For some context on the numbers below. The past 2-3 seasons have been heavily indoors for me during the off-season but more outdoors during the race season. This year I spent more time in the April-August time frame indoors than ever before. I intend to drop structure and indoor rides significantly for the remainder of August and all of September before going back to structured training, primarily indoors, in October.
I’ve given more detailed ride and race history elsewhere on the forums if you want it - but this season was competing at the pointy end of the P12 road race fields in the north eastern US with several podiums and another few top 10s. This season (and last) I was racing at around 4.7 w/kg
January - 1 outdoor, 30 indoor
February - 2 races, 4 outdoor, 13 indoor
March - 1 race, 2 outdoor, 19 indoor
April - 3 race, 4 outdoor, 14 indoor
May - 4 race, 2 outdoor, 25 indoor
June - 5 race, 1 outdoor, 15 indoor
July - 5 race, 4 outdoor, 19 indoor
August - 1 race, 2 outdoor, 9 indoor
Many of you seem to be assuming outdoors and not on a specific TR plan equals unstructured. Nothing could be farther from the truth and I am pretty confident Jonathan and Pete’s training is highly structured. And, since they are both highly experienced riders (and Jonathan is a real live coach), why would they follow a stock generic plan?
People use TrainerRoad because they are NOT Jonathan or Pete!
Structured training works and TR is an easy way to get good structure. But TR’s stock plans done on a trainer are not the only way to do structured training.
I am just about 100 percent indoor trainer. I do race 2 days every week outside during the week. I also race fairly often on the weekends but with that said my training is exclusively indoors except for the occasional sprint workout.
Question: At what point in your cycling journey do you de-emphasize [structured training]?
Answer: Never, ideally.
Anybody who argues the efficacy of structured training is fighting a losing battle if science is at play in the discussion. Structure allows greater specificity with work and results.
Another issue I think you are running into by just looking at a person’s ride data is that you see no context. I’ve gone through and recounted all of my activities in my TrainerRoad calendar for 2019 so far, and this is the breakdown:
Races = 40 (Including Saturday Drop Rides in this. Although I view them as training instead of a race, they are not intentionally structured outside of what the course gives you, if you are so privileged/speedy or slow/dropped to decide how you want to ride it, hehe).
Structured = 83 (Unless a ride falls into one of the remaining categories below, you can always assume I have a specific interval structure for at least a portion of the ride, inside or out, regardless of the title)
Warmups / Cooldowns = 24 (I don’t always separate these from the race file, hence the lower number)
Equipment Testing / Course Recon = 14 (Even during some of these I am following an interval structure to get in some multi-tasking, but I still kept them separate)
Fun = 11 (No structure or agenda at all)
Looking at that, I think I need more fun rides .
With that considered, you then have to keep in mind what we all know but assume we are the only ones that wrestle with this – just because it is on our plan doesn’t mean we will do that workout, because despite our best intentions, life happens, and priorities are what they need to be.
As @stevemz mentioned, I was sick for 7 weeks in 2019 (brutal year with our little one having his first year in school). I reckon that caused 4 missed races and about 20-30 missed structured sessions.
There are examples of very fast racers that don’t do a lot of structured training, and strangely pride themselves on that, often projecting “I don’t do structure, I just ride”. Can you imagine if they actually did structured training!?!?
That’s fine for them to say, but there is no scientific basis behind why another person should take the same approach. Structure, on the other hand, is a clear path forward to bring about specific adaptations in specific ways. It operates on sound principle, not guesswork.
Another flaw I see in this is you are assuming 100% of their TR activity is getting posted to Strava. If you were to look at my Strava data I’ve only done 1 ride in the past 2 months. In reality I’ve just completed an entire training block on TrainerRoad but am hiding it from my Strava feed.
One other point that hasn’t been mentioned - in terms of indoor vs outdoor many of us train indoors due to having jobs and/or geography/weather that makes riding outdoors impractical or at least not that enjoyable a lot of the time. Particularly if you want to do structured training outdoors and so need roads without too many interruptions from traffic, junctions, descents, etc.
The impression I get is that the TR guys have some great riding options nearby which allow them to train efficiently outdoors, plus great weather at this time of year, plus obviously a job where fitting a bike ride into your working day isn’t frowned upon. Perfect setup for doing majority of your rides outdoors, especially if you’re not building for anything. Up until very recently training outdoors meant not doing a TR ride, and even with the new TR outdoor integration if you’re an experienced rider/coach who has been doing structured outdoor rides for years then that functionality may be surplus to requirements. So I would guess that is a big factor in the numbers you’re seeing.
I don’t have their level of expertise but am a decent rider (4.3W/kg currently, aged 44 and at 78kg) with quite a bit of experience of structured training both in cycling and other sports. Quick scan of my rides to date this year shows that in most months about 60-70% were indoor TR rides. I have no outdoor TR rides. In time it’s closer to 50:50 as one of the outdoor rides is a long group ride. Those numbers are largely driven by my job, location and young family making it difficult to get outdoors more than once (maybe twice when the weather is nice) per week. I can guarantee you that if I had easy access to good singletrack and a job that was flexible enough to let me make good use of it then that ratio would be reversed and then some!
