The weather is getting better here in Ontario and it’s time to head outside!
Something to mention I am not an avid racer and I am training for personal fitness.
Am I overthinking this, I really enjoy my training but I don’t know how to incorporate the outdoors? Today I have a 1.5 hour recovery ride and then Monday I begin my build phase. I would like to ride this weekend as well outside.
Do you just skip the recovery ride and enjoy the trails? Or do you do both? I don’t want to overtrain as well.
How do people deal with this and I am maybe taking my training to seriously for what I want to achieve?
You can always do the recovery ride outside via Outdoor workouts.
But you said you are riding primarily for fun and enjoyment. You don’t have to follow a strict plan if it isn’t allowing you to maximize your enjoyment. Riding outside on a day when it is nice out (after a winter inside) is not going to make you overtrained.
The overtrain portion was just doing the training plus the rides and straight into training with no rest.
You’re right I don’t want to ruin my enjoyment and I always feel a little rusty with the trail skills so an early start is a good way to shake off the cob webs.
I’d go with building a plan around how I want to ride, versus sticking with a plan and trying to reason out how to adapt a plan to how I want to ride. TR is a lot more flexible these days, should be possible to do the former now. If that makes sense.
I’ve been riding indoors since pre-pandemic. There are no hills around where I live, so I can climb some soul crushing routes on my smart bike, and then go out and enjoy the scenery as more of a recovery ride. I notice that riding outdoors is easier, faster, better, as I can keep up with more advanced people, and drop others. But on the flip side, training completely indoors does eliminate the joys of riding ‘out there’: wind, ‘weather’, road repair, chipseal, etc… Making the transition can be humbling. We get nasty high winds that rip down the corridor of trees and it’s not fun fighting that range of hell that can happen. I am realizing that riding 100% indoors like I do isn’t really preparing me for the real world.
Just to give a very clear answer, don’t do both rides. Do your workout indoors, or do your workout outdoors, or just go for that awesome mtb ride you’re craving, but don’t feel like you need to do your fun ride PLUS do your TR ride. That ride outside is the reward for your hard work!
I think everyone is correct in enjoying the training results by ripping the trails. That’s my happy place!
One other point I came up with while I was out on the trail was that the trainer can’t mimic the skills needed to keep the watts up on a trail. So there will be more outside riding sprinkled with some indoor riding.
minus the trees 