Indoor vs Outdoor Training; What’s better for you?

This podcast is brought to you by Trivelo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. I'm your host, Jordan Donnelly, and on my left is former Australian Ironman champion and head coach of Trivalo Coaching, Jarred Donnelly. In today's episode, we're diving deep into the pros and cons of indoor training. And if you've listened to the podcast before, you'll know we are huge fans of the indoor trainer. So much so that it is a requirement of our program that if you want to be coached by us, you need an indoor trainer. It doesn't have to be a smart trainer, but you do need an indoor trainer. However, the indoor trainer has huge drawbacks. And so today we want to warn you of the top indoor training mistakes to avoid. Dad. Welcome back to another episode. Back to how we normally start. What are you grateful for?

Thanks, Jordan. I'm looking forward to another great episode coming up. And my gratitude is a little bit of a different one. I'm certainly unable to do my normal training and competing and this, this week has been the World Championships, a race that I was actually aiming for. And it's so good. And I'm so grateful for the people we coach and their performances that they're putting in. Really puts a smile on my face. And even though I've got FOMO about not being able to compete, I hate to say that I'm getting my enjoyment through others performances, but that's exactly how I feel. It really makes my day. I'm so grateful that guys are actually out there and, and just ripping it up and, you know, doing their best performance, whether they're winning or on the podium or doing a pb, not just at this particular world titles that are here in Townsville at the moment, but just their everyday training. I, I just didn't understand really how much I was missing the enjoyment chemical that you get out of your brain when you do train well and you're happy about your day's activities. When you're not doing that, you're searching for it from somewhere else. And I certainly get, you know, I want to tell this story a little bit, but we always talk about the victory drive home after an event, which I've been talking about on the podcast, where the coach and the athlete get together and no one else is there. The person's in the car driving home and I'm at home listening to how their race went. And, and sometimes when you win, you know, that's an extra special conversation if you've never won before. If you're, if you're aiming for a big event and you actually achieve what you're trying to, what you're trying to achieve. And, and it's, it's a special, special moment between the athlete and coach and, and Stevie Mac actually has been, who's going to, we're going to do a podcast on this, but he actually won the World Duathlon title on the weekend along with Matt Clarkson. So two of the Trivala people have won that. But I got on the phone to Stevie and I've been working with Stevie for a long, long time. And I don't know I want to ever swear on, on, on a podcast, but we got on the phone and all we said was yeah and screamed it out and it was, it just sent goosebumps through me that we both yelled out the same thing to each other. And it was, yeah, it was definitely very special moment. So I'm so grateful for that opportunity to, you know, to get some enjoyment from others performances and yeah, that's my gratitude this time.

That's a pretty special reframe and it was, yeah, a special moment to have an age group world champion. And yeah, we can't wait to bring the story of Stevie to you because it's been a pretty epic journey from when he very first started with Travello and a lot of the trouble and challenges he's had over the last year or two and then to get to this point, pretty phenomenal. So we can't wait to bring that episode to you. My gratitude is I have found myself in a country I didn't expect to this year, which is Slovenia. And everyone keeps asking me, why Slovenia? I keep saying that I'm just chasing Tade Pogacha, but I got to ride some of the routes around some of the beautiful mountains and gorges of Slovenia. And I seriously didn't know much about the country and expect it to be this good riding and this good environment and views and everything and it's been pretty special. And yesterday I did a, I found myself on an 8 kilometer, 7% pretty epic climb and I definitely was just picturing the pog, you know, doing all his training for the Tour de France and it got me through it. So, yeah, super grateful to be here.

Awesome. And yeah, expecting you to say that you did some sessions with the pog, so. Well, at least you're on the same roads that he trains on. So, yeah. It's a beautiful place, Lavinia, isn't it spectacular.

I did try and search his Strava to see if he was around. But I think he officially lives in Monaco now, so he's left it behind. Getting into the episode. There's a few things we want to chat about before indoor verse outdoor training. And the first one is how epic was the women's Tour de France. Tour de France femme, the final stage. It was one of, if not the most insane final stage of any stage race, let alone a Grand Tour, let alone the Tour de France ever. And if you didn't see it basically coming into the final day, Cassiodoma Nuevo Casiadoma, the Polish rider had the yellow jersey by a minute and 15 seconds over demi bollering. But basically there was three of them that were in contention to win the yellow jersey. And it came down to the last climb, Alpe d' Huez. And basically Vollering attacked on the. On the climb before and the two of them were away. And if they beat Nuroderma by. And it was the limit was changing every second because depending on who got the bonus seconds at the end of the day. But basically they had to beat nuroderma by a minute 05 or a minute 15 on Alpe d' Huez to win the Tour de France. And it just became. They both hit the bottom of the climb. It just became a time trial. Almost two against one. But Vollering was having to do all the work herself. It's just insane. There's so much to unpack here. But just to see it come down to the final climb, just a 45 minute time trial to win the Tour de France, see how they just, they just gave it absolutely everything to see how they manage their effort and how they measured their effort. We where they put the power down and it came down to the end and it ended up being a 3 second gap, 3.8 seconds or something in the last 500 meters. Three different people could have won depending on whether it was three seconds up or three seconds down. It was just absolutely insane.

