I have been attempting to push more of my formal training outdoors. While using TR’s outdoor option, I notice that it doesn’t always have the same power requirements as it does indoors for the same workout. For example, I recently did a 90 min Townsend workout outdoors. This is one that we have probably all done before. It’s a pretty common recovery workout with various power from 60-70%. When doing this workout outdoors, it had basically zero variety and simply had 5 min warm-up/cool down and then a single consistent 60-70% range the entire time. No variation at all. I basically just held it in the middle of that range at 65% the entire time. My question is, is this how all endurance sessions are, when done outdoors? Are there any benefits to the variety that’s prescribed when training indoors?
Not a TR employee, just a user, not sure if you were asking for them to answer.
IMHO the natural variation of the outdoors takes care of any variation. I live in the PNW (US) and hills, downhills, stoplights, and wind will just naturally create variation you do not have indoors, no need to build it in for outdoors. Just keep it simple, outdoors will take care of the rest.
3 Likes
Yeah. In TR, and other apps, it’s common to simplify the power levels when doing a workout outdoors, mainly to make it simpler to comply with, but also realizing there’s going to be a fair amount of variation anyway.
2 Likes