Hey guys,
I just signed up to TR today when I saw that you can now do workouts outside & inside.
I’m using a Garmin 1030, so I have a few questions.
The big question: How do I properly train outside? E.g. tomorrow I will be riding home from work (70 Km) - the first hour or so there will be city traffic, traffic lights, etc. But even after that, when there’s not much traffic or so, there will be a few rolling hills, descending sections, etc…How do I properly train here, hit power numbers and such?
But also…how should I set up my Garmin in respect to data fields to get the corresponding instructions from my TR training plan/workout?
Hope you can help me. thanks!
I was doing a lot of cycle commuting when I first signed up to TR. Outdoor integration wasn’t available then but I think I would still take the same approach now that I did then, which was to adapt the workout to the route, rather than trying to follow it too precisely. Depending on the workout that might mean that your intervals and recovery periods are quite heavily dictated by conditions not by the clock e.g. waiting to start an interval until you get to the bottom of a descent, or doing short intervals between sets of traffic lights and getting your recovery while stopped. And some days/sections were basically impossible to follow any kind of plan as I’d just get too frustrated with all the interruptions. Obviously safety of yourself and others also has to take priority, you don’t want to be going through traffic congestion at high speed because you’re trying to finish your VO2 interval!
Sounds like the first section of your ride is going to be too unpredictable to follow any kind of workout on your Garmin, so I would either treat that as an extended warm up, or else just memorise the work you should be doing and fit it in as best you can. If the descents are shallow enough to allow you to still lay down good power then you could start the workout on Garmin once you get out of town, but if there are sections where you know you will be forced to brake or freewheel then personally I would say you’re better off just fitting in the intervals where the terrain permits rather than following the prescribed workout. I think having the workouts on the Garmin is much more useful on rides where the roads are empty/straight/flat enough to allow you to follow the prescribed work without too many interruptions.