So, it looks like I am going to have to spend some time indoors to fit both mine and wife's training schedules and a newborn And to keep some household peace, of course.

My regular training weekday rides are normally Tue and Thu, 25-30 miles, ~1000' and average about 19mph. What would be equivalent on a trainer? I have sufferfest videos and have been doing about 18 miles during the hour (Hunter, Angels).

I don't think I could switch to other week days since I am also going to be doing marathon training so the long runs will be on Sundays, after the long rides on Saturday. That makes Monday my rest days and while Wed could work, I am not sure if there's a group ride or not. Friday is a possibility, but again, do I want to ride Fri evening before long ride on Sat?

So, it seems like the trainer is a good idea. While I prefer outside, I don't mind the trainer rides with Sufferfest/TrainerRoad. Just trying to see what would be comparable.

Thanks

dont pay too much attention to trainer speed. It depends on the trainer you're using. For example yesterday i was hold 350 watts in (i think) my 39/19 or 18. Obviously this wouldn't be the same as a flat ride outdoor.

You sounds like you are a pretty serious rider and that is good.

I ride my trainer more than outside and love it. Mostly due to work hours and putting in 11 hour days. I like the Sufferfest/Trainer Road videos. I also use Epic Ride and really enjoy Spinervals. I also just use music from iTunes like the 35 workout hits Vol 1 - 3. Nice beat to get your cadence going.

For me, I ride an hour in the morning at 4:30AM and another hour in the evening after 9PM. Not great times to be outside. Here is the key for me, I have my bike set up in my office at home. My office looks nice, floor to ceiling bookcases etc. I even bought a little table for $30 that is very tall and small for a projector to hold laptop over front wheel. I refuse to ride in a closet or back room. Ceiling fan and tower fan help greatly.

I don't sweat much, I keep a Yoga towel on the bar. I am 50 and probably don't train hard like you. A hour for me is cadence 105-110 steady with some hill climbs standing if just listening to music. What I call my easy ride. I keep data in my Garmin 705. Love to upload and analyze the data or see progress.

I know many hate the trainer. I tend to love it. I use a Kurt Kinetic Road Trainer. I don't have experience with other trainers and I have never tried rollers.

Every man needs a man cave (office) and make it nice. Put up that poster of a mountain in France. Or your favorite Pro-Cyclist. Or Sufferfest flag. Congrats on the family. We adopted in our late 40's and my daughter is seven now. My Dad lives with me as my Mom died of ALS. I care for him, bath and dress and fix meals. Hence time is short. Work 10-11 hour days with two hours round trip commuting.

I listen to Velo Beats and Cycle 360 podcasts. Lots of good things to keep the motivation up. In the end nothing beats a good ride inside or out.

Sure, that's why I am asking. I don't have a power meter so I have no concept of my power outdoors. And the rides are from last season anyway so I am not sure if I should even base anything on them. I have my FTP set to 205 in TrainerRoad right now and I probably will bump it up. The Sufferfest rides are not easy right now, but they aren't that hard either. I do incorporate one legged drills and such but feel like I have more to give. As for the trainer, I use a Kinetic Road Machine.

OTOH, I also wonder if I should pay more attention to heartrate than power. I am doing a 2hr spin class now (local tri club) and the intervals such as 8 min at LT after an hour or so on the trainer are kicking my ass. Of course, one again, I have no idea of the power at that point.

Mine is setup in the office as well, probably not as nice as yours but there's plenty of space and I do have an (older) 32" TV in front of me to keep my mind in it.

As far as serious, well, the goal is to get better of course, but the actual goal this year is Garrett County Gran Fondo (https://winthefight.org/granfondo/index.htm), which a pretty hilly ride out in Western Maryland/WV. It kicked my ass last year and I am coming back this year with a score to settle

Part of it was undertraining, part of it was I didn't really fully realize what to expect as far as how long/steep the climbs were. Now I know...

hr over trainerroad power for sure.

