Finished "Grassy Ridge" with 148bpm HR avg, too easy?

Training
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Turn the fans off :wink:

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Why?

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To see if it makes it harder is all.

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No mystery, it will.

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Yeah, that is a well understood situation.

  • Cooling equals better performance and lower RPE in the moment. No question about that in any way.

  • Branching out to heat acclimatization / adaptation is an option, but a specific and very different one.

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So a couple tips that may or may not apply to you:

  1. This is for you…Using different power sources (especially if one is Assiomas and the other is Virtual power) has a strong chance of giving you different results
  2. Cooling. Outside you have 20mph of a full stream of air to evaporate your sweat and cool you down. For indoors you want to have so much air and fans going over you that you are barely (if at all) dripping sweat.
  3. Position. If you are using two different bikes indoors and out then make sure that they are pretty close in position
  4. Cadence. You mentioned 70-80 cadence. This could be perfect for you but is much lower than most people. I would maybe try pedaling at 85-95 for a bit and see if that makes things a bit easier on your muscles.
  5. Inertia. Lots of wheel on trainers have very low inertia due to a small flywheel and a not too heavy wheel. Outside you have the inertia of your whole body and bike that probably weighs north of 150lbs. This can be a big difference and leads to the feeling of having to really ‘push’ the pedals all the way around vs ‘spinning’. Think climbing vs riding fast on a flat/descent. This difference can be a lot depending on how you normally ride. On a wheel on trainer there isn’t a ton you can do but for a smart trainer in ERG you can use different gears where ‘easier’ gears have lower inertia and ‘harder’ gears have higher inertia.
  6. Motivation. This can sometimes be super hard inside. All you’re doing is staying still and pedaling your brains out looking at a wall, laptop, phone or something else. You don’t get rewarded in the same way outside with speed, wind, different goals like tops of climbs or road signs, etc. So it can be hard to dig as deep as you might outside.
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