Yet another question on outdoor workouts

Training
1

Hi,

This season I will be relying 100% on TrainerRoad to prepare for my goals (A race: Cape Epic 2021). I’ve used Plan Builder and am currently on the second week of SSBHV1. I live in sunny Barcelona and weather will be warm until late october probably. With this in mind, I’m trying to do as many outdoor workouts as possible, specifically weekend rides + tuesday & thursday, doing wednesday & friday indoors. The reason behind this is that I can find routes that fit the scheduled workout including rest times.

Nevertheless, I was wondering about wokouts like today’s: Tallac. It consists of 3x15 SS intervals w/3’ rests. Barcelona is sorrounded by a natural park with a lot of hills that at my current fitness level allow me for a solid 20min SS work. But with Tallac, it is impossible for me to ride downhill in 3 minutes and be able to start at a point where I still have 15min uphill. Does it matter if I make longer rest intervals as long as I’m doing 3x15 @SS?

TL;DR: Tallac outdoor - 3x15 @SS w/3’ recoveries. Does it matter if my recoveries are longer? I want to do it outside on a local climb and descent will take me ~6min

2

Does it matter? Yes, there’ll be a small amount of the intended benefit missing.

Is it the end of the world? No, it’s better to have your longer recoveries than skip the workout all together because you can’t stick to it 100%

2 Likes
3

I always wonder this too. Unfortunately where I live we don’t have long hills, so for me to get 20 min of ss I have to start on a flat section of road that takes me to a particular climb and then I finish the interval on that climb. But obviously this really extends the rest periods. I love doing my intervals on climbs, and do repeats as much as possible. But I also realize this doesn’t always work. If I have workouts with extremely short rest periods, like 2x10 with 1 minute rest in between (2 sets), I’ll do those type of workouts on flat road where I can just let off for one minute and get back to it. Time of day makes a big difference for these workouts, if I can get on the bike by 5 am, there is basically no traffic and I can keep steady power more easily.