Just a thought but perhaps polling seasonal users as to what would keep them as year long subscribers would get a better course of action then the entire user base. Maybe that is something that is already done as part of cancelling the service. I wouldn’t know since I’ve never cancelled since starting. There have been a lot of interesting ideas and opinions but how many are coming from people like me who would happily keep their subscription year round anyway.
Yeah this time of year it gets dark before end of work. So I have to ride indoors M-F anyway. Figured might as well do a training plan and maximize productivity. Last outdoor ride was the day before the time change.
When the weather is nice, I love being outside on my bike but the fun of outdoor rides is indirectly proportional to how much time I spend stationary.
Yeah, I don’t recall seeing a single Powless ride in Contra Costa County. Pretty much just Sacramento County, El Dorado County, and Placer County. Mostly Sacramento and up into the Sierras. A few rides down here in the Delta flatlands.
Nate’s original post stated “The hope is that those who want to ride only outside during the summer months could switch the plan and still get benefit from TR.” and I’m simply trying to bring the outside rider perspective into the thread. Totally understand that a lot of folks on TR forums have subscriptions and either can’t or prefer to ride inside, and by the original definition aren’t the target of TR Outside.
My quote referred to your criticism of me saying that I find it hard to follow rigid workout instructions outdoors, i. e. it was much more narrow and not aimed at your contribution to this thread in general.
I would expect that most people will still do both, even if their focus shifts towards outdoors. Just think of bad weather or when life happens. Some of @Nate_Pearson’s proposed features (e. g. TrainNow) are indoor features — or at least, you could do them indoors if you wanted to.
I still think that if TR wants to be more appealing to people who primarily ride outdoors in the summer (this is how I understood the premise), TR should not just “port indoor workouts outdoors”, but think about better ways to have a more outdoor-sy mentality.
You are totally right that you could have awesome roads or trails in front of your door. When I was a kid, I literally had to cross the street to get to the forest and to a trailhead. This is awesome, and if I were living there today, I’d ride my mountain bike much more. 
but often in summer there is a very bad weather or i haven’t the time for outdoor, so it is easier to do it indoor, so a good mix of indoor/outdoor would be interesting
Irony is not criticism? I’d still buy you Shabu Shabu and a couple rounds of beer, we could geek out and I’m genuinely interested in hearing your point of view 
I think the antennas of my irony meter got bent. I’ll take you up on the invitation to shabu shabu, though. (Hard to talk sometimes without facial cues, sorry about that.)
Am I the only one who would probably use just this “summer edition”? Because in winter i stopped TR and just ride trainer (structured workouts, selfcoached). But with good wether I ride and race mostly outside and want to have TR to “keep an eye on me” because in season training/recovery is more complicated than in base…
And I would have just one (outside FTP) which is at least 10% bigger outside and doing “underzone” indoor training is not productive for me… SS become low tempo and vo2max become SS/FTP…
@Nate_Pearson i would most probably return to TR if you release this…
I’m probably part of the target market for this - I train indoor during the winter, and then transition to riding a lot more outdoor when the clocks change. I also train towards one or two big summer events then cancel TR for a few months. Last 2 years I’ve been on the LV tri plans, which also affects the comments below.
Before the event(s) I’m pretty happy with the current TR offering. I more or less hit the swim/bike/run workouts, mostly doing the 2 bike workouts indoors. The upcoming run/swim updates are going to make this easier and more effective for me.
I don’t have a smart trainer, so any discussion of indoor control functionality isn’t super relevant for me - but if you want to introduce a lower price tier for non-smart trainer users then that’d be a nice present 
For me, now that PLs and FTP estimation are in place, then there is a possibility that I’d keep TR year-round for a lower price during my end of summer/off season. Those things add value for me. If I can continue to track my bike fitness and occasionally do an appropriate workout or type of ride to keep things ticking along then I’d be there.
The danger of this is that I’d stop having a real off season, try to stay at high fitness all year round, and blow up. Although I understand that you’re not really presenting this as an offseason option, more a summer one.
