Seeking Advice: Staying Disciplined in the Spring

Training
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Hi All,

This is my first post on the forum. I’m a 24 year old male who started cycling about 1.5 years ago and I’ve been absolutely loving it. This winter season was my first time where I did structure training, using Trainer Road and it was great! I started in November with an FTP of 227 and I’ve increased my FTP to 264 as of this March (detected through AI). My training schedule this winter has been 3 days a week, totaling of 3.5 hours weekly.

As the weather gets better, I can’t wait to get outside. I loved training indoors but when the weather gets good, I’d much rather be cycling outdoors instead of indoors. My training has been very productive and structured indoors and I don’t know if I’ll be able to reproduce that outside. What do you all recommend I do as the weather gets warmer if I’d like to continue improving my FTP but also enjoy the outdoors? Should I split my time between indoors and outdoors, or should I add more days to the schedule? I don’t have a power meter on my bike, so I don’t think I’ll be able to train effectively outdoors.

Thanks in advance!

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My first question would be: what is your goal? If your goal is to enjoy the heck out of riding your bike, I’d say to ride outside as much as possible, taking in as many routes as you’re able. If your goal is to continue to improve your cycling fitness, I think it would be good to continue to do one or two TR workouts a week. If you’re working a ‘regular’ job, fitting the TR workouts in during the week might be easier than you think (especially if your area tends to have random weather). You can also try to find a road in your area that would allow you to attempt some of the workouts outdoors (which, without a power meter might be a bit tough, admittedly).

But, above all, enjoy yourself! Cycling is a hard sport, so if you aren’t enjoying it, it gets miserable quickly.

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I can’t wait to get outside… I’d much rather be cycling outdoors instead of indoors

Follow your heart.

That being said, you get a large chunk of the benefit of structured training just by loosely following basic training principles. It’s not like your options are don’t train at all vs cut your toes off in punishment if you violate your training plan by riding off the trainer.

Ride as much as you can recover from and feel motivated to ride. Throw in a threshold interval you do everytime you ride a certain 10-20min long segment. Have a shorter but high intensity route you do each week with a bunch of canned road segments where you just go all out on each one. Etc Do this all by feel. You don’t need a power meter, just pace yourself by feel for the duration of the segment.

Then just go out and fill the rest of the miles with whatever you feel like. Ride with friends. Go exploring. Just make sure you don’t make yourself too tired with these rides.

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Hey @Shlyank,

First off—huge congrats on that FTP jump from 227 to 264! :rocket: That’s some serious progress, and it’s awesome to see your hard work paying off. Let’s keep that momentum rolling! :flexed_biceps:

This is a common challenge, and one I just wrote about in a blog post! Check it out here: How to Stay Motivated and Keep Improving With TrainerRoad Year-Round

A few thoughts to help you stay on track while still enjoying that spring sunshine (vitamin D is important!! :sun_with_face: :wink:):

Endurance Rides Outside

A great way to mix in outdoor riding without losing structure is to do your endurance rides outside. These workouts don’t have to be exactly on target—just tune into how endurance rides feel indoors and try to match that RPE outside. And honestly, it’s better to slightly undershoot than push too hard, especially if you’ve got a more intense workout coming up in the next day or so.

Doing Harder Intervals Outside

This is trickier, especially without a power meter. To be transparent, you may sacrifice some of the benefits of the workout by taking it outside without a power meter especially in the beginning. However, I agree with @NigelTufnel11! Enjoying the process is key to cosistency.

Here are some tips for outside workouts:

  • Find a long, steady stretch of road or a bike path with minimal stops.
  • Use RPE and heart rate to gauge efforts—this takes practice, but it’s doable.
  • Consider doing shorter, punchy efforts (like sprints) outside, while keeping longer threshold or VO2 work indoors where you can really dial in the effort.

Dialing in RPE

Speaking of effort levels—if you’re training outside more, getting a solid feel for RPE is huge. It takes time, but start paying attention to how different intensities feel on the trainer and match that feeling outside.

Optimizing Road Conditions

Good call from @NigelTufnel11 about making sure your routes work for structured work. If you can find a quiet stretch of road or a long bike path, it makes workouts so much smoother. And of course—pleeeaaase be safe! No headphones, stay visible, and start your intervals once you’re in a good, open stretch.

Ultimately, there’s no one right way to do this—just what works best for you. Mixing in outdoor rides while keeping some structure indoors can be the best of both worlds. Hope this helps, and keep crushing it!

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what I do is do the intensive workouts inside (3x a week 1h) and endurance rides outside. Mostly keep to zone 2 range the workout advises.

And if I want a completely free ride and just do whatever I want I just change one of the endurance rides into a solo ride so it doesnt falsely effect progression levels.

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Sometimes a ride is just a ride. It can be hard/easy long/short. It doesn’t need to be workout or fit into some plan. Group rides can be a lot of fun and great workouts too. Some years ago I was regularly doing 3 challenging group rides a week totaling about 150 miles/wk. That’s the fittest I ever got.

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#1. Enjoying the sport long term means enjoying the sport.
#2. You can workout outside.

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You’re 24 - Fuel big, go smash those segments outside, use some of that strength you spent all winter building.

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Welcome to the forums.

What I am aiming for is two hard days indoors, one hard day outdoors, one easy day outdoors.

So, mid week a relatively flat route for endurance zone, and weekend a favourite hill for threshold repeats. To do this with RPE, try only nose breathing and/or singing while you ride :slight_smile: And try to recall how threshold and vo2 feels from your indoor rides to get a sense or hard-but-not-too-hard.

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Cycling isn’t about some number. It’s about enjoying the fitness that the number represents. Get outside, enjoy the fitness you’ve built.

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