Quick note: On behalf of the whole Purple Patch team I would like to congratulate all Purple Patch athletes who toed the line at the IRONMAN St George World Championships. Anyone who questioned this event as a viable alternative to Kona should think again, this was brutally tough and an amazing event. While different from Kona, it bubbled up equal challenge and was a super event. Well done all, and I personally loved connecting with the folks who managed to squeeze me in prior to the race.
Key Message: The Northern Hemisphere weather is turning - the days grow longer and the temperatures begin to rise. With races coming in thick n’ fast, and major events looming for many, we are getting a lot of questions around the best way to manage the bike sessions in each week of training. I thought a simple guide might be effective.
Indoor versus outdoor riding. Before I bullet key considerations, lets remind ourselves the benefits and challenges of riding on the trainer and being outside:
Trainer Pros:
- Time efficient
- Great venue to work on pedal stroke and habits in posture
- Highly specific intervals relative to prescription
- Very safe
Trainer Cons:
- No ability to work on bike handling skills (cornering, wind management)
- Higher cognitive stress (always a higher demand than riding outside if at lower intensities)
- Less suitable for real terrain management
- Not a good venue to build over-distance work.
Outdoor riding Pros:
- Highly specific to race conditions
- The school of learning to improve the art of riding (terrain, environment etc)
- The place to apply the lessons of indoor
- Conditioning of postural integrity and stabilizing muscles
Outdoor riding Cons:
- Safety considerations
- Greater logistical challenges
- Occasionally tougher to implement specific intervals if suitable terrain isn’t easy to find
If you read above it should become apparent that outdoor riding is an important part of you improving as a cyclist and becoming race ready. Ultimately, it is what you do. With this said, the trainer is a super tool, and even more valuable for the time-starved athlete. This is a typical approach that you can adopt with the weather warming up.
- Weekend rides:
- Optimal to have the vast majority outdoor. Work on terrain, posture and resilience.
- If you are forced to ride the trainer then either:
- Follow the structured ride (~50% of training time of the outdoor ride)
- Do ~ 75% of outdoor duration in free ride format while implementing any intervals asked for.
- Midweek rides:
- (Thursday) The tougher interval based rides completed as Live or Video On Demand sessions.
- (Tuesday) Primer and Prep sessions completed as Live or video on demand sessions, or taken outside for 90 min to 2 hours and include the main set into that ride.
- Any other additional ride added should be low stress (Z1 to Z2) and always outside and social. A soul filler.
This enables you to get the specific coaching and prescription, while yielding the benefits of outside riding.
This isn’t a hard and fast rule, so please don’t take the above as a gospel demand from above, but it provides a useful framework to build from.
Cheers,
Matt
