I absolutely think it would. I guesstomate trainer to road ratio is about 1 trainer hour = 1 hour 10 minutes on the road. You simpy never stop working on the trainer. There is no coasting, no stopping. It is a steady-state effort.

Good luck on your ride.

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Tom Demerly
The Tri Shop.com

While some purport a some formular for making trainer = to road time. I personally go 1:1. My aerobic system needs to work for six hours, so I'm goign to make it work for six hours.

Actually thinking about it - I really enjoyed doing my long rides on the trainer leading up to AZ.

When I ride long out doors, at the end of the ride, my AVG Cadence is always around 67.

Let's say I was just on the saddle for 6 hours. That's 24,120 or so revolutions.

When I have ridden "long" indoors (greater then 3 hours) my average cadence is ussually around 85. 5 hours = 25,500 revolutions... IMO, the steady firing of muscles is worth something over the "interval" efforts of riding & coasting.

IMO, I always feel my longer indoor rides have been more productive then my outdoor rides where there is traffic, stops, coasting at least in terms of building shear endurance.

However, a 5 hour indoor ride is mentally challenging and when I need to ride or run long it's my personal preference to get as far away from home as possible as not to have a mental breakdown and take a "shortcut" home... So for a 6 hour ride, I'm going 3 hours straight and turning around to be forced to go 3+ back.

Good luck if you go indoors... Best be mentally prepared the night before.

Though my computer doesn't calculate average cadence, I've suspected that something like this be true for a long time now. On my indoor rides, there's simply no coasting or stopping, so I feel like a 1hr ride is way more productive than a 1hr road ride.

Though, as you said, the mental challenge of a long trainer ride is many times higher than a long road ride. Like running on a treadmill, it's just so easy to get bored/tired and stop.

I hope you have some strippers or other entertainment to keep you from going stark-raving-mad.
I went 2:45 on mine last week, right after I was driven indoors by a cold rain/hail storm after 1:20. that was brutal, especially on my taint. I felt like I'd ridden 5+ even though my total was only 4.

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_________________
Dick

Take everything I say with a grain of salt. I know nothing.

If there are any male ST strippers willing to volunteer, I'd welcome the entertainment.

I think Paulo is you man to handle this one.

Definitely. Another great feature of riding the trainer is that every time I do it, I notice considerable gains in power and strength out on the road and it takes a little less time indoors.

I am getting ready for IM right now, as I presume that you probably are too. I have some of those long trainer days coming up myself....best advice I can give is have as much visual and audio stimuli as possible! It isn't uncommon for me to have a movie on, my IPod going and the visual telemetry on another screen. It helps with the monotony of being inside.

Good luck and have a great ride!

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"It is not the great things we do in life that really matter, it's the small things we do with a great heart..."-Mother Theresa

I am with you on that one. I have always gone with 1:1. Of course there are some people here that have derived complex formulas that say otherwise. I think its all just an excuse to ride the trainer less.

I have never ridden anywhere near that on a trainer. But I will state this 1 hour on the trainer feels a lot harder than one hour on the road. And I have a PowerTap on it so i can compare Watts. i think the fact that you never stop peddling is huge. As you don't really want to stop peddaling in a race. I may try a long bike on trainer so how long I can last.

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Like T says, "Remember it is all about the Bike because it is all about the Run!"

I'll third that opinion.

I'm an avid trainer rider...even when it's nice outside. I just like the fact that you do nothing but ride, no stoplights, no coasting - just straight pedaling.

To the OP, if you have planned on riding 6 hours - then ride 6 hours on the trainer and be better for it. More is more right? so, if people want to say the ratio is 1:1.x then you'll only be doing yourself a favor by going the full six.

I've done a large number of six hour rides on my CT (and even twice on a spin bike) - sure there are more pleasurable things, like riding outside, but pound for pound it's just too good of a workout when compared to a six hour ride outside.

man all this trainer talk is getting me hot and bothered to ride my trainer for 4 hours on Sunday rather then go outside!

I agree there is no stopping, no coasting (however you can significantly slow down :)) and therefore your legs end up working more for the same amount of time.
Your brain also ends up working more... Even though with a solo 6H ride outside you will have to deal with boredom as well.
However, on a trainer, I would suspect your core work less since a) no need to main equilibrium and b) no need to deal with the mind.

That being said, leaving in Ottawa, I will enjoy as much as possible of outdoor riding before I even consider hitting the trainer!!

Fred.

considering where you'll be riding in two weeks...yeah, maybe you should. It can't be anymore boring than staring at lava fields, right?? :-)

Normalized power, anyone? ;-)

maybe I could convince my wife to close the windows and crank the heat!