I acknowledged that in my post. It doesn’t change the absolute values but it would skew the percentages. You don’t work for Trainerroad (do you?) though so it seems like it is more acceptable for you to not post TR rides than those that are promoting the product.
My experience is that I start to lose aspects of my fitness when I get away from the Trainer for too long.
For context, my “road season” is roughly mid-April to mid-September. I do prefer to ride outside much more during this part of the year because I enjoy the club rides and just being out in nature. But even though the club rides are often hammer-fests, I tend to lose my muscular endurance if I neglect the structured trainer work too much. So I try to maintain a mix of outdoor and indoor trainer rides through the season as much as possible (this balance can be a little tricky sometimes).
For further context, during one season shortly after my second child was born I wasn’t able to get outside much at all. I still managed to do well on a local Granfondo (well, I flatted 50Km in so it became a 110Km ITT, but I was happy with my power!) with barely any outdoor riding leading up to it (previous outdoor ride was about a month before). So my experience supports the structured training facilitated indoors on a trainer to be of greater consequence to my fitness.
Once it starts getting colder and wetter here around September/October (Vancouver, BC), I’m essentially exclusively on the trainer until April.
The time to de-emphasize ANY training regime is when you aren’t happy with the results and/or not enjoying the process.
The pro/anti indoor training discussion aside, you need to evaluate your satisfaction with whatever type of training you’re doing and decide if it’s worth your time and effort to continue, or time to try something new.
I don’t think anyone will argue that some structure is going to be highly beneficial, but the most important aspect of structured training is that it contain appropriate training stimulus and balance recovery for a given athlete to improve fitness without burning out. This could be a TR, Sufferfest, etc plan, a custom coach developed plan, or an experienced self coached athlete planning out intensity vs volume balance and progression with Training Peaks or the like.
The only way any training works is if you believe in it and execute consistently. So, find a plan (or not) that gets you motivated and follow it. Then, when you’re bored, tired, at a plateau, whatever go find another way to have fun and hit your goals on the bike.
Breaking down “training” as for the last few months is slightly unfair as I’ve only been doing local races, and spending time on my mountain bike. Like Nate mentioned, I’m not worried about the fitness for the upcoming EWS, but more in ability to point a bike downhill and go fast. That means a lot of my time has been spent riding trails out of my comfort zone, and many Northstar days. I’m actually down closer 10% in both overall fitness and FTP since I haven’t been training much.
If you really dig into my time spent training for this year during the winter and spring, mostly for Team Camp and a big race in April I spent my time not doing TR rides as MTB rides with the dog (which are very important around the house) and a fair amount of time in the gym. I know that when I actually need to get fast, I always opt for structure. There are a few ski days in there as well, but this is a pretty standard snapshot of training.
As you can see I’m definitely more in the realm of 60-70% TR when I want to get faster.
I started this year as a cat 5 then asked for an upgrade. I’m also 2 points away from cat 2 and I’m not sure I can do any more races this year .
You can check out my career at - TrainerRoad. It’s been years but there are two things that I think “unlocked” big jumps.
I went from 190 to 270-290ish FTP From just being consistent. I used to skip workouts when I wasn’t feeling them and now I’m HTFUing and only skipping them If I feel bad in the workout.
The second unlock from 290-340 has been the endurance diet by Matt Fitzgerald and eating carb centric. I can do more volume and longer workouts and it isn’t as hard to do.
I believe my next unlock from 340-380 is going to be added aerobic volume on top of what I normally do; mostly through double days and early morning sessions. I’m not sure if that’s going to work though.
The tale is pretty much more structured volume = faster Nate.
@Nate_Pearson You give me hope. Came in to cycling with something like a 175 FTP last May at 110kg. Nearly gave up on cycling earlier this year but found TR, since then was able to get my FTP up to 252 as of last week. Still have a loooooooong way to go before 300.
My TR usage has dropped significantly after disappointing results in my A race. It’s of no fault of TR as I was focusing on the wrong areas of my riding. For now, I use TR as a very powerful calendar and training guide and I’m using the actual workouts less and less. Since my weakness is muscular endurance, simply riding more often will serve me well. I still sprinkle in the occasional structured work, but I’m finding it easy to drop sweet spot, sub threshold, and threshold efforts into my normal outdoor rides - no “workout” required. I plan on continuing using TR moving forward but now I realize that following a plan blindly doesn’t serve me (especially when I failed at picking the correct plan!) and that using it to organize myself and hold me accountable will be the main benefit.
The ability to drive our workouts outside is also clutch, that said, I’m not sure I’d use it on open roads. (I’m lucky to have access to a public track)
I’ve learned a lot by following a plan. And I’ve also learned a ton by listening to the Pod cast. At the end of the day, your training NEEDS to be enjoyable. If you don’t enjoy the trainer, don’t do it. I’ll dust it off when winter hits and remember that we’re just trying to get time in certain training zones, a trainer is not required to do this and is by far and away the least enjoyable method of getting faster for most people. Most of us picked up a bike so that we can ride bikes outside. So, again - it’s the ability to push structured rides outside, the flexibility the calendar and plans offer that is the selling point for me.
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