Failed McAdie +1 yesterday so decided to load it up on my Wahoo and try it outdoors. I decided to do the intervals on the popular local climb (Mt. Diablo) given its 12 miles of straight climbing, 3500 ft elevation gain at 5% average gradient.
I know there is typically some discrepancy between indoor vs outdoor power but found this ride to be significantly easier, at least to keep it within the power range during the intervals.
My question is – am I even doing this right and will I obtain similar benefits as doing it indoors? Here is the workout chart. You can see the “over” intervals today range from 250 to 270 with some hitting below my ftp of (some intervals dipping slightly below 244 at times due to gradient shifts).
The indoor McAdie +1 yesterday forced me to ride at 256 and all I could finish was one full set of intervals at 100% intensity before bailing at the second one.
I’m new to outdoor workouts and restarted my plan 4 weeks ago. Since the restart of my plan I have done every workout, outdoors. I notice the rpe is much easier outdoors (for me). I think it’s due to the fact that there’s other distractions to take your mind off of the suffering. I’ve actually manually bumped up my ftp twice now in the last 4 weeks.
My power sources are different. Indoors I’m using my Tacx neo 2t, and outdoors I’m using a crank based power2max. Before I started my new plan I put my new bike with power meter on my Tacx to check the comparison between power meters. They were spot on. After 2 weeks of base I thought the workouts were getting easier, so I thought maybe something had changed and that my power meter was “off”. So again, I put my bike on my Tacx, and they were spot on (within 5 watts).
I’m by no means an expert, and I’m not sure if this fitness will translate to a better ramp test in two weeks but we will see. Either way, I feel faster, I feel mentally fresh, and I love riding my bike. There will be plenty of days this winter where I will be inside on the trainer.
When riding outdoors there are “distractions” that take your mind off the physical effort that you do not get when sat indoors on a trainer.
Better cooling from the fresh air which is more efficient than being sat on your trainer indoors in front of a fan or two.
I can put a big effort in outdoors and sweat very little where as the same effort indoors in front of a 20" fan and a 12" fan has sweat running down my face. During efforts outdoors I try and take my mind elsewhere by looking at my surroundings and there is always something different to look at, indoors the best I have is a graph or a load of animated cyclists in front of me.
In a nut shell cycling outdoors is generally a lot more pleasant so the pain is easier to cope with.
The general consensus among riders here is that you can achieve better number outside.
Part of the reason is cooling and coasting.
Also when you ride outdoor is generally more comfortable, and that also lead to a better ride.
Longer Overunder intervals are ones that can be severely affected by cooling. So if your indoor cooling is insufficient then OU workouts are where that could be revealed.