# Indoor Training vs. Outdoor Training



## jtheskier (Jul 20, 2006)

it was 95F today at 6pm and i decided to try and do my 4x10min workout on the trainer. in the past my trainer workouts have always gone poorly, and i'm rarely able to produce the same watts that i do on the road. for reference, i use a PowerTap for training.

this time i got serious with my trainer workout. i turned on the A/C and set the thermostat to 65F. i put a fan in front of me to blow air on me. i soaked a t-shirt in cold water and draped it over my back for the intervals. i turned off all the lights, put on my ipod and blasted some AC DC. didn't look at my power meter until 2 songs had passed. i was totally in the zone and don't think i could have set myself up any better.

first interval was 286W for 10 minutes. i was blown up at the end, HR reaching max 190. 

second interval was only 259W average. with 2 minutes to go, i checked the power meter and i was only at 244W average (although HR was 181), so i went to 305W for the last 2 minutes. this brought my HR up to 189 by the end.

third interval was crap. i tried doing it without music/water-cooled t-shirt and perceived went through the roof. i felt acid coming up the back of my throat and i thought i was going to puke.

i almost didn't do the fourth interval, but after spinning super easy i decided to go back into music/cooling mode and go for it. i only averaged 256W and i was sure i was going to puke by the end.

perceived effort was high, heart rate was high, yet power was ~10-20% low relative to outdoor workouts. for reference, i did this exact same workout last week with less rest, and all four intervals were between 285W to 296W. highest HR in that workout was 183bpm, and perceived effort was much lower.

what would you do if you were me? is it worth doing these 4x10m workouts on the trainer if i can't do the watts? if i were training by heart rate, i'd consider this a great workout,better than my outdoor workout last week. it would certainly help if i could get my workouts done on the trainer, because it takes weather out of the equation (which has been a serious problem the last 2 weeks).


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## reikisport (Aug 16, 2006)

Sounds like you made a common mistake you did the first 1 too hard and that killed the others.
Normally (for me and clients) I tell them not to kill your self on the 1st just build into it, (for me) the second or third are the best(numbers and RPE wise don't worry too much about HR)


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## kretzel (Aug 1, 2007)

*add'l thought*

Ditto what previous poster said. 

One other possibility, I suspect it is a minor factor but something to think about, are you sure your recovery between intervals was adequate. Out on the road you often get more "micro breaks" of coasting than you realize, they'll show up in the power data but not the HR data so if you were doing recovery by HR you might still be working the legs harder during your trainer recovery than your on the road recovery. You could probably extract this info from some power meter files. 

Cheers,


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