I’m uncertain of the best / recommended way to execute an outdoor TR without if I am riding significant time before and after the structured portion.
I need to ride for ~30 minutes to get to a park where I can execute the workout with decent accuracy. Then I need to ride back. I’m worried that all the extra riding will throw off tracking of PLs and therefore AT.
My options, AFAIK:
Record the ride there as one file, the workout as another and the ride back as a third. Pro: it gives the cleanest data to TR for matching the prescribed workout. Con: it will cause me extra work annotating the ride files with my notes.
Record a single file. Wait to start the workout on my Wahoo until I am at the park. Pro: less work during and after the ride. Con: maybe it throws off the PL analysis?
Record a single file. Start the workout on my Wahoo right away but pause it right away. Pro and con same as above but not sure if it is better for PL algorithms. I’m also not sure if my Wahoo will record the rest of the ride while the workout is paused.
Which of the above should I do? Or is there an option I’m not thinking of?
The outdoor ride will continue in the final step of the warm-up phase and will not start the main set until you press the lap-button. This allows you to ride to your starting point whether that is 15 minutes or an hour from your house.
Interesting. If it’s only going by completion or not and post-ride survey, then it shouldn’t matter what way I execute it.
I suppose that’s the easiest approach. But I assumed that the FIT file has the planned intervals in the data and would allow TR to “find” the intervals and do some basic checks as well as detect over/under achieving.
I know I won’t get any PL credit for the pre/post workout riding but it’s no issue.
I’m not a Wahoo user, but I know you can pause the workout without pausing the activity.
Basically, you have the TR loaded on your device, you then start your ride and press pause. Your ride will be captured normally and once you hit play your workout steps are back.
This is what I do all summer, with my Wahoo. If the warm-up is too short for my transit time, I pause the workout at some point (usually near the end) while the ride keeps recording, and then start the intervals when I get to the right place. At the end, I ride home and don’t interact with the Wahoo at all, and it keeps recording after the workout proper ends. It ends up looking like this:
(The extra riding at the beginning and end will not impact your resulting PLs until Levels 2.0 launches, but it will impact your FTP detection. I don’t care about PLs, so that was fine with me.)
@huges84 Outdoors workouts after the warm up have ‘press lap to continue’. So don’t press lap until you’ve done your 30mins, only press lap when you are ready to do your workout. It’ll also make no difference what you do though (one ride or multiple rides) as TR currently doesn’t analyse outdoors work out only scoring them as a pass or fail considering your subjective survey response.
A bit OT the ‘press lap to continue’ thing is often after rest periods in wokouts too. Lol, I’m guilty of forgetting to do so often (press lap) and start off hard too early
As he has already said, that is not how it works on Wahoo units.
I used to just pause the workout when riding with a Wahoo. The problem being, at least back then, that you couldn’t switch to another screen to get ride data. But can’t have it all I guess.
None of the three alternatives will make a difference on how TR sees what you have done, but you forgot the biggest con on alternative 1. Three shorter rides comes across as less impressive on Strava then one big one.
I recently discovered by accident that I get access to my other screens again if the ride ‘auto-pauses’ (at traffic lights) whilst the structured workout is already paused.
I haven’t gone back to try to replicate it yet, but I remember thinking it was potentially a really useful workaround!
EDIT: I’m doubting my memory now. It might have been an auto-switch to the climbs screen rather than an auto-pause. If that’s the case then it probably also works with Strava live segments - they’re usually disabled during structured workouts but it’s a setting you can change if you want. So it would be possible to create a strava segment on your outbound route which is placed specifically to get the screens to switch automatically.
With you there What I’ve sometimes did in the past (but only when I’ve bothered to make a workout in Training Peaks) have separate files I can personally analyse in TP/GC but combined them with FIT File Tools to one more impressive ride for Strava
The simpler solution that I’ve relied on in the past is just to wait til I’m near my ‘training ground’ to even start the structured workout on the Wahoo, even if it means I need to briefly pause it and skip forward one interval to get past the warmup and into the first set.
This method that @alexfthenakis mentioned is the way I usually do it.
I often ride ~30-60 minutes out to where I’m going to do my workout and I just wait until I get to that starting point to then load the workout up onto my head unit.
Then, I’ll do the workout until it’s finished and ride on home.
At this time, PLs won’t be affected by the extra riding around your workout. Your PLs for the workout itself will still be accounted for, though, which means you PLs for the zone of the workout will still be accurate.
What I’ve sometimes did in the past (but only when I’ve bothered to make a workout in Training Peaks) have separate files I can personally analyse in TP/GC but combined them with 