I’m just a bit too north to do Judson…but I do GTE on a regular basis.
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If you dont have one get a Varia. It has been the best thing I ever bought for cycling outside.
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I also prefer indoor. Outside there are too much traffic lights, every 200 meters I have to stop. very irritating. Landscape here isn’t exciting either.
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I have a social group ride that goes out MWF 6am - 8am here. Fast guys, lots of them in the >4wkg zone if I have to guess. It’s fun to mix it up with them and get my butt kicked.
But some days, I just stay inside and ride the trainer… It’s easy to set up, safe, it doesn’t beat me up as badly as the group ride, and I consider indoor time “quality time” that isn’t frantic. I did this a lot when COVID surges were happening to avoid getting snot blown all over me… call me germaphobe…
Sunday rides are always with my best buds, we talk about our problems and it’s a social thing. We often get coffee at the end of a 50mi ride.
Different rides for different purposes. They’re all good.
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It sounds like you don’t have any aims for your outside rides, apart from “I should ride outside”, which is not really a good motivator. Maybe you can find goals for your rides, like a certain point you want to get to - a nice road, a climb, a cafe, or a train station for a train back. You can make these gradually further away, so you can stay on famiiar roads with only a little bit of new.
To be honest, my main reason to ride a bike is to be out there, see the fields, trees, flowers, little lambs etc. I also continue to be amazed by how it’s possible to just jump on your bike and ride to far away places, totally under your own steam. Sometimes I don’t feel like going out, but usualky, once out, I realise that the weather isn’t as bad as it looked from the window, the drivers are actually not all arseholes, and just riding along does feel nice. But sometimes, I go out, and if I’m really not feeling it after half an hour, I just turn round. Its all your own choice.
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I find that instead of thinking I must do x number of hours, instead I decide on sonewhere i want to visit. Be that a bench with a nice view, a castle, the coast…
I’ll often pack a small picnic, with a flask of coffee and sandwiches, then head out the door with the plan to have breakfast in a beautiful location.
For me, riding outside is about being in nature. I don’t set power targets, I just ride. Somedays that’s fast, others it’s slow. No rules.
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But the thing is, you have to reach them via the urban/trunk roads around where you live. Those are the dangerous/unenjoyable parts that discourage, not the beautiful country lanes that never fail to delight once you actually reach them.
(Unless you actually live in the countryside, which most of us don’t).
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Sorry if this has been asked before, and I hate to escalate, but I feel the need to ask, this is only related to cycling ?
I suffer from a similar, I find the slightest excuse to ride indoors, on Sunday I was prepared to go out on a 70 mile ride, got up, looked at the sky and thought it might rain, so did 4 hours on Zwift, on a sunny warm spring day, I don’t ride with a group at the weekend as don’t want to let them down by turning up late / not showing and cafe stops don’t appeal, but I suffer from agoraphobia and it also extends to just leaving the house to go to for a walk in the morning, I’ve suffered from it for years without knowning and TR was part of my downfall (where I didn’t leave the house for 3 months) because it is easy to justify not going for a ride, with I need to do this workout
Sorry if I am way off the mark (as I expect I am), but I needed to ask
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Also, unless you live in a remote area, this network of minor roads doesn’t exist in isolation from built up areas, be it villages, small towns etc. Rural roads may carry less traffic but they are not without risk. In the last few years, two friends suffered very serious injuries in separate incidents on such roads.
In my original post I didn’t intend to imply that the entire UK was dangerous for cycling. I’m 62 and have enjoyed a lifetime of exploring many parts of the country by bike. I accept that times change and I have to adapt accordingly. Anyway, apologies for diverting the discussion away from the original point. I wish you all safe pedalling wherever you choose to do it.
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I totally get this. My road bike lives on my trainer in the garage and i’m almost always far happier riding in there in my own little world without all the downsides of being outside. i.e. cars and aggro drivers. I worked out that I haven’t ridden my road bike outside for 13 months - on that day a taxi driver tried to kill me and then i had a standup row on the side of the road with him about why he felt justified because i wasn’t on the bike path. Stress!
So i bought a hardtail MTB recently and started to fully explore around me and it’s fantastic. I’m so enjoying it. All the fun of using my TR fitness with no traffic hassles. With Komoot and RidewithGPS i am finding 100’s of new trails and paths and almost never have to deal with cars anymore.
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How long have you been riding, and how long is the long outdoor ride? Is this ride going to be with a group of people?
I totally get where you are coming from, as I do all of my weekday rides inside and in the early morning due to safety and efficiency. I even ride inside on the weekends if life gets in the way and I can’t get out the door early and it is unbearably hot by mid-day.