I love going on exercise bikes because they are so much more convenient. In the winter I average about 16 mph, 18 mph in summer, and 22 on the trainer. I still like the feel of being outside though.

Meh, they don't do anything for me. My gym has the Expresso bikes, but you have to tinker with the setup and they never feel like your bike. The seat sucks, the position is off, etc.

Very impressive. Maryland is beautiful. Went to school in Baltimore.

Are you bound to the trainer by weather? Or is it just the baby thing?

If its just a time issue, I'd rather burn off a 25km TT for 45mins then spend one second on the trainer - trainer road/sufferfest or not!

It's a scheduling thing and what would work best for my wife's training and my weekend rides/runs.

If you don't have a real powermeter, then I would think heart rate would get you in the ball park for comparing workouts.

Bump, any other input?

Don't worry about mileage on the trainer as much as you worry about time on the trainer. Also I find trainer time to be more efficient than outdoor riding time as far as training goes, since there is no coasting, stopping at lights, or distractions. I also find it easier to go harrder on the trainer than I do riding solo outside. Group rides and racing are a different story.

Trainer road virtual power is fine to train with as long as you have an accurate virtual FTP on TR to train by. Make sure you do a 20 minute test and do it right and the Virtual power on TR is a great tool. It doesn't mean you stop paying attention to HR though, Comparing your HR to your Power out put can tell you things about how your legs are the day in question.

Something wrong with your sweatglands?

+1 on heartrate. Use heartrate and time to compare, in a very broad sense, workload. Before I had a power meter I used a very basic HR monitor (last iteration was a Timex watch with HR, before that I had Polar HRM, and in there somewhere I had a cyclocomputer with HR). The Timex was nice, it gave me avg HR plus the amount of time spent in one zone. I set a zone that was basically "very hard" so I could track how much time I spent going hard. For me that was about 160 bpm, which is what I hit if I'm working pretty hard on the trainer, but which I generally average in a race.

We have an almost 11 month old here (March 10th birthday). I did a few outdoor rides over the summer but I've been doing almost all indoor rides since he was born, at least on non-race days. On the trainer I can instantly respond to him if something happens. The Missus doesn't feel abandoned (we work well together I guess - he's our first). We all go together to my races but I basically skipped doing any group rides. I feel better about spending time on the bike because I can respond to requests for help quickly. So for example if he blew through a diaper and it's all over his legs and such I can go help contain the mess. Or he is hungry and wet I can change him while she gets food or vice versa. Some of my trainer days were 12 mnutes here, 20 minutes there, etc. Inevitably if I get on the trainer thinking "man he was sooooo tired he's gonna sleep for 2 hours" he gets up in 12 minutes. If he doesn't seem tired then I don't get on the bike and that's when he sleeps for 2 or 3 hours.

You can see all my training in Strava: https://app.strava.com/athletes/143064
I started logging everything there sometime in April so May 2012 to now is accurate. With different sleep schedules my riding changed. He used to fall asleep 9:30-10:15 PM and wake up at 6. Now he's falling asleep at 7-ish and waking up at 7-ish, sometimes with a wake-up at some point between 11 PM and 3 AM (last night was 11 PM). I can do longer rides in the evening as a result. The 5 hour and 3 hour weekend in early January Junior and the Missus were off visiting relatives so I had free time. I basically got on the bike Saturday when they left and climbed off on Sunday shortly before they got home (I wanted to do 5 hours Sunday but they got back earlier than I expected and I really needed to get some stuff done before they got back home).

A local ex-pro Cat 1 coach/racer (one of his guys signed for Jelly Belly for 2013) is a former high school runner. He did 4:30 miles apparently so he's a fast runner as well as a very strong racer. He said a good rule of thumb is to multiply running time by three to calculate recovery time. In other words an hour run is like riding three hours, in terms of recovery needed. This is not a training workload calculation, it's recovery time calculation.

I mention this because with running being so hard on the joints/muscles you may find a very light easy trainer ride on Monday helpful in getting the blood flowing. "Active recovery", like an easy day, might be better than absolute rest if your legs are really sore.

