Before we get into what many athletes commonly experience when having a hard time maintaining power targets - I looked specifically at your history of doing recovery and endurance rides outside, and you generally do a pretty good job of staying in that zone!
There are things we can work on to make that power a tiny bit smoother when riding outside to stay a little more compliant to that zone (which we’ll get into!), but comprehensively, you’re meeting the goals of those endurance workouts outside pretty effectively.
For educational purposes, we’ll also discuss what other athletes may encounter when having a hard time with power targets outside while we’re on the topic of workout compliance.
First: it’s important to identify that it’s not expected, nor reasonable, for your outside power profile to look perfectly smooth, so lets cover a few different scenarios during which you may not meet power targets for outside rides, when it’s okay, and when it may be impacting your success in getting faster.
1. You’re trying to be near the target, and mostly there, but your power profile has lots of ‘spikes’.
When attempting to meet a power target, what we’re trying to avoid that can result in a lot of spikes are instances of ‘chasing the power’, where you look down and see you’re off target and try to compensate with a surge, overshoot, and feel like you’re constantly adjusting.
A common misconception for outside workout is that you should be monitoring your head unit every second of the interval in order to get that smooth power profile, which is not the case (and is also dangerous!). Instead, just glance down at the timer briefly every 5ish seconds for those shorter ones to make sure you’re meeting target power (and to check-in about how much interval time you have left), and using feel to really practice settling in once you know you’re at power.
Knowing what your threshold power, for example, feels like after confirming on the head unit and then consciously trying to hold that by feel takes practice, but also involves not surging/coasting to level it out once you realize you’re off target. Gradual, minor adjustments when aiming for a power target are key, and doing so smoothly is a SUPER valuable skill to practice!
Finally, making sure your head unit is set up in a way that enables clutter/distraction-free visibility when trying to hit power goals is key in achieving this. There are some screen setup best practices for you here: '‘Garmin Workout Sync Best Practices’
2. With the terrain I’m working with, it’s not possible to follow that zone exactly.
Thats okay; in some instances.
Based upon the workout typed, its tricky to know under which circumstances it’s critically important to stick to the format of the intervals with a high degree of compliance, and when its okay to be flexible and extend rest/time between intervals.
Some workouts require you to be strict in the timing of the efforts, others not so much, where the goal should always be to prioritize the work intervals assigned instead of overall time or TSS.
These guidelines should help you differentiate when there needs to be rigidity in the workout, or when you can make loose changes if needed, as it does scale differently based upon the work.
- Endurance/Tempo: Accumulating time without interruption at a specific intensity is a key tenet of prescribed Endurance and Tempo work, so if the interruptions you are experiencing are frequent, either restart the interval when circumstances allow you to be consistent, or just loosely keep track of time lost from interruptions and add them on to the end of the interval.
- Sweet Spot and Threshold: These systems rely upon accumulation to achieve the intended goals of the workout, so brief interruptions are okay, but if they grow in frequency throughout the workout, you may be missing the intended gains of the work.
- VO2max: VO2max intervals generally aim to increase the time you spend at peak aerobic uptake, and this is accomplished in relatively short intervals. Since these intervals are so short, and since rest has such a big impact on resetting your time at peak aerobic uptake, you’ll want to stick to the assigned work/rest time pretty firmly.
This also applies with slightly less severity to rest between intervals, so if you need to take more time between sets to get to a good spot, thats okay.
- Anaerobic and Sprint: These intervals are very short and specific, so sticking to the structure is key.
3. Im too tired/too bored to keep it in the zone prescribed.
-Can you not maintain endurance power targets because you’re fatigued?
That’s okay! Don’t push it, cut the ride time short if needed, answer you post-workout survey honestly, and focus on big recovery.
-Can you not maintain endurance power targets because it’s hard to make a ‘smooth’ power output?
Endurance is a pretty broad zone between 55% - 75% of FTP, so your fluctuations in power are totally fine, as long as you’re staying within that region and keeping the overarching goal of the workout in mind.
Things like getting out of the saddle for a couple seconds after a stop sign (and getting out of endurance zone as a result) are okay, as long as they aren’t standing-start big gear sprints for fun (lol), which brings us to:
-Can you not maintain endurance power targets because its ‘boring’/there are too many sections on your ride that you cant help but go hard on?!
Not good 
. As we covered previously, all of these workouts are assigned with so much intention; even the ‘easy’ ones. The best way to make sure you don’t nail your super tough workouts is to not follow the plan when chill or achievable workouts are assigned.
I know firsthand how stressful it is for some athletes to feel as though they’re not maximizing workout time by having to do ‘easy’ workouts, that they’re not as important as difficult workouts above your current Progression Level, or that you’re not using training time effectively to improve quickly enough.
In reality, a ‘no pain no gain’ approach when it comes to workouts is a great way to burn out and plateau in your fitness. It takes a lot of patience and control to lean into those endurance rides and stay in that zone, but they’re crucial in moving you forward in your overall fitness and progressions long-term. Save those form-sprints and PR climb attempts to integrate into another workout instead!
All this considered, I don’t think you should opt to: ‘I have to do endurance workouts inside’, and instead could look like: ‘how can I approach riding outside differently to make this work for me within my training plan."
Take a look at some of the principals in the ‘Tips For Safe Outside Workouts - TrainerRoad Blog’ as well, and see if it makes a difference for you during your next couple workouts. As always, feel free to DM me if you have specific questions from your calendar for any workout’s outside ride approach, if you need me to glance at your power profile for an outside workout as a ‘compliance check’, etc. We’re here to help!
And then I was actually able to go up from there… amazing what training long duration stuff at proper numbers will do.
