I’ve been following TR AI training with pretty good results. At home, I have a Kickr Move that I use for workouts, always Erg mode within Zwift where I just focus on the cadence. Even when I ride outside, I find it harder to attain the same power numbers due to downhills, stop lights, turns, etc.
When I travel, if the hotel or gym I am using has a decent bike, it often doesn’t have power meter. Or if it has power meter, it could be less accurate or just different from at home and won’t broadcast for recording.
Today I tried to follow Nellis Wash (Over-Under Threshold 4.2) workout on a Technogym bike recording intervals / HR with my Garmin watch (set to outside). It was going ok except when I forgot that I had to press the lap button to start the 2nd set if intervals, so that round of intervals was about 40 seconds longer than expected.
Also there’s much more work to adjust the resistance upward manually and monitor power, the bike seat/cooling setup isn’t ideal, etc..by the third set of intervals, I made it thru the first Under (3 min) and Over (2 min) but then wasn’t able to complete. I also didn’t do the 18 min endurance after that and just did a brief cooldown. If this was at home, I’d have to rate it a maximum effort/did not pass. But given the less than ideal nature of this workout - should I just record it as a very hard solo ride?
Good on your for trying to get it done. I’d mess around with the RPE rating a bit to see what the different outcomes are. When you are trying to execute a workout on an oddball set up I’d give yourself the benefit of the doubt that the workout would’ve been easier by a level or two. Overall, I personally don’t think it would impact your progress much, but I’m not sure how the AI would adapt your plan.
Also, to answer the question in your post, I think, Yes, it is worth it to train with a less than optimal setup if that’s what’s available. Think Rocky IV - he trained in Siberia, no excuses.
I traveled for work last week, I also rode a Technogym bike in the hotel gym. For me I wouldn’t do intervals on the odd setup, I moved my calendar around and put endurance workouts for those day. Completed the interval workouts when I got back.
In my mind I am getting the heart rate up, I am using my cycling muscles, some is better than none, and I am burning some of those travel calories.
Long ago riders trained without power or smart trainers and managed to get pretty fast. There were many but Eddy Merckx stands out. So, yeah. It possible to train without any of the modern conveniences and get fast.
After the HR data from today’s ride synced, I tried RPE of Very Hard and the AI came back at 278 W FTP. I also tried RPE of Max Effort/Equipment issue and it came back at 279 W. Since I started the training block at 265 W with a projection of 275 W, I’m good with either outcome really, even though prior to the workout it was projecting a very optimistic 282 W.
Now to figure out which of the next 3ish workouts I’ll be able to do before returning home
I travel around once per month for work and I definitely think it’s worth it to continue training! For consistency and feeling decent while traveling. If you can plan ahead, I recommend making it a rest week with endurance workouts - not ideal given travel stress, but I find that intervals are hard on a hotel gym, for the reasons you provided and also a lack of cooling fan. I did a post recently on using the Peleton- I have to upload as a solo ride to get TSS correct.
Before TR was a sparkle in Nate’s eye, I spent years doing structured intervals on a magnetic indoor trainer with a Timex Ironman watch to time intervals and paced by RPE. Got to a Category 1 racer that way (but somewhere along the way I moved up to pacing with a new fangled heart rate monitor). I would say less than optimal is just fine.
