Don't you mean 6800 (Ultegra) if thinking Stages, not 5800 (105 2015)...?
Great average: https://www.strava.com/activities/349500509
Good call on the ANT+ USB stick, you're half way there already!
The novelty of the Turbo will wear off very soon, when it does videos can be a good way to 'pass the time'. In theory anything which is a distraction without requiring 100% of your attention is a good thing. I found watching rugby/Game of Thrones good for base work (maintaining cadence for sweet spot etc) but for the more complex things I needed less of a distraction and more of an encouragement. Sufferfest videos and the GCN pages on Youtube are good for this.
Resistance is futile, kind of. I did some drills of low cadence/climbing workouts where I just screwed the turbo really hard against my rear tyre. I used old tyres for this rather than ruin my trainer tyre. It worked well but the smell of hot messy ruined rubber was rather offputting and not something I'd want to do for long periods or more regularly. I turbo outside and even then the smell was pretty bad!
Trainer is more to wear you out or to do intervals on than climbing work. There's lots of drills you'll read about online you can use rather than subscribing to something like TR. At least until you're sure you want to follow some kinda training structure then it is invaluable.
Oh I'm sure it will! Even on my first run that seemed like a long 20 minutes! TBH I don't plan on using it much and certainly not this time of year, I just wanted to make sure it worked in case I needed to raise an ebay claim.
Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of resistance for what I need, I was just expecting it to have more resistance than I could overcome in top gear. Further reading shows me that a fluid trainer would do that but not a mag.
I'm not 100% sure I'll go down the trainer road route but I'll certainly need something to give me a bit of structure and anything that gives me some form of feedback of my effort is going to require a subscription.
As I'm a lazy begger I've already gone off the idea of a trainer tyre or dedicated trainer wheel. I'll swap to one of the Kendas that came with my bike over the winter when I'm unlikely to be using it outside much and just use my regular tyre if I use it other times. At £11 a pop for Lithion 2's I won't lose sleep if I wear them out a bit
Am I a bit wrong in the head for being slightly annoyed at the silver Cycleops skewer that now has to live on my black / dark grey bike?