Likewise a longer base type ride on Saturday won't overly fatigue you for Sunday's long run but it'll still help with your cycling foundation/base.

Trainers have other benefits. You can experiment with fit, form, adjustments, etc without risking stranding or injuring yourself. As soon as something seems wrong you can stop. You won't have that "well I can just ride home" thing going. You'll have whatever tools you own close at hand. Etc. Usually after I build a bike I ride it on the trainer for a few hours before heading out. I hone bar and lever angles, saddle position, and double check all the adjustments. After a few hours of riding I'll wrap the bars - I'll have confirmed the proper bar angle and lever placement.

Hope this helps. Congrats on your newborn too.

cdr

The most that I can really stand on my cycle ops magnetic trainer is about an hour at a time. I do not really have a system or any power measurement. I just hold about the middle of my cassette (not sure how many teeth) and add in intervals where I click up a gear for 2-5 minutes at a time every 10-15 minutes or so. Not really scientific, but it deos at least maintain my fitness level. I use a box fan pointed directly at me on high, and I still leave 2 puddles on my mat in a chilly basement. The only good thing about the trainer is I get to watch DVDs and Netflix. I always prefer doing all of my rides outside. Even cold chilly rain soaked rides beat the trainer in my opinion. Actually going somewhere and changing your scenery has a lot to do with it.

If you don't have a powermeter, the HRM is decent. Check out "TRIMPS" score on Golden Cheetah - if you have a Garmin that downloads HR data, it'll calculate the time spent in each HR zone and give you a total "TRIMPS" number that represented the weighted composite of it.

TrainerRoad is really good as well - if you're going to train seriously indoors (sounds like you are), you really have to at least try it for a month. Even if the virtualpower isn't powermeter-accurate, it doesn't matter for indoor training, since it's the relative efforts to your tested FTP that matters, so you'll still be getting killer good workouts at exactly the right effort ranges as long as you're basing your training off a FTP test. (There are ready-to-go FTP test 'workouts' on TR.)

I don't have a powermeter but I'll ride in a specific gear and then see how long it takes me to get to 170 bpm (my max is approx. 195). The longer it takes to get there, the more my fitness is improving. It's not exact but it is some indication.

Thanks a bunch! It's likely that with his schedule now I'll do the rides after he's in bed which right now is like 7pm And sicne the trainer is in the basement and the nursery is on teh third floor I can blast (within reason) the Sufferfest tunes without keeping anyone awake.

Quick question about active recovery. Is it low resistance/normal cadence, i.e. 90? Or high cadence? Also, how long would you suggest?

I think the sat/sun combo should work well. The sun runs are all zone 2 distance runs. I might have to alter some thigns if I do a century here and there, but those will likely be before the longer runs as I get closer to the marathon.

bull****

For active recovery just enough to get the blood flowing. Generally speaking I find it's easier to spin a bit faster but in a very low gear, so 90-100 rpm but maybe 39x23 or 39x25 on my trainer. The idea is to place little/no muscular stress on the system but to promote blood flow to the muscles. I'd ride until I got a bit fatigued or feel like I need to eat - I go based on how I feel. I've done 15 minute rides and realized that I'm really in tough shape and climbed off the bike. I've also done 2-3 hours because my legs came around once I warmed up. So not really a specific time, but generally 30-60 minutes works for me.

I actually moved my "trainer location" from the basement to the ground floor because it took so long to get upstairs from the basement trainer room - out one door, hall, up stairs, hall, up stairs, nursery. Now I start off in the hall on the ground floor.

The new trainer room is our den / guest room. It's under his room but he doesn't seem to mind background noise. I put the monitor (video/audio) on one of the speakers in front of the TV.

Junior usually hits the sack at around 7 now, for the last week or so. Before that it was more like 8 or 10 PM so that was tough. Of course last night he was up at 3 AM or so, and didn't go back to sleep for about 90 minutes. Today I'm a wreck.