Where do you live if you don't mind me asking you? I live in a rural mountainous area as well but it's not very safe with an increasing population that is either distracted on their phones or rednecks being bullies with their large vehicles. We've had a handful of cycling deaths too. I'm outside of Burlington, VT.

I see both sides of riding indoors and those who ride outside more. This past season I did the most indoor training on the bike ever to be safer. I can't say if I increased my fitness or not as there were too many variables and my Ironman this year was extremely different than 2018's IM.

Here are a few things I'm planning on doing for 2020 to try and make my indoor training better while also getting outside a bit.

-moving pain cave to a better area of the basement. Going to turn the other half into a dedicated training room for the bike and strength training. Will put up sheet rock and flooring. And do some fun creative things to this area. This will make it a bit nicer for all the long hours on the bike.

-Going to have coach move long trainer rides in the winter to Friday mornings and ride my fat bike on Saturday with the husband and friends. This is fun, gets us outside in the fresh air and surprisingly gives us a good workout and a good practice with bike handling skills.

-ride my cross bike outside on Saturdays during the spring on our hilly dirt roads which are much safer and less traveled. Hard to drive over 40 mph. Then get on the tri bike outside closer to my main Ironman.

-Summer: do some long Saturday bike rides indoors and outdoors, maybe even alternate weekends. We always start riding at 5:30-6am on Saturdays for a few safer hours of riding.

-Continue to do a few rides where first 3 hours are outside early in the morning and last 2-3 are on the bike trainer when the roads get busy. I did this a few times and it's very hard to do!!

I'm trying to be creative with balancing riding indoors and outdoors. I don't feel safe riding outside so it will only be on Saturdays but not all Saturdays where I might do a 5 hour bike inside (Sundays are less busy so that might be an option to discuss with coach and maybe run long on a week day). I do think I get a better workout indoors but do feel you need some riding outside to maintain bike handling skills. If you are only riding flat non-technical courses that's one thing. But if you choose to do hilly races with very technical descents, please get outside and practice that. Those kind of skills don't just magically manifest on the bike trainer. I saw two very bad crashes in France last month where one woman died. And every hilly race I did this year had at least one bad crash (I did 3 hilly races of my 4).

So...no point really. I guess we all have to do what's best and what feels safe. Everyone's situation is different.

If you do ride 100% on the trainer, one suggestion could be to set up some cones in a vacant parking lot and practice some bike handling skills. Just a thought.

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.