I just did my first outdoor workout, it was really great and a real learning experience. I live in a hilly area and thankfully have one flat area with one light very close to me. Even Amber a fellow native has talked about the struggles of outdoor workouts in my state. Is there or could there be a way to take an outdoor workout and map/match it on a route. Would be an amazing feature if possible. I know doing outdoor workouts is a skill but this could be a help or maybe I’m crazy.
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Im with you on this one, that would be an incredible feature and would take so much of the burden off of route planning for us as athletes!
In reality, the applied logic required to align your workout and interval structure with factors beyond just a route would be unbelievably sophisticated. It would have to consider individual athlete pacing outside, road gradients, intersections/right of ways and stop signs, then incorporate individual workout structure and timeline in a way that meets the overarching goals of your workout would be an enormously big lift for developers. That said, I dont think this will be on the roadmap anytime soon.
You’re right that planning outside workouts IS a skill, and to offer some validation for you: you’re not alone in being challenged by that at times. Even athletes in relatively ‘flatter’ areas have trouble finding places to do intervals uninterrupted.
As part of practicing this skill, it’s good to familiarize yourself with efforts in how they correlate with the terrain. For example: finding a gradual long climb is great when it’s not so steep that you cant rest if you’re still climbing. I think a lot of athletes don’t realize you can still rest while climbing, as long as it’s not too steep and as long as you can keep yourself in check and ride chill! Roads like this are amazing for doing all sorts of efforts from VO2 max to Threshold and everything in between.
Finally, you should feel okay about taking a little extra time to get to/from your workout spot or in taking an extra bit of rest if you’re doing hill repeats and need to get back to the base of the climb. As long as you’re meeting the comprehensive goals of the work intervals assigned, don’t stress too much about making those outside workouts perfect outside of the intervals assigned. 
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Holy smokes what an awesome response, thank you Ivy! Very helpful and yeah I realized that making something like this would be ridiculously difficult if it is even possible.
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I wish there was a way to pause the rest period in case you don’t quite make it back down in time to start the next interval. Like you can indoors for a nature break. 
on a lot of workouts you have to hit the lap button to start the next interval, so you effectively can lengthen the rest period as needed
It’s possible to pause TR outdoor workouts at any point, on Wahoo and Garmin head units.
- Wahoo = Middle button when viewing the workout screen.
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@mcneese.chad is right, and stupid of me as we discussed it the other day in regards to pausing at lights but not still affecting lap avg. Lap button on garmin skips to next interval effectively cutting the current one, or skipping the next one all together. On the 830 if you swipe up I believe you can go back an interval but that would double your rest time.
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