How do you organize your route/effort for trainerroad workouts outside?

[OreoCookie]

@ifyoucantakeit

1. For rides longer than 2 hours (say 80km), what do you do? Longer warm-ups and/or cool downs?

I live in the city, so navigating the maze is my warm up/cool down.

@ifyoucantakeit

2. I usually plan my rides around hills (the most fun bit for me), which means I tend to take it easier on the flats between hills, and push when the gradient rises. This will make a long interval easy to achieve (I guess), but it might make the following hill 30-40 minutes away. I know I could pause the work out until I get where I can complete the interval easily but… would it make sense to have such a long recovery time between intervals? (I don’t plan to descent and then repeat the same hill).

It depends on what your goal is. For interval work, I don’t think this is a good approach, at least not for most types of intervals. But I think there are good ways to bring purpose to outdoor work.

What I like to do is set myself challenges or jobs for outdoor rides. For example, on rides where I try to optimize pacing to maximize overall speed, I know I will have to reign myself in on the climbs a little and push myself on the flats. On other days, I don’t want my heart rate to go above 140 bpm (a Z1–Z2 ride). Or I pick one hill where I want to smash it and casually ride the rest of the way.