I guess I would just weigh what makes you the happiest. If you are happy with the sense of accomplishment in completing an indoor right, and you are okay with not being as comfortable for your long outside ride, then no reason to change things up. However, if that outside ride is either a Fondo/race/group setting, I would suggest going outside and riding with some people just to get used to the group dynamics…who knows, you might ride in a group and actually have some fun!
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Even as someone who lives in a very rural area in northern New England and has ridden road and mountain bikes for decades, I find the idea of straight-up road riding a little terrifying now. There have always been horrible/aggressive drivers, but things feel qualitatively different in the past decade or so between smart phones and general unchecked rage. Growing up riding in Central PA, I had more than a few empty beer cans and bottles chucked at me while riding, along with all the usual harassment. But now there’s no guarantee that any given driver is even going to look up from their phone while you’re hugging that narrow shoulder on the road.
I no longer own a ride bike, and spend as little time on the pavement as possible. I do mostly gravel now (which is easy enough for me to do, I live on a dirt road), and sometimes mountain. Ride With GPS has been a fantastic tool for route planning, especially with the heat maps so you can see where other local riders are going the most. I’ve also been doing some local events to help motivate me to explore new places.
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I haven’t read the whole thread, but a few thoughts:
I wondered if I had personally become too attuned to riding indoors, but concluded that for sessions where I want to hit prolonged periods at threshold then indoors trumps outdoors.
In the podcast, the hosts have talked a lot about ‘friction’ recently - maybe now would be a good time to identify points of friction towards getting outdoors, beyond those you mentioned at the start.
Maybe you could combine both into one session - i.e. start / finish (or vice versa) indoors.
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This is so dependent on where you live, out my door its possible to make outside workouts look like inside workouts. Warmup for 10-15 minutes and then long stretches of safe roads and trails await. Living in a flat windy area adjacent to mountains is a great combo. We are looking to move in a few years, its gonna be hard to leave this area.
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Me too!!!
I did 5Boros recently, and was just so ‘burned out’ riding that: It was a cold day, the wind was out in force, and avoiding the people riding like idiots, and the rough streets pounding my wrists that took a beating in late 2020 when I rode outdoors on crap ‘rail trail’. (Swear I broke something in my right wrist but my doc says ‘We can’t do anything about it’, insurance company refuse to cover an x-ray because it wasn’t a problem unless it continued) So I get not riding outside. I have a killer trainer, and all the comforts of home plus not getting dropped and having to figure out where in the heck you are, and dodging snot rockets and really bizarre conversation and criticism, cars, trucks, BIG trucks, and all of it…
Riding outside in the bugs, wind, ‘other people’, on real roads? I’ll do it if a have to…
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I live a little further south than you (Western MA), and I have had similar experiences. While I live in a town of about 1400 people, we get lots of logging trucks, construction vehicles, and just all around angry drivers that are pretty hostile to cyclists. It’s really a shame, because the roads are beautiful and there’s lots of fun, challenging hills, but it’s just too dangerous to ride solo in this environment. We have lots of rail trails here, but they are pancake flat, and are really meant more for casual riders and families, plus I really don’t want to kill a bunch of chipmunks and squirrels again. We do have a few active groups that have multiple weekly rides, but I’m stuck in this weird in-between where I’m way too fast for the slower rides and don’t have the skills (and maybe the speed!) to hang with the faster rides.
How much would you guys pay for a moto escort (per hour), that will cover your back at all times during a ride?….seems like a business opportunity. Uber style.
Well in the last bit I have had trouble getting on the bike at all it seems. I have been put on an antidepressant and it seems like it has kicked in. The thought is I get fed what I need from the medication in more of a constant stream. Seems I am not getting anything out of cycling at all. Seems that it is next to impossible to be motivated to do anything let alone grind away on a bike for an hour or so. Last couple workouts I lasted around 10 minutes and went for a nap later.
Cut the story short I miss my exercise highs. (healthy rush, feeling of accomplishment, gratification.) Appointment with my doctor to drop the dose and ween myself off it. I prefer to self medicate through exercise. This blah feeling and lethargy sucks.
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Best wishes for you moving forward….please let us know how you are doing.
I certainly don’t think that it’s just cycling, so you’re not way off the mark at all.
I think my concern is that riding my bike was my relief from all the stresses of life, and I just haven’t been able to get outside.
I have been able to train so there’s some of that happy hormones from exercising getting in there.
I think I’ve got used to the easy part of training ( no weather, traffic, punctures etc) the sense of achievement from ticking off another workout.
The other part is about it fitting into the time available, and I know everyone has limited time. My wife is very supportive and is happy for me to ride outside, but I still feel a bit selfish about going out for 4 hours. Even if I return with a bigger smile.
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