Using the Garmin Power Guide for training to replace TR workout? (Edge 1040)

I just got a new Garmin Edge 1040. My second ride with it was a 150 mile gravel ride and I tried out the power guide feature – it was awesome. Kept me sticking to a plan and riding within my abilities and I’ve never finished a big ride with so much energy.

But over that long day I couldn’t help thinking the power guide seemed like a much more natural way to train with power than using TR workouts outdoors. When riding a TR workout I’m constantly fighting the terrain or trying to adjust as needed to find the right terrain for a set of intervals. When using a Power Guide the intervals are in distance rather than time so you always finish your VO2 max power at the top of the hill, which is what is actually natural.

So now what I’d like to do in my ideal world is build routes with the right terrain to use for various TR workouts. I guess this might really lead away from TR eventually but I could still see using the platform to tell me what I need is X minutes at Y power and then I can put together a set of hill repeats or whatever that match that but use Garmin’s power guide to execute so that rather than fighting my computer if I go faster or slower than I’d guessed I can just ride the power targets to the top of each rise and so on.

Has anyone else tried going down this route? I realize it’s a bit of a doozy, and not everyone has the number of roads to create options around them that I do, but here in rambly New England I can stitch together a wide array of routes to do just about anything except give me a long enough flat enough section to easily do a TR workout as written without a fair amount of shenanigans.

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There are lots of interesting ideas in your thoughts here, I am sure someone out there is the world is working on the tech to do this, but nothing really exists that I know today.

You probably need to simplify here. You say you have plenty of route options. Just choose the best to match the workout, and then if it doesn’t match perfect, change the workout to suit your terrain. For example, if you are schedule to do 12 minutes threshold repeats, but only have terrain that suits 9 minutes. Just do shorter repeats, but more of them to match the workout description. This is really nothing magical about 12. It is more about hitting the right system and total dosage.

I think TR sometimes creates this thinking that there is really only 1 way, and that is never the case.

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