With the winter weather rolling in, temperatures dropping, and rain finally hitting after a summer of near drought, it’s the time of year when many riders start heading indoors.
But should you keep session duration the same, or can you drop the volume, especially when it comes to the traditional weekend ‘long ride‘?
Andy is a sports and exercise scientist and answers reader questions monthly in our ‘Ask a Cycling Coach’ series. Got a question? Pop it in the comments for Andy to review.
What to do about the long rides
Winter training often means base endurance rides, ‘winter miles equal summer smiles’ is still an approach used by a lot of riders.
But, a four hour ride, for example, is a tough ask indoors.
In terms of physiology, some people suggest that one hour indoors equals 90 minutes outdoors. I’ve seen enough training files and analysed enough Training Stress Scores (TSS) to know that this is simply not true.
What is TSS?
(Image credit: Future)
Training Stress Score (TSS) is calculated based on duration, and intensity relative to your threshold. Riding at your max 1-hour power, for one hour, would give a score of 100, riding at half of that for two hours, would also give a score of 100.
It’s true that, when outdoors there is more coasting; indoors you’re always pedalling. However, indoors you can keep the pace very consistent and controlled, hence why riders like Uno-X Mobility’s Jonas Abrahamsen spend so much of their low intensity, high volume riding time indoors.
Indoors, there are no spikes in pace, or surges into tempo up climbs. The session can be a truly consistent Zone 2 ride, resulting in a reduced total training stress based purely on the numbers.
On the flipside, indoor riding involves no windchill; without a good fan or ventilation, you can inadvertently be doing heat training each session, which adds extra physiological stress and strain.
Then, there’s the psychological element. The fact is, four hours of steady riding indoors, even with a series to binge, can be a bit mind-numbing. Some riders can manage this fine for long periods of time; others can’t stand it.
I have managed two-month periods at a time solidly on the turbo, where I’ve done rides over four hours. It’s done wonders for my fitness and reduced the time spent cleaning bikes – but it has hit me mentally after that period and impacted motivation badly.
Tips for successful long, indoor rides
(Image credit: Future)
- Find a good series to binge, podcasts, or audiobooks, even language audio lessons.
- Break the session into segments, even if high and low blocks within the Z2 region.
- Have a call with some friends, turn it into a form of social ride.
- Use it as a chance to get better at holding an aero position, maybe 5min on 5min off and progress.
- Try some different indoor training apps, there are a lot out there and all have a different flavour. One might not be your cup of tea but another could be.
Comfort is also a consideration. Often, indoors, the pressure through the saddle is consistent throughout and there are limited opportunities to ride out of the saddle comfortably. For a four hour session, combined with more heat and sweat, this can be bad for saddle health and saddle sores.
With all those factors considered, what should riders actually do?
I tend to have two recommendations, pending the character of the athlete.
If they are happy still getting some good volume in, I suggest reducing the volume by around a quarter; a four-hour ride becomes three. Alternatively, they can split the ride into two, two-hour sessions, this can be more mentally managable.
For the riders whose indoor limit is two hours total, I would suggest they ride one hour in zone 2, before including three 15-minute tempo efforts, with 5-minute recoveries; this will generate more stress but limit the time spent significantly above the first lactate threshold.
Long ride replacement options
- Reduce volume by 25%: swap 4-hours to 3-hours; swap 3-hours for 2hrs15mins; swap 2-hours for 90minutes
- Split the ride up: ride 2x2hour rides to replace a 4-hour ride; 2×1.5 hours to replace a 3-hour ride; ride 2x1hour to replace a 2-hour ride
- Up the intensity: Ride 1hour @ Z1, followed by 3x15minute tempo, 5minute easy
Shorter duration, high intensity sessions
(Image credit: Future)
What about shorter outdoor rides, brought indoors?
These are easier to suggest alternatives to, for the most part, any effort sessions I prescribe to riders are often easily able to be condensed down into a 1-hour session. Even if the efforts are spread over a 2-hour ride, normally, this is out of necessity to find appropriate stretches of road to conduct efforts and get a proper warm up and cool down in.
Indoors, you can very efficiently fit the warm up and cool down into a session without disruption from traffic lights, gradient changes, or anything else. The efforts can then also be conducted safely with suitable recoveries in between.
The training stress by bringing the ride indoors, and slightly reducing the volume, may be slightly lower, but you’ll have completed the relevant efforts, and that’s what matters.
Where things become a little different is when we start incorporating efforts after a certain amount of fatigue has built up, a key indicator of performance in elite racing. In these scenarios, I sometimes suggest splitting the rides, or we look to generate more workload by adding tempo or sweetspot intervals earlier into the session before the key efforts to ‘soften the legs’.
