Outdoor versions of workouts that are markedly more difficult than their indoor equivalent

TrainerRoad Software
1

I’m just working my way through General Build high volume and have been using the new TR outdoor workouts feature on my Garmin. It’s great and I love it. But…

In week 6, the scheduled Tuesday indoor workout is Pisgah +6: 2 sets of 4x4-minute VO2max intervals at 112% FTP, with 8 mins recovery in-between sets, followed by 30 minutes at 65% FTP. I thought that it looked tough but entirely doable.

However, when I switched to do Pisgah +6 outdoor, it came up with Little Tahoma: 3 sets of the following; 3x3.5 minutes at 120% FTP with 5 minutes easy between intervals and 10 minutes easy between sets. This looked incredibly tough in comparison.

Although each interval is only 30 seconds less, I was being asked to do a 390 watt average (120% of my FTP) for 3.5 minutes compared to a 364 watt (112% of my FTP) for 4 mins. That felt like a significant difference in terms of watts relative to time.

I struggled to hold 390 after the first set and settled in around 380 for the last two sets. I’m sure it was still a really beneficial workout but I was just wondering why it was so much harder. I’ve been using TR for almost two years now and Little Tahoma was up there with some of the hardest workouts I’ve ever done.

Has anyone else has found the differences between indoor and outdoor versions of workouts hard to deal with?

2

We took a look at this workout and it does look like that workout was incorrectly paired with the outdoor version. We have now gone in and made a direct outdoor equivalent for Pisgah +6.

Sorry about the mix-up there, we are working to improve in this aspect and make more one-to-one equivalent workouts. A one-to-one equivalent workout will share the same name as its indoor version, so in this case, Pisgah +6 will have an outdoor version named Pisgah +6 rather than Little Tahoma.

All workouts in training plans have a one-to-one outdoor designation, but some of the non-training plan workouts use a more generic outdoor equivalent. We have a team of Support Agents that are working to minimize inequivalent outdoor workout issues like the one that you experienced.

Feel free to reach out here, or at support@trainerroad.com if you stumble across any more uneven pairings.

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