

0 tmk2 over 4 years ago in reply to SylvainGa

Yeah, but many spin bikes do not have fixed cadence-to-speed ratio, but also take resistance level into account when calculating speed.