goregrind wrote:
the funny thing is you could have done a 2x20 with 2 minutes rest at 1 hour pace and gotten a better workout than some 5 hour screwoff fest where you were able to do stuff like type messages on slowtwitch or do whatever else you were doing, complete waste of time, secondly, not sure where you are from but this has been the warmest winter in years, in the midwest at least, ive done at least a four hour outdoor ride every weekend from october to mid january until it snowed last weekend, even when the winter is bad i can pretty much do five our rides in at least 8 or 9 months of the year, so doing one on a trainer is a joke, and really, 5 hour rides outside dont do much for you either unless they are done mostly at ironman race pace
Totally disagree there. 5hr ride is a very different workout than 2x 20.
2x 20 hurts like a total ***** but after I'm done, my legs are 100% fine. I could race the very next day.
5 hours on a trainer should give you some serious leg fatigue. Granted, I don't ride so casually that I can type and read books, but for the first hour, it feels downright ridiculously easy at 19mph on a Cycleops2. An hour later, things start to hurt and the legs are starting to fatigue since there is no coasting. 2:30 later, I can't really last too much longer - I think the longest I've gone is 2:50 and I was toast. Even though my speed didn't really slow in the final hour, holding 19mph required a serious effort from me - I could barely watch a movie. And in that shape, I could ride 75 miles with 6000ft of climbing no problem. Hammering most of the climbs.
Now I could probably have dialed it down just to survive for another 2 hours, but I'm pretty sure that the leg fatigue would have still got me at that point.
Anyone who thinks 2x20 >>> 5 hrs on a trainer has obviously never done more than 2 hrs on a trainer. Long rides on a trainer are legit. Not the most exciting thing, and I still hate doing them unless I have to, but there is no doubt that they are good workouts. (Ok, you probably shouldn't be playing video games on it at the same time - that's probably too easy for 2.5hrs but if you're going 5 hours, I'll give it to you.)
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