I’ve really enjoyed pushin my TR workouts to my garmin as outdoor workouts but performing them indoors on Zwift. Maybe I haven’t looked hard enough but I haven’t found a concrete solution to this. If I complete the “outdoor” workouts as intended and properly fill out the workout survey, am I missing out on anything from AT or AI FTP or otherwise by completing “outdoor” instead of through the standard TR app.
Are you going into the TR calendar and “associating” the outdoor ride to the planned workout on your calendar? If so, AT should be working fine. It’s the unstructured outdoor workouts that aren’t “associated” that we don’t have yet.
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If I am following this process correctly, pushing the WO as an outdoor WO to your head unit and using the head unit to control the power SHOULD be feeding everything back into AT (with or without using Z as a distraction), providing that OUTDOOR workout syncs back into your calendar AND you answer the survey (which you say you are doing).
I wouldn’t think this would be any different than just taking the WO outdoors as is, which AT should be looking at??
- He’s not doing ERG, he is riding in Zwift (as a proxy for riding outside) and setting his power via gearing and effort on the Z terrain just like he would be riding outside.
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You’re not really missing anything, but there is a difference at play.
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At present, when you complete an outside workout, TR is more Pass/Fail even though you set a rating. That workout is not reviewed in the same way TR does for the TR inside workouts.
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As long as you are reasonably close to the targets, you are fine. But if you miss the targets and still claim the workout as done correctly, it’s possible to be off more than the inside version that would actually see the deltas and might alter PLs differently than a “perfect” workout.
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I’ve done similar but on RGT. Since AT came out I try to run TR in parallel with RGT as TR I hope does a more detailed analysis of an indoor ride. Hopefully when WL2 are launched TR will undertake that same analysis of outdoor rides as it much easier to push a wo to the head unit and jump on RGT/Zwift. Well it was easier until a few weeks ago when my garmin started to intermittently lose sound and sometimes all together; no count down timer is a bit of a pain when your head is down on a TT interval 
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Are you going into the TR calendar and “associating” the outdoor ride to the planned workout on your calendar? If so, AT should be working fine. It’s the unstructured outdoor workouts that aren’t “associated” that we don’t have yet.
Yes, that’s right.
- At present, when you complete an outside workout, TR is more Pass/Fail even though you set a rating. That workout is not reviewed in the same way TR does for the TR inside workouts.
That’s exactly what I’m worried about.
- As long as you are reasonably close to the targets, you are fine. But if you miss the targets and still claim the workout as done correctly, it’s possible to be off more than the inside version that would actually see the deltas and might alter PLs differently than a “perfect” workout.
Ok, this at least makes me feel a bit better about it. I think as long as it 90% of way there then I’m satisfied and will give this a real shot.
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A bit curious as to why you do this?
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Outside workouts are currently pass/fail as far as Progression Levels are concerned. Currently that means you can lie and tell TR to pass a workout, and receive PL credit even if none is due. AT uses PLs, so lying to receive undue credit would have an impact on AT.
TR has plans to analyze outside workouts in the future (workout levels v2). And then the “lying” problem with PLs and AT will go away.
We’ve been told that AI FTP looks at all workouts, and that you should honestly rate even the unstructured outside workouts.
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I was about to page @WindWarrior and see replied to one aspect of this post already. I suspect he can share his use, that I think parallels this with use of RGT and following TP workouts on his Garmin, when he can’t do his workouts outside (his usual preference).
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Ive done something similar in the past but with RGT not Zwift. For me its just the easiest/ fastest way to set it up. RGT/Zwift being better to look at and passes the time better. The alternative is to have my phone running the TR app and the laptop (bigger screen) controlling RGT; then configuring the both apps to get the one I want controlling the trainer. My older power meter is also ant + only and my ant+ phone dongle or its software can be flaky.
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I’ll add my reason as Chad prompted me. My relationship with Erg is best summarized by the Strava title of my first experience:
Sim mode makes indoor training more like outside. Sim mode doesn’t feel weird, it makes pedaling feel more natural. Makes training more engaging. Trains the mind and the body.
Turn on Zwift or RGT, select a course, and hit the start button on my Garmin bike computer. It just works. One training User Experience (UX) to rule them all.
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A bit curious as to why you do this?
Sim mode makes indoor training more like outside. Sim mode doesn’t feel weird, it makes pedaling feel more natural. Makes training more engaging. Trains the mind and the body.
Definitely a lot of what WindWarrior wrote above. I really enjoyed using outdoor workouts this summer and this is a good way to keep that going. 2 main things standout. The first is that it took me away from precision and thinking that I need to be doing EXACTLY 254 watts and that the ranges given in outdoor workouts of 20w or so are perfect. The second is the simplicity mentioned here too. I can easily use the Ant+ and bluetooth connections and don’t need to worry about setting up any dongles or connection issues while having TR and Zwift on my laptop. It also helps with my future setup of an Apple TV and big screen instead of a laptop.
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There was a problem when I used to do this in erg mode where the warmup was zero watts or halfway between zero and the actual target iirc - is that still an issue?