What’s the point of riding a bike outside? By spending an extra $500 on an indoor trainer, you eliminate crashes, flat tires, and bad weather and your components will last way longer. Your bike and drivetrain stay spotless, you never waste time coasting, and you can hit precise wattage targets for your training. Why even bother with outdoor rides?
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Why bother riding a bike anyway? You can save hundreds of $ by not buying an indoor trainer, you won’t be able to crash if you don’t ride your bike, no component wear because, again, no bike. It’s perfect.
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Serious answer – if you race outdoors, you should absolutely ride outdoors, too. If you don’t, you will be a danger to yourself and to others (especially in road racing where you will find yourself in a peloton in close proximity to other riders). Racing involves much more than fitness alone – bike handling and navigating your way through a peloton are extremely important skills in this sport.
If you race CX/MTB/gravel, then bike handling skills become even more important – not necessarily because of the pack riding element, but because the terrain you’d be riding on is much tougher and more demanding on your bike handling skills than relatively smooth asphalt.
Beyond that, I just love going outside. I’ve crashed more times than I can count (several of those crashes resulted in hospitalization), dealt with more flat tires than I can remember (at least I can change 'em pretty quickly now), had to bail out halfway through rides in nasty weather because I got so cold I thought I’d freeze to death (thanks Mom & Dad/friends/strangers willing to give me a lift to someplace warm), I’ve churned through a ton of drivetrain parts (you can make cool artwork with them if you’re into that), I’ve spent an awful lot of time coasting (especially true if you’re descending an epic climb that took you over an hour to get up), and while my wattage targets aren’t quite ERG mode precise outdoors, they can get pretty dang close if you practice putting down power smoothly.
Despite the “bad” that may come with riding outdoors, the “good” certainly outweighs all that for me. I’ve met a lot of cool people and seen a lot of incredible places thanks to riding a bike outdoors.
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Ask yourself what you’re going to remember and what you wish you did more of.
Are you going to remember the flat robo group ride on Zwift where you were able to draft in a group of 150 and hold a speed of 45kmph for 30minutes or are you going to remember that epic climb you did as the sun rose over the hills. Breathless at the top, looking over the countryside and feeling like you’ve achieved something. I know which one I’ will be remembering and which one I wish I had more time for.
Time for adventures, time for friendship, time for coffee stops and seeing the sun rise and set.
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Surely this belongs in the Unpopular Opinions thread!
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Sanity. Serenity. Speed. Nature. Beauty.
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Cycling to the donut shop is preferable to driving 
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The purpose of riding indoors is to enhance/benefit my outdoor riding experience, because outdoors is where the joy comes.
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Riding indoors is like ‘laboratory conditions’. You want to ride 200 watts, you ride 200 watts (plus or minus a small list of conditions) Want to ride 200 watts outdoors, and well, it gets messy. That messiness is what is missing on an indoor ride. Riding outdoors can be humbling as there are so many variables that you just can’t have on an indoor ride. Wind, animals, road crossings, flats, crashes (not even including you) and that just names a few. If I was racing, I’d for sure ride more outside because that’s where a lot of the races happen. I would still train a lot indoors just because of the repeatability and the amount of effort I can achieve; there are no big hills anywhere near where I live so hill training is extremely hard to pull off. Years pre-pandemic (PP) I was riding a lot indoors and my FTP was rising. I went on a group ride and wasn’t dropped. People were surprised and so was I to be honest. My FTP was somewhere over 300. (Now is another story) So training indoors really did help me quite a bit, but dropping by for a real outdoor ride would be a necessity for seeing how well it was going, and at least getting some affirmation that it IS working, or a plate of cold crow that it isn’t. I don’t see a problem with training indoors, obviously, but getting ‘out there’ should also be part of the plan too. Either way: RIDE ON!!
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Man, I feel like it’s usually the other way around for me. There are places to hide outdoors but holding a constant xxx watts for yy minutes on the trainer with no micro-rests or soft-pedaling or macro-rests from sustained downhills or tailwinds, etc, is always quite a bit more challenging for me than my outdoor performances would suggest.
THIS 
And being fast is FUNNNN 
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How else would I get to the cafe stops?
Which is, when all is said and done, the number one main priority of the whole endeavour, isn’t it?
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Because there’s no downhills on the trainer. 
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For me, cycling is about 3 major things. 1. The freedom and joy of being outside, 2. The desire to stay healthy and fit, 3. satisfying my competitive nature and internal urge to prove myself to myself. There have been times in my life when each of these have been singularly important; when I’m only craving adventure I exclusively ride outside. When I’m only in search of fitness, I almost exclusively ride indoors. And when I’m motivated to compete, it’s usually a mix of both, for reasons Zack mentioned above.
But usually, for me, cycling is about all 3 of these things. The more fun I’m having riding, the faster and healthier I want to be, and that unlocks even more fun. A healthy mix of all riding styles (indoor, outside, structured, unstructured) and even multiple disciplines (road one day, mountain the next) is the most sustainable balance I’ve found. And it’s what keeps me as excited for every day on the bike as I was when I started nearly two decades ago!
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don’t forget the comradery
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If fitness is your only goal 100% indoor is fine.
I used to race and outdoor riding played a big role in my training. I don’t race any more and I’m fine doing 90% of my riding indoors now since basic fitness is all I’m after. But don’t kid yourself, indoor and outdoor are not the same.
If you are training for an outdoor event some outdooor riding is advisable and if you are training for any sort of mass start race outdoor riding is critical if you want to succeed. While indoor riding will get you fit, there are a few fitness aspects missing from indoor riding and almost every non fitness skill can only be trained outside.
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Indoors you are a caged animal, outdoors you are free in your natural environment.
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It is indeed a total ball ache.
You forgot avoiding the crap you have to carry, abusive drivers, and potholes. Oh lord and figuring out where the hell you’re going to go.
Indoors you can go to the toilet any time, get more snacks, watch TV, pretend to work…
What’s the point of driving my car outside? It stays clean in my garage. The miles don’t go up. I don’t have to buy gas. It’s perfect. Why even bother?
I’m not sure about you but I bought my bikes to ride, not to keep clean indoors.
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