A number of my winter and spring rides will follow a heat adaptation protocol to prepare me for long rides in the heat so my heart rate will be unusually high on endurance rides.
Is there a way of telling TR that a session was part of a heat adaptation protocol so it doesn’t think my form has suddently slipped?
Thank you.
Similarly, I do loaded bike touring so sometimes put an extra 40lbs on my bike for outdoor rides. Anything I can tell TR plan about these to help it know what is going on? Thanks!
As of right now, we don’t have any heat training tools built into TR.
If you’re doing heat training, I’d recommend choosing a workout that will keep your HR around LT1 or the top end of zone 2. If you’re simulating warm conditions this might be something as “easy” as a recovery workout.
In addition, I’d focus on hitting the power targets and keeping a steady HR. The correlation between power and HR will be skewed a bit during these sessions, but that’s kind of the point.
Just do your workouts as you normally would, for now, I’d say!
As always with heat training, be careful and be sure to consult a doctor before doing any of this stuff…
In this type of case, you’re usually going to have to work harder to move that weight around. If you have a power meter on your bike, that will be obvious in the data, but if not, just rate the ride how it felt afterward.
This is a bit different because your power (or effort) is still tied to your HR as it normal, whereas during heat training your HR is much higher than it typically would be for that given effort.
Gotcha that makes sense. Thank you!
I am a bit lost here. In a classic TrainerRoad workout plan, in which workouts would you incorporate heat training? Specifically for the initial heat adaption, not the later maintenance stage.
Options:
A) on interval days: I’d guess only after or towards the end of intervals would be a good idea, switching into zone 2/1
b) on zone 1/2 rides in between interval days
C) on any day
D) change the plan to only zone 1-2 rides for eg 10 days
E) in the rest week daily
I got 3 intervals a week, Monday Wednesday and Friday. In between I fill Tuesday and Thursday and Saturday with zone 1-2. Sunday is off.
What would you suggest?
What are your goals with the heat training?
Preparing for an upcoming hot race and possibly some performance gains in the cold as well.
I’d use heat during shorter, easier rides.
Keep your hard days hard, and if you have a long endurance ride, that should be fueled well and ridden with cooling, but any short “recovery” rides could incorporate some heat stimulus.
Just stay on top of hydration and keep your HR in the right zone.
As I said before, make sure you talk to a doctor before doing any serious heat training, though!
heat training is definitely a “hard” stimulus though.
Yes, it does bring more fatigue than regular “easy” riding, but it’s likely not as much as really hard workouts.
It’s tough because, while it is adding more stimulus, you don’t really want to put it in place of your hard workouts.
Really, only athletes who have the energy budget and adaptation abilities to take on heat training should. If it’s going to affect your performance during hard workouts, then maybe skip it, or do some passive heat training on your day off. 
So basically you suggest adding it to the easier recovery rides between hard interval days as long as it doesn’t affect the quality of the hard intervals. It requires extra recovery, and probably lower overall TSS of the zone 2 rides, keeping heart rate at zone 2 limits.
I think a key challenge is that in the lower zones it takes longer to get into effective heat zones from what I read. I got the core 2 body sensor and can report back how that’s going to work out.
What do you think about heat training in rest weeks?
Yeah, I think starting the workout at 100% intensity to get your core temp up and then throttling your output to keep your HR where it belongs is the best method.
I would probably keep heat training limited during rest weeks. Two to three days a week is probably the maximum, but it definitely depends on the athlete..