I have a question then. I have been doing my 5 and 5+ hr rides on an island with a continuous 4.2 mile loop. There is vehicular traffic on the island but it never causes me to stop maybe only slow down very rarely. Now, not only am I riding non-stop but there is also considerable winds and (well the first time anyway) heat to deal with. Does this make the ride equivalent to something longer than 5 hours? Is this nonstop riding less significant then a 5 hr trainer ride?

And when we say a 5 hr ride is that 5 hrs of riding time or 5 hrs fromt he time you start til you finish? I always assume 5 riding hours.

Just curious cuz this is my first IM coming up too and interested to see what people think about these longer rides.

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Paul
AmateurEndurance.com

As was mentioned above by Andrew Coggan, if you're got a PT, you know the answer already or can find it out real fast. More watts are more work, indoors or out. Personally, I always find indoors much harder but when I look at the power data, I've done less work no matter the ride duration This comes from several different factors including poor cooling indoors, boredom on the trainer and the fact that I don't have much traffic or stops on my main outdoor riding courses.

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Jason
Dig It Triathlon and Multisport
http://www.digittri.com

No power meter here.

I was going to say... all this talk about "feels harder" etc is all subjective.

I sit on the trainer when I'm forced to. It is pure hell to ride HARD on a trainer for any period of time. A 1 hr workout with IF around 0.93 on a trainer is extremely difficult mentally. I just did an outdoor group ride and at the 1 hr point my IF was 0.99 and the mental cost of this was pretty low.

For those counting, that's about 80 TSS in one hour on the trainer and right at 100 TSS in one hour on the road. The same applies, probably more so, for longer rides.

So it appears this whole "trainer to road" conversion might be just a bit too personal to come up with any guideline.

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----------------------------------------------------
Note to self: increase training load.

People give me shit when I say its 1:1, they say, " you dont HAVE to ride that long", but I say, why not, its only going to make me stronger.

Fair enough. As Signal Strength mentions, since the ratio of work indoors versus outside is fairly variable, I'd say it best for folks to keep it a simple 1:1 ratio indoors versus out. In my case, trainer time would be less work than outside but getting myself on the trainer is punishment enough, I'm not going to penalize myself more by discounting the time as well.

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Jason
Dig It Triathlon and Multisport
http://www.digittri.com

what about when you use a computrainer in ergo mode? If I set the load at 225, doesn't that equal 225 (give or take) watts on the road? I would assume that would negate the environmental factors that you mention.

For me, a six hour ride means six hours of wheel turning time, which means more than six hours away from home when you add in the inevitable stoppage time. As well, if I spend the same number of hours on the trainer as I spend with my wheels turning outdoors, I still feel I have pedalled more on the trainer due to the usual coasting time outdoors. The difference may be less for someone who has the discipline not to coast when the opportunity presents itself.

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Grant

pfffft. you evidenced based guys are all the same. ;)

HOLY CRAP! 5 hours on the trainer. thats torture.. that would make me resent my bike more than anything and hate training. Hope youknow what youre doing haha. Maybe you should watch this and go outside and ride!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIl5RxhLZ5U

you dont need no stinking trainer!

A watt is a watt, that was indeed what I was trying to say. I don't have a computrainer but a "hard" interval on the trainer brings me fewer watts than it does outside for the same PE. So a "hard" trainer ride requires less work to be completed than does a "hard" ride outside.

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Jason
Dig It Triathlon and Multisport
http://www.digittri.com

That's gizmo power estimator where I come from. ;-) Most of the people I've talked to have higher average power and *much* higher normalized power on the road, yet they feel like the trainer workout is harder.

I'm guessing, most people aren't cooling sufficiently to match road conditions. Before I got the Avacore thing, I decided the optimal temperature for a trainer workout was around 50 deg fahrenheit, with two BIG fans directed at me. The power loss is fairly minimal then. I'll bet very few people use a trainer that way, though.


--jens

If cooling is performance enhancing as your "toys" have shown :-),
than a 30+kmh wind will provide a cooling effect that is lost inside on the trainer.

There is likely a combination of watts, time, hr, environment that would make for a comparable state.

I know that I perform better inside with a fan and cooler conditions.

Andrew

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C'mon legs run faster!
Being fast on a crappy bike is cool
Fueled by Guinness, Tuborg, Anchor Steam and Creemore Springs

What about heart rate on a trainer. I find it much harder to raise my heart rate on the trainer. Even on the flats outside, it seems I can push my heart rate. When on the trainer, it feels like I am going all out to get HR up.

This has raised questions for me about long rides indoors. I will do my recovery days on the trainer, but I feel that if I were to do a long ride, I would be getting the RPM's but clearly at a much lower HR.

