I have turned almost all outdoor rides to endurance rides only or maybe a workout for vo2. The roads are such that there are too many small hills or turns or stops to do threshold work. By the time you’ve done 12min on a TT bike at threshold you need a lot of road.

Outside of town I can but means a 3 hour ride to get out there and back when an interval workout often only needs an hour (or I only have an hour).

So trainer gets the interval work indoors.

I am really lucky, I live in the Mohawk Valley in NY. If you want easy or steady state I head west toward Oneida lake where the the terrain is pretty flat or follow the Mohawk river. If I want climbs I head north or south, the climbs will vary from 5 minutes to an hour and everything from 3% to 20% grades are pretty close by. This makesi it pretty easy to select a route to suit a workout. That said, this year I changed it up a bit and did a lot of just riding and going hard when the mood took. It turned a bunch of rides into kitchen sink workouts with VO2 max, 20 min FTP, sprints, etc. It was not as effective as structured training but I had a great year on the bike (at least until I got Covid in September!)

True about in-town/city and all the stops. I've given up considering that sort of riding part of my workout, but that means more junk miles or time used when time is precious.

And so true for TT work. Luckily, we have a pretty flat area of farmland near by. But even then, 20min effort at 45+km/hr burns up a lot of road!! We have another good road on a peninsula, which now has a nice shared path next to it, but threshold is too fast for the path. And so, I ride in the bike lane (yes, there's a bike lane and shared path), but then I get abused by drivers for not being on the path!!

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nz
rst, then slowtwitch lurker since '93

Your area sounds great for riding. Been trying to mix it up more now too. Seems the VO2max efforts from riding or ice hockey have been really helpful.

Sorry to hear about the covid, another wave of it hear and lots off work. Hopefully you'll recover well and have a good winter.

I'm thinking you'll get a solid cold winter. Do you then move to trainer rides?

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nz
rst, then slowtwitch lurker since '93

Oh, we get winter! Everything from days of cold rain at the start and end to weeks where it doesn't snow for just a few hours!

I am already on the trainer and slowly getting strength back ..thanks for the encouragement!