So today in my Sufferfest training plan I had 2 rides scheduled, one 45 minute set of intervals, and one steady base ride. Since The Sufferfest uses TrainingPeaks for their training plans, I had this on the calendar already, but I didn't have the actual workout associated with the video but it was easy enough to fill in as it was just one minute hard at 110% of FTP and one minute recovery. I input the workout, let it download to my Wahoo Bolt, and off I go. I have Prospect Park nearby as I mentioned above somewhere, and that is 3.3 miles with no stops, so I ride over there and start the workout in the park, with a 5 minute warmup. Well that warmup got me to the hill for the first interval, and going up the hill is always more than the 245w that I was supposed to do, and then the recovery at 95w or so is still way above that, even easy pedaling it was 200w. So, not a great start. On the next hard interval, I get myself up within range and try to keep it there but a small dip in the road makes that hard to maintain, and in fact every time you let up even slightly it goes way down. The recovery was hard to keep that low, even a .5% dip would make it so you were just spinning the pedals. I did about 10 repeats of this and got the hang of it eventually to keep the hard intervals hard but within range and the easy as easy as I could go and still be moving. At some point I realized I could stop the workout without stopping the ride on my Bolt so I did on both the uphill and downhill as it was too hard to stay within either range and used the two flatter portions for the intervals.

But here's the thing. By keeping the hard intervals near 245w it was killing me, just like riding indoors. By the 10th interval I was suffering. Yes, this is the point of the workout. But the moral of the story is this: Doing a sustained outdoor ride at the proper power points is just as hard as doing the same on an indoor trainer. Riding outdoors without the planned workout is much easier as you are not holding to a target. Every time you let up in the slightest, you drop 100w even if you don't slow down. You don't ride for speed indoors, you ride for watts.