I don't get it? Why do people ride indoors? It sucks, period. There are few things in this world that compare to the simple pleasure of riding a bike outside. As for the workout comparison. I don't buy the trainer crap. You don't fight wind, gravity,nor do you have to drag your carcass around on the trainer. Nothing builds strength for riding a bike like riding a bike outside. Besides i'll take real wind in my face anyday over a big stupid fan. Trainers are for when winter has made roads un passable. Maybe this explains why I see such crappy bike handling skills in races. Your all riding inside like little hamsters.

PE? I thought that's WHY we trained with power instead.

I guess I'm a hamster - I like my trainer & use it year round.

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"I don't get it? Why do people ride indoors? It sucks, period."

You obviously don't live in Canada :) I agree that it sucks, but when the roads are covered in ice and slush and it is -25C outside, indoors doesn't suck as much as outdoors.

yes, it sucks. what would suck worse is being arrested for leaving my 8 year old home by herself while I feel the wind in my hair. Or getting hit by a car because I am riding post-call on one hour of sleep. lighten up dude. some of us have other responsibilities that make riding outside impossible even when the weather is nice.

I think some people who ride on the trainer while checking email, playing video games etc are riding a lot easier than they think they are, even though it feels like they are going
hard. When they are done, they say "I did 5 hrs on the trainer." but it is the equlvalent of riding 5 hours on the road at 15 mph. In that case, they would be better served to have
done 2 really hard hours.

Alright, alright already point taken. I appologize for my post to those that have circumstances at times that don't allow outdoor riding. My post was in response to the original post though, where it sounded like the individual had a choice between the 2 options.
No, I don't live in Canada. I used to live in upstate NY though, and in terms of weather it's pretty close. That of course is where I developed my deep hatred for indoor riding. I live in the Northern Shenandoa Valley now (VA) and stil get some bad weather at times. I usually HTFU and get out on a SS cross bike and end up loving it when it's done. I don't have kids yet so I can't relate to those circumstances.

So the question on HR on trainer vs. road got lost by the hard axx question about why anyone would ride inside. Now that we agree that there are circumstances that intervene in our busy lives that mean sometimes our only option is to get in an indoor ride...

What about HR on the trainer. Do others find that they feel like that are having to go almost all out to get their HR up to a level comparable to what they could do even on the flats. I don't have wattage, which is why I monitor primarily HR.

I totally feel ya! Working in a hospital in the fall thru spring... good freaking luck riding outside. It's dark when we go in and dark when we get home.

Call me crazy, but I really enjoy a really intense hour long trainer session at 5am.

:-)

Jodi

Absolutely have trouble elevating HR on trainer versus outside. I think it's because of stuff I mentioned earlier in my why do people ride inside rant. You don't work as hard because your not fighting wind, gravity or pulling carcass around. The resistance is simply different. Your perceived excertion is high on a trainer because of the lack of cooling and being stationary marinading in your own sweat regardless of how high you have your 16 fans set at around you. I used to have to spend several month on a trainer in upstate N.Y because of the infinite snowbanks. I could ride the thing 3-4 days a week and it would still take me a month to get my real riding strength back in the spring. I found rollers to be a more comparable option to outside riding. Rollers are 10x better than a trainer. Most people are simply too scared to try them though, especially triathletes. There obviously is a learning curve on them, but once you get the hang of it you will see it's better. It holds interest more mentally as well. If you lose concentration you crash. That's pretty good motivation. Plus you become a better bike handler. I have never tried my tri bike on rollers though, only road bike. Tri bike would be very interesting!

You are one sick puppy ... ;-)

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

I can see why people would ride inside if it is icy outside, but other than that extreme - why would you ?
Lack of sleep isnt a good reason - if you're that fatigued you should take the rest.

And if your HR isnt at least similar to what it would be outside, then whats the point.
Another tri forum had a competition about their longest turbo ride. I think someone did 8 hours or so - but if you're just twiddling the pedals - theres no point. Anyone can sit there and not raise a sweat if you take the resistance down a bit.

If you race outside, really you should train outside unless you have some good reasons for the occasional miss.

In the winter time I turn into a TV junkie and enjoy the trainer. But I'm not a junk mile trainer junkie. My workouts are called workouts for a reason even on the trainer!! Longest ride on the trainer 6 1/2 hours and it was all quality !!

lack of sleep isn't a reason not to train, I am not necessarily fatigued, but my reaction times are affected so I don't want to play in traffic. I did 60% of my training for IMFL indoors. still had a decent bike split and a great run.

Interesting question! Three answers:

IF you are looking to cut corners then absolutely NO!

IF it's not raining, then ride outside?

There is NO WAY anyone can tell you what road equals what trainer time.....it is rider specific. Use a powermeter to equivalate. My bet is that the trainer time is actually longer. It may feel harder, that's because its soOOOOOOOoooooOOOoo boring, but usually the power output is less on the trainer. Remember, the powermeter doesn't lie!

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