I live in a hilly area and any ride I take is in going to encounter 10% grades where I can’t follow the 85-170w at 90rpm the plan asks for. It’s there some way to get less strict plans? Or should I cancel ( I just signed up today) and sign back up in winter when I’d rather be on my trainer?
Hey there! Welcome to the TR community!
We’d certainly advise giving your Outside Workouts a try!
Ideally, we’d recommend stringing together some roads to make a route where you’ll meet the least amount of interference as possible so you can stick to your power targets – but we understand that real life doesn’t always work that way.
Don’t feel like you have to stay glued to a given cadence if the terrain doesn’t allow it. If you hit a steep hill, shift down as low as you can, and try to stay at your prescribed power target – even if your RPMs go down a bit.
Further, remember that power zones blend into each other, so you don’t have to be ERG mode-precise when riding to power outdoors. You’ll want to try your best to match your power targets, but expect to be a little over or a little under at times. Aim to keep your power within +/-10 watts or so of your target and you’ll be on the right track! It can take some practice if you’re just getting into it, though.
Here are a couple of TR blog posts we have with additional tips you may find useful:
Hope this helps! Feel free to let me know if you have any other questions. 
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I do indoor and outdoor TR workouts. I don’t think I’ve even seen a cadence recommendation outdoors. For me, I just try to hit my interval power targets outdoors. On the ‘rest’ intervals, I may be a little high (low endurance) or low (zero/coasting), but you need to manage the terrain to manage the main intervals. Below is part of my workout this morning (over/unders). While power isn’t the smoothest, you can see the over/unders are pretty close. The rest intervals are a mixed bag depending on whether I am descending or still climbing. As long as the rest interval is providing sufficient recovery, I think it’s fine.
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Yup - good advice so far. My two cents - just go up that hill as easy and reasonable as you can - the ideal is that it’s part of your warm-up before you get to the terrain where you will perform your main set of intervals. You can even take the liberty of exchanging the prescribed watts for an rpe of 3-5 or there abouts. It takes some practice doing the outside workouts - go for progress not perfection.
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@ZackeryWeimer i took a look at your Strava and I can’t believe how smoothly you put the power down outside.
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My friends have told me some of my power files look like a robot was riding. 
Here’s a recent threshold session:
Finding a hill to do repeats on can be super helpful for executing workouts outside.
If you don’t have a long enough hill nearby, though, finding a long road with as few interruptions (stop signs, traffic lights, etc.) as possible is a solid alternative.
This workout is from earlier in the year on a flat road:
And finally, this next one is a plain ol’ endurance ride on rolling terrain with a lot of punchy hills that get up to 10% or higher – similar to the terrain @ctt is describing. You can see how my cadence (the white bar on the graph) changes with the terrain. On steeper pitches, my cadence goes down, but my power stays on target:
I don’t use any power smoothing on my head unit, which I personally find helpful for keeping a steady effort. Other people prefer to have some kind of smoothing on, be it 3s avg, 5s, 10s…
@ctt Playing around with those settings on your head unit display might also be worth a try as you get into things!
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Living in a place with 200-300 foot blocks and stop signs every 2nd block, there is no possible outdoor workout. Even when I did find a 2 hour ride I couldn’t tell what was going on with the Garmin 830 because of lag and poor graphic interface (I wear glasses, but not riding, can’t afford prescription protective glasses) I would get stuck in horrible cycles where the numbers spike and then you back off and they drop so you speed way up and…well, you just blew the workout and made non-planned intervals withouut acheiving any workout goals. As far as I can tell, you need to live somewhere where there is an open flat car-free road with no stops within warmup time. Nowhere within miles of me is like that. So when I ride outside, I track the ride, but I never try to do workouts.
As far as I’m concerned, non-feature.
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