One thing that helped me was outside rides. I’ve been on trainer road for quite some time and it was an on and off thing. Purely riding inside was just boring at times and my schedule didn’t support races very well and it was hard for me to sustain motivation.
This year (is) should have been my first real race season in 5 years … I did two things differently:
- Changed the diet
- Rode outside as much as possible with outside workouts. Most of the time, they aren’t quite as effective as I live in an area with rolling hills. But I’ve enjoyed the training a lot more. So while not being as effective minute for minute, for me it pays off in the long run.
Riding outside quite a bit also helps to show me, what all the training is for - even without the races. Just seeing how I’m able to put down more power than I used to motivates me. And that makes training inside better. Last but not least, I try to watch very dumb movies while I’m on the trainer to distract myself (Judge Dredd was awesome for that, there is no way you don’t understand the plot and lot’s of stuff going on).
I’m however quite happy how they designed the product. I tried using Zwift and I just can’t. I don’t even like the races (despite enjoying the odd Playstation game). I think the focused training platform without anything else works really well and gives me the chance to look for a yoga instructor, meditation guru or strength work somewhere else. I wouldn’t mind having that in the program, but I would rather they spend the money on the adaptive plans that I’m pretty sure they are building (the number 1 thing Nate is always going on about)… Analysing the data and automatically adjusting the plans to compensate for weaknesses and building on strength relative to the goal would be crazeamaze.