Interesting. I zero offset indoors and out and only use the power pedal (powermatch), ignoring the turbo which can throw another variable into the mix.
However, although you can be cold indoors and well air conditioned, it’s not the same as outdoors air flow which in theory can make your performances outdoors stronger and there’s also a lot of other factors (like momentum which do the same). I often outside get into a zone which comfortably delivers more power than indoors but then start to ease off for traffic, side roads and other hazards and the longer term average is lower than indoors. Fortunately the course of my TT on Saturday was flat, straight and simple so I didn’t ease off much.
The biggest difference I think in what you are saying though, is you are using different recording methods indoors and out. If possible you should try to be consistent and use the pm in (via powermatch) and out. If you can do that I’d suggest manually updating your indoors FTP towards the outdoors FTP as you feel comfortable. If you can’t (maybe you use a turbo bike and don’t want to faff about with transferring the pm), I treat indoors and outdoors completely separately and only raise the indoors FTP according to an indoor test. Good luck
I use powermatch now, but I’ve only had my power pedal for a litle while. From now on I’ll just use that though. I guess another factor with a higher FTP outside (depending on how it’s tested) is that I really don’t push myself to vomiting on an indoor test (ramp or 20’), but I really do when it’s a race situation. Ok, it was only a club tt, but competition does make a difference.
I am in the AT beta, so I am ‘ranking’ all my rides (indoors and outdoors) upon conclusion.
Yesterday, 18 MAY, I was outdoors at 0530 for a ride with 3 friends. We rode for 1 hour @ 20.3 mph. I ranked it as ‘easy’, because that’s how it felt. I think it was about 60d F with no wind. Max HR was 160 on a TICKR.
This morning, I got on the trainer at about 0430 and did “Sugarloaf” to get some threshold work done. It felt pretty hard, I consumed 3 cliff blocks, and cranked the Ava Max as loud as my earbuds could go. I ranked it as ‘hard’, because that’s how it felt. My Garmin recorded a temp of 72d F in the basement, and I have 3 Lasko fans running. Max HR was 172 on a Scosche armband.
Look at the stats in the screen-shot below. Shockingly similar ‘data’, but totally different RPE.
That is fascinating. Did you feel in your body that the temperature was the cause of the vastly different RPE? Though I guess intervals are fundamentally harder than the same average power at steady state.
I kinda / sorta expected having music indoors would be the great RPE equalizer… but perhaps that’s an old wives tale.
For body temperature, I do the warm-up section of the workouts with the fans off, and wearing a Nike Hyper-Cool baseball base-layer. Once the warmup ends, I turn on the fans and ditch the shirt.
Hmm, how was your outdoor ride? Did you ride hard pace line with your 3 friends so the structure of the load was a bit comparable to “Sugarloaf”? I.E. Threshold for a few mins, then rest for a few mins?
Because if not, you are comparing apples with oranges.
But that’s not to dismiss your point. That one is very real. Which is: the same absolute load leads to vastly different stresses indoor vs outdoor. So say you would ride Threshold intervals inside vs outside. Or you would ride Endurance inside vs outside. Even with fans (gosh, I couldn’t do that) it’s a complete other “climate” inside then outside and therefore also more strain on your cardiovaskular system. Then you are missing all the momentum, the fluidity of the system your body forms with your bike outside and the micro pauses. All leading to a measurable increase in stress (heartrate, sweat rate) and at least from that but also from the other aspects a higher RPE.
Indeed, for some of us so much so that you really have to be careful to weigh the pros and cons of inside vs outside work. E.g. yes - you can ride undisturbed and well structured intervals inside. But is it worth it if you can do your Intervalls only at 250 Watt inside instead of 280 Watt outside? How much do you leave on the table? Think the results of research related to altitude training. Train high / live high is worse than train low / live high. Because you can’t stress your muscles enough when on altitude compared to what you can do when you train low.
