0% indoors. Other than having to be home because of my kids, I can’t imagine choosing the trainer over outdoor riding, and luckily my kids are now old enough that it isn’t an issue.
Last year for my HIMs I did maybe 1 indoor bike workout per week and 2-3 outdoor rides. This year, I’m in a new city with fewer good cycling paths (non-existent for road bikes going fast-ish) so I feel I might better off with more indoor bike workouts. Wondering what others here are doing. What percentage of your bike workouts are indoors?
Cyclist only, and I recently moved to a new city also (just outside of Columbus OH). It would be easy to drive through my area and think it’s terrible for riding bikes.
Through Strava and a little exploration, there is a bike path (ok for 20+ mph) that takes me straight from my front door to country roads about 5 miles away. Don’t write your outside riding off just yet. Ask around and see where others are riding.
That being said, when the snow is flying and/or it’s under 25 degrees, I spend 200+ miles on the trainer a week. I laugh when people mention their “really focused” 45-60 minute workout- I’m doing more minutes than that in just my FTP work, so my “really focused” rides are more like 90-120 mins 
99.9% of my rides are done indoors. Its just easier with my schedule and really simplifies having to plan a long ride outside. 8 hours is the longest ive gone indoors on my trainer, roughly about 4 movies on Netflix. But I regularly go up to 5-6 hours indoors.
99.9% of my rides are done indoors. Its just easier with my schedule and really simplifies having to plan a long ride outside. 8 hours is the longest ive gone indoors on my trainer, roughly about 4 movies on Netflix. But I regularly go up to 5-6 hours indoors.
8 hours. Wow! Good for your. That is some serious mental fortitude.
Prior to my surgery, and as soon as I’m healthy i’ll be back on the trainer and TR.
4-5 hours a week, 4 times minimum.
With a more than full-time job and being on the road often the trainer is the BEST use of time. Even being somewhat close to decent riding roads it is still 25min before I’m into the good zone and its hard to hit targets consistently due to traffic, terrain, and other things. Group rides are great except you’ll get chirped if you’re smashing yourself to hit #'s when they are out for a social.
I’ll do all the structured work indoors and then do my 2-3 hour endurance ride outside with friends.
Last year for my HIMs I did maybe 1 indoor bike workout per week and 2-3 outdoor rides. This year, I’m in a new city with fewer good cycling paths (non-existent for road bikes going fast-ish) so I feel I might better off with more indoor bike workouts. Wondering what others here are doing. What percentage of your bike workouts are indoors?
For me:
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Nov-April:
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95% indoors. Just the long weekend rides are outdoors when the weather complies. (Which it has been this year generally).
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Rest of year:
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50% indoors.
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Anything with 3-20 minute intervals I do on the trainer.
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Low intensity/endurance and 30-60sec intervals I do outside
That excludes my commute to/from work which I obv do outside, year-round. That’s all recovery intensity which is very low.
I live in an area with good weather most of the year, and still find myself indoors most of the time. Riding outside is a beautiful thing, but the advantages to indoor training are just so numerous: less clean up, safer and night (or at all times for that matter), easier to structure a workout with intervals, etc. But maybe the biggest plus for me is time. Being time crunched, indoor training is a winner. 90 minutes on the rollers is 90 minutes of spinning the pedals. Outside, with stops, coasting, etc., it’s much less than this.
Utah resident.100% indoors from October to April because I’m a pussy and don’t like riding in the cold. 85% the rest of the year. Netflix, playstation (on rides less than IF.72) and Trainerroad keeps me in line and tuned up. I do it because of the structure and time away from family is minimized. Rides take place before family is awake or after kids bedtime.
Prior to my surgery, and as soon as I’m healthy i’ll be back on the trainer and TR.
4-5 hours a week, 4 times minimum.
With a more than full-time job and being on the road often the trainer is the BEST use of time. Even being somewhat close to decent riding roads it is still 25min before I’m into the good zone and its hard to hit targets consistently due to traffic, terrain, and other things. Group rides are great except you’ll get chirped if you’re smashing yourself to hit #'s when they are out for a social.
I’ll do all the structured work indoors and then do my 2-3 hour endurance ride outside with friends.
Even though I have time to get outdoors and ride and am really only 10 minutes away from a decent place to ride outdoors riding indoors is far more efficient. 20 minute round trip to riding location. time to get bike in car, gather all equipment needed for ride making sure the check weather conditions. Let’s say 15 minutes give or take 5 minutes. Get to ride location and say 5 minutes to get setup. after ride another 5 minutes to packup. So that’s 45 minutes on top of my ride time. training indoors I eliminate the drive and if I just leave my bike setup on trainer and am off. Still have to make sure I have my fuel and drinks available indoors. One upside and downside to indoor riding is temp control. It’s nice I can have the fan and ac to keep it cool. But I still will want to ride outdoors to stay comfortable riding in different conditions.
With a job, wife, kids, dog, and a house about 95% of my bike training is indoors. 3-4 rides a week and very structured, no time wasted. My trainer rides vary from 60 to 120 minutes.
I only ride outdoors the weekends leading up to a race, a occasionall MTB ride, or for casual family rides on a paved trail.
Except for IM distance years, I don’t ride outside after the last event of the season (around here that’s September) until the week or two before the first of the season, around here that’s June.
I live downtown, the nearest good riding is 40 minutes away (each way),
so a 2 hour ride becomes 4 hours after you have wasted time with setup and stowing, changing etc etc. Indoors you can go 2 hours then get of and run straight away and bonus there’s a shower right there.
