Hello trainer road community! Long time cycling fan but VERY new to structured training. I started indoor rides with a wheel on wahoo riding with Zwift during COVID, I have recently upgraded to a Kickr direct drive and signed up for trainer road. About a month and a half ago I bought some Garmin Rally XC 200 pedals for my gravel bike for outdoor rides.
Having said all of that I’m seeing that its much different holding consistent power outside, but I’m not giving up on it! My question is, is it better to learn how to hot power targets on easier endurance rides? tempo rides? or on harder sweet spot/threshold rides? I feel like this is going to be quite the learning curve for me as I’m overall pretty new to REAL cycling and i feel like the rides while I’m figuring it out are kinda trash. so what kind of ride is best to sacrifice for the sake of long term improvement?
Hey there,
Good question!
It can seem tricky to hold your power steady when riding outside. Riding inside is generally easy since many of us use ERG mode, where the power is more or less dictated by the trainer, and other modes rely mostly on gearing and cadence alone, which makes achieving steady power really intuitive.
When riding outside, I’d ensure that you have power smoothing enabled to 3 or 5 seconds. This will help to keep your figures a bit more manageable. Also, get used to things moving a bit more than they do inside. That’s just how things work when riding out in the real world for most of us, but this is something you can improve over time!
Focus on practicing with shorter, steady intervals, and rather than watching your head unit the entire time, go by feel and then analyze your work online afterward. It’s really easy to get distracted by the numbers, and even if things bounce around slightly, your overall power might look smoother than you think when viewing the entire interval.
You’ll get better the more you ride, look at your power meter, and think about it. I don’t think intensity matters, just practice.
Joe
IMO it’s better to look at the unfiltered power value so you can make instant correction of your power. With a filtered value, you are always late to adjust and will surely overcompensate in either direction.
OP, I recommend practice keeping your power steady with some moderate power and on flat paved roads. A realistic variation in power after some focused practice is probably about ±10 to 15 watts in a steady effort.
It helped me focus first on lap average power. I try to keep my power in the higher end of the power range. If my workouts is something like “ ride between 180-200 watts I keep my average around 200. After the workout I look at the normalized powers for each interval or long effort to see if I followed my workout good. I don’t know if that is correct. Having to watch 3s or 5s is bugging me.