It may be the same with inside vs outside. Result: If one has quiet roads and can do high quality structured work outside, then hell yeah, it would always be better than doing it compromised inside.
One caveat here: The effect of heat induced training stress which can be of advantage for some workouts. But then you’d have to do them without any fans at all (which I always do, btw, as I can’t stand a fan on me when I’m sitting still indoors).
On Monday I did 3x8-min at 105% into a strong headwind and rated it medium and wrote “These intervals felt good and I got some huffing and puffing out of it.”
a lot of short overs and recoveries, so I suspect RPE differences might have something to do with rolling all zones workout vs threshold intervals. And personally I find it easier to do hard work outside vs inside. It might be a better indoor vs outdoor comparison if you had done intervals outside.
RPE is subjective and over the last year I’ve gotten better at assigning efforts on a 1 to 10 scale, however it still seems to be influenced by my latest Hard effort. In the past week I did max effort sprint-ervals (2 sets of 13.3 minutes) on Saturday and rated it a Hard (9 out of 10). After the 2nd set it took 15 minutes before I could resume zone2 pedaling as my legs were completely drained. I got a little dizzy but didn’t have to pull over and stop so I gave it a 9 out of 10. In my mind a 10 requires stopping to recover, or risk falling over while pedaling.
That effort likely reset my mind’s definition of Hard.
Then two days later on Monday did 3x8 at 105% (maps to Tinker -2 in TR library) and rated it Medium (5 out of 10) and they felt good. It was 96 minutes and I felt really really strong and feisty coming home and put in some ‘lacking zone discipline’ efforts after the intervals. Wasn’t easy and wasn’t hard so I Goldilocks it in the middle on RPE scale.
Similar temps in 70s and from each effort can pull up an hour surrounding the intervals and have similar NP, TSS, and IF - only difference is average power because sprint workouts have greater spread between NP and AP. Normalized power is about establishing a metabolic equivalent if I’m not mistaken, and you can arrive at NP equivalency via different efforts and those differences might drive different adaptations.
While its interesting to compare a kitchen sink all zone ride with friends to a structured workout - thanks for sharing as I love this kind of discussion on the forum! - to me I guess it serves as a reminder that RPE is subjective.
I’ve come to the following system over the past year:
Easy is majority of my 2 hour endurance rides at 65-80% and those are 3 or 4 RPE
Medium is majority of my interval workouts, I’ll give those a 4-7 rating with 4 usually being shorter tempo and sweet spot where I’m working but not suffering and could do another interval, and 7 being ones where I’m suffering to complete the interval but still leave a little on the trainer/road
My indoor workouts destroy me. I fail them miserably. Meanwhile, outdoors I have no problem. I did a ramp test indoors and came up with 198 W. I did a 2x 8-min outdoor test and came up with 212 W.
I thought I had it all figured out. I would change my FTP to 198 W on indoor days and to 212 W on outdoor days. Well, after changing my FTP from 212 W to 198 W the other day and then back up to 212 W today, my progression levels tanked. Adaptive Training is trying to decrease the intensity of all my workouts going forward because it thinks otherwise all my workouts are going to be immediately 7% harder than they were a day ago (even though just a few days ago I was doing workouts @ 212 W FTP @ the progression levels it just killed). I’m going to need to decline the suggested adaptions for a while.
This just brings me back to—why can’t we please have separate FTPs for indoor and outdoors?
I’ve never joined a feature request before. Is there someone I ping about this to throw another vote in or something? How does it work?
You can always email support@trainerroad.com directly, but adding your positive and informative comments here is essentially your +1 vote and all you really need to do.
I always find this fascinating, people pushing more power outdoors than indoors. I push more power indoors because I don’t have to steer the bike, avoid obstacles, watch out for cars etc. Cognitive load is reduced, power goes up.
In the past over the longer term (20 min tests + ) Ive always managed to get more power out indoors, perhaps I can push that we bit harder when I am not worried about traffic and things are more steady state etc I do sprint better outdoors though
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