TrainNow does account for non-TR work (e.g., outside or Zwift) when making recommendations, yes. Even if it was HR only.
I assume it is just looking at TSS or another measure of load.
Seasonal user of TR so far, would really like to keep year round but I find it hard to justify cost in the summer when I do maybe one indoor workout every couple of weeks when its raining.
I tried a couple of the outdoor workouts last year and to be honest the biggest barrier for me is terrain - I have a few places I know I can get a solid 10 minute threshold interval in (gentle uphill), but mostly its difficult to get more than 5 mins before coming to junctions / narrow sections / downhill.
I guess the golden ticket would be something where you can upload training routes and have a planner select workouts / intervals from your own selection of routes / GPS data…
Fully agree with the comment about making the outdoor workouts simpler in structure so we can adjust to the terrain, traffic, etc. It also helps to throw a TSS goal in there. “Ride in Z2 until you accumulate 150 TSS. This should take you about 3 hours”
An annual subscription where you get full features in the winter and limited features in the summer. Show the price savings so they will pay annually so they won’t have to make any choice. Why only have high annual cost and monthly costs?
The problem with this:
Seasons vary wildly across the globe. Some have 3 months of summer, some the other way around… some like to stay indoors when it rains, some want to go outside on a mild winter’s day… I see a massive issue here (most likely a showstopper for me).
I’ve done outside workouts in the past, but my thinking now is why ruin a bike ride by doing a workout. 
@Nate_Pearson In the past two years, I have done one indoor workout. Could this be a year round option for those who prefer to ride outside? I live in Southern USA so the winters aren’t bad and will still ride outside even if cold and rainy. Just wear appropriate clothing. I also have a good area for training…loops and flats of length suitable for any intervals.
I think some rule #5 needs to be handed out to some here 
Those who ride outdoors are mostly doing either club rides (either social no-drop or chain gang), some sort of endurance solo type ride or café ride.
My 2p/2c worth is to have these rides analysed (hopefully by the updated AT) then for TrainNow to suggest appropriate workout sessions to augment those. “Looks like you could do with some short VO2max intervals…”. As others have noted, regimented intervals of X minutes are awkward to do outside, take a leaf out of running’s book and suggest fartlek intervals: “sprint to the second lamp post, recover for three lamp posts, sprint again to the next lamp post” so there’s no dealing with pausing/restarting a head unit and the rider can figure out a suitable location in their locality to do the workout.
I did this summer totally outdoors, a bit of exploring local segments on Strava to find my best times so I knew where to head to do two to four minute VO2max intervals; eight to ten minute threshold intervals and so on. Usually the hardest part was getting back to the start of my segment within the allotted recovery time but for longer intervals my Garmin required me to hit the lap button to start the next interval so there wasn’t that pressure.
This already exists. You just mark your rides as outside and it loads to your head unit.
I do my 3 TR workouts outside at least 6 months a year. I will also do the group and solo endurance rides as extras when possible. Maybe I am lucky in my area with good roads so I don’t understand the comments that TR workouts can’t be done outside. I haven’t had one yet that couldn’t be done. I’ve even done some while on vacation where I brought a bike. I don’t think every interval needs to be prefect like inside. An random stop sign is not wrecking my overall workout. I guess a lot of people just drop structured training once the weather breaks. I have been doing interval on the bike (outside) since reading Greg Lemond’s and Eddy B’s books in the late 80s - early 90s. Everyone I know that has a coach is training outside when they can. To me, TR replaces a need to hire a coach whether I train inside or out. I would probable give up cycling if I had to ride inside all the time.
I get that some people can’t ride outside or prefer inside because of family and work schedules. I will still need to hit the trainer once in a while in summer.
You are lucky. I usually have to have a 30 minute plus warmup to get to sensible roads for intervals.
What I usually do instead is take a look at the workouts I have got scheduled in the next ~week and pick a route that suits one of them best, and try to “capture the essence” of the workout (so that might be like a 15 and a 10 minute climb instead of 2x 12 or something to that effect). I would like it if TR could see that