Riding indoors allows you to focus on the bike and constant power instead of road conditions, road signs, road rage (mine and theirs).
Also, no coasting.
Last year for my HIMs I did maybe 1 indoor bike workout per week and 2-3 outdoor rides. This year, I’m in a new city with fewer good cycling paths (non-existent for road bikes going fast-ish) so I feel I might better off with more indoor bike workouts. Wondering what others here are doing. What percentage of your bike workouts are indoors?
I spend 200+ miles on the trainer a week. I laugh when people mention their “really focused” 45-60 minute workout- I’m doing more minutes than that in just my FTP work, so my “really focused” rides are more like 90-120 mins
Wouldn’t more than 60 min @ftp mean that it is not your ftp??
I’m time pressured so don’t get that much training done at all.
During winter:
2 indoor(Wednesday night, Saturday morning), one outdoor ride (Sunday)
The indoor ones are:
6x9:00 Sweet Spots on 1:00 RI
and a VO2 max set. Usually the following:
3 x on 3:00 RI
but I tried this recently:
40 x 0:40/0:20 @ 110% FTP … however I think it needs to be 115% FTP
As the season approaches, I phase out the sweet spot training and replace it with VO2 max set.
Soon I’ll replace one indoor session for before/during/after work hard short sessions.
Plan to try to keep one weekly indoor VO2 max set: 3 x on 3:00 RI
But time will tell about that.
FTP has gone from 239W in December to about 268-270W now (my last test was 263W but I’m due a new one).
I don’t know the percentage, but in the winter I do most of my real training indoors. I commute to work, also in the winter, by bike 4 out of 5 days. I just really hate to clean my bike 
In the summermonths most of my riding is outside, unless I’m short on time. There’s an abundance of good bike paths, so no excuses
Same. 2-3hrs during the week on the Kickr and TR and then if the weekend is decent (35*+) I try to layer up and ride outside. Even in summer though I still do 2-3 hours during the week on the trainer. Its so much easier to control variables and focus on the workout.
Last year for my HIMs I did maybe 1 indoor bike workout per week and 2-3 outdoor rides. This year, I’m in a new city with fewer good cycling paths (non-existent for road bikes going fast-ish) so I feel I might better off with more indoor bike workouts. Wondering what others here are doing. What percentage of your bike workouts are indoors?
I spend 200+ miles on the trainer a week. I laugh when people mention their “really focused” 45-60 minute workout- I’m doing more minutes than that in just my FTP work, so my “really focused” rides are more like 90-120 mins
Wouldn’t more than 60 min @ftp mean that it is not your ftp??
Of course, but I said “FTP work,” which for me is usually done at 85-95% of FTP and split into 15-20 minute increments.
Last year for my HIMs I did maybe 1 indoor bike workout per week and 2-3 outdoor rides. This year, I’m in a new city with fewer good cycling paths (non-existent for road bikes going fast-ish) so I feel I might better off with more indoor bike workouts. Wondering what others here are doing. What percentage of your bike workouts are indoors?
I spend 200+ miles on the trainer a week. I laugh when people mention their “really focused” 45-60 minute workout- I’m doing more minutes than that in just my FTP work, so my “really focused” rides are more like 90-120 mins
Wouldn’t more than 60 min @ftp mean that it is not your ftp??
Of course, but I said “FTP work,” which for me is usually done at 85-95% of FTP and split into 15-20 minute increments.
Ah, I see. May I ask roughly what % and how long is the recovery between these increments?
I ride indoors too much. I get a ton of grief from other riders that see my Strava profile filled with Zwift/Perpro rides. Because of my job schedule I’m mostly a weekend warrior for outside rides and the rest of the time I’m riding indoors.
For my Ironman build last year I had to train through winter so I was doing a lot and it paid off.
On Saturday morning I would spend 2-3 hours on the Cycleops Powerbeam doing specific efforts, then after this head outside and do the rest of my sessions, this worked great to get the specifics done then it was nicer outside to ride. Last IM build about 50% of total time was on indoor bike. You need a good one and being able to set it up to do specific efforts is key. It is really cold where I live so another advantage is saving 15 mins getting dressed and loads of laundry from riding outdoors in many layers in below zero temps.
Ill be doing the same this winter (Australia) getting ready for Kona.
I just discovered Zwift and thus rediscovered my bike trainer. I used to have a trainerroad subscription when they first launched and kept it for over a year but only used it a handful of times, got rid of it and did 50% of my riding outdoors and the rest at a computrainer studio.
However, over the last month, I rode the first week exclusively outdoors everyday for 18hrs (300 miles) total 'cos the weather was great (NYC), then it got bad but wanted to keep cycling everyday and looked again at Zwift (didn’t appeal to me a year a go). Since then (last 3 weeks), all my rides have been on the trainer (9-11hrs/150-200 ‘miles’)…that’s every day!!! I am currently following Hunter’s (Allen, of Peaks Coaching) Workout Challenge, which calls for basically an interval workout of between 60-90 min everyday for 4 weeks. It was pretty hard to do it everyday initially, legs just knackered, but now used to it and look forward to it. Definitely feel stronger and the workouts are easier to do ‘perfect’. I have an itch to get outdoors (been ~70F here last couple days) because I love cycling and I have no issue with NYC traffic, actually enjoy it, makes things interesting and gives you great handling skills. However, sticking to the Challenge but after it’s completed, I will probably switch to something like 5 days on the trainer (split with computrainer studio and Zwift) and 2 outside.