Yeah, it's one for the ages and I. And the great thing about it was it was on one of the most iconic climbs in cycling. Alpe d' Huez is one of those. And it was fairly fitting. I thought that one of the most exciting finishes in Tour history, A was in a women's race, B was on Alpe d' Huez and you couldn't. I was glued, almost yelling what's going to happen here? And you know, obviously if Vollering won that stage, she gets 10 second bonus and that changes everything right from for the next four or five minutes when you're waiting for Neurodoma to come across the line. So she's got to add that into her calculations and, you know, the clock's counting down, you know, and you're thinking, is she going to make it? Oh, she could make it easy. Oh, no, she's not. And, and the, the exhilaration and the disappointment on both athletes was. Was there in front of you to see. And. And I felt so. I felt so bad for Vollering because that shouldn't have come to that, in my opinion. The crash. Let's talk about.

Yeah, let's talk. Let's talk about Stage five. So I want to know your opinion on this. There's huge controversy because I can't remember if we spoke about this already, but Wolverine crashed in Stage five. She was in the yellow jersey. None of her teammates came back to help her. She was left on her own to ride to the finish with 3 or 4k to go. New Edoma attacked once she'd crashed and everyone's kind of going, is that dodgy? You know, do you really attack the yellow jersey once they've crashed? And there's big arguments, people saying it's in the last three kilometres, it's every man from themselves, every woman from themselves. If it was 68 ago, maybe not. So, yeah. Tell me your thoughts on. On everything that happened on that Stage five that completely flipped the race.

Yeah, there's a whole lot of points to make about it, you know, a. The one you're talking about. Well, you know, everything was going beautifully for. For SD Works, you know, they got a great team, they've got the yellow jersey. She's, you know, she ended up winning two stages and coming second and third out of the seven or eight stages. She's pretty much dominated and came second overall. So, you know, despite the fact she didn't win the Tour, which is what she's expecting to do, she was in position to do that, I think, quite comfortably. Looking at the stages after that, I think had she not crashed. But, you know, there's plenty of people saying, well, crashing's part of riding and it is. And. And lots of other athletes have missed out on winning things because they've crashed. And Nuadoma said it's happened to her before, but it hasn't happened on that and the Tour de France in those circumstances. And so I'm really on the Vollering side and I think if I was her, I'd be extremely disappointed with her team and her management. And when you crash and you're in the yellow jersey. The whole Tour de France is about winning the Tour de France. That is the focus for every team to get someone in their team to win the Tour de France. So the yellow jersey is the number one thing that everybody's striving for. And sure, there's lots of other things that happen each day to allow that to happen. And winning a stage each day is directly underneath winning the Tour and winning the yellow jersey, then winning the green jersey, then winning the polka dot jersey, and then winning the younger, young rider jersey. They're completely all underneath the yellow jersey. And the stage wins are just as good as winning one of those jerseys, except for the yellow. So that's my take on how the teams. And it's a teams race, and every GC Yellow Tour de France winner or Giro winner or welter winner knows that they can't win without their team. And so everybody goes into the Tour knowing that the team is working for their one rider. And that one rider knows that without that team, they're not really a chance. So with all that information, you would think that, you know, every time they're on the bus before each stage, if your team is in yellow, and I'm talking about SD Works, their team tactics, they should be talking about, okay, we have to protect the yellow jersey today. We're in a winning position to win the Tour overall, but these are things that could happen. One of our riders could go up the road and get an opportunity to have a stage win. And they're things that are secondary, but they're important to talk about. But. But, you know, if something happens to our yellow jersey, we all need to know that our role is to go and help the yellow jersey.

Exactly.

Get to the finish line without losing any time. And I think. I think that's the bit that the team lost me with because they did have one rider who happened to be near her. The. The camera was on the SD Works car next to where Vollering crashed. So it was clear to everybody in every car that the yellow jersey was on the ground.

Yellow jersey is crashed.

So SD Works teammates would have known that, and every other team direct of sportif in the car would have been sending messages through their headphones to everybody in the peloton. And so you can't tell me that the SD Works response was okay, that they didn't get any of their riders to stop riding altogether. And if. If it was me, I would be actually making them turn around and ride.

Back to go and help back towards the yellow jersey.

Yeah. Is that allowed?

Are you allowed to do that?

I don't know. But you know, you need to stop riding and, and wait for the yellow jersey is. And you know, sure, you could say that, you know, 1st works won that stage but they lost the Tour. So was that stage more important than the Tour? I don't think so. Yeah, go on.

Yeah, well, yeah. It's funny hearing the SDWorks Director DS comments straight after the stage and then putting them in context after the whole Tour on the day of, you know, it was really weak explanation. It was the things you're saying. It was communication. We struggled to communicate. Blanca Voss who ended up winning the stage for SD Works said her radio wasn't working, that they didn't know Vollering had crashed. It just felt like all these kind of made up weak excuses. But sure, you might go, okay, maybe those things are true and they just really messed up the stage. But then in hindsight, you know, they had three riders ahead of Steworks of Vollering when she crashed, one dropped back to help, but she just wasn't strong enough. Vollering just flew past her. She couldn't, she couldn't hang on. But they had Lorena Weavers and Blanca Vaas ahead who decided to go for the stage win instead of going back and helping Vollering. And at the time of Stage five, everyone was a lot of people were pretty disgusted with those tactics. Like you're saying the yellow jersey. To see Willering have to ride solo and cross the line and save as much time as possible by herself was really sad to see. Made even sadder by the fact that she loses the Tour de France by four seconds. You know, had both of them gone back and helped, they probably could have saved her 15 seconds, 20 seconds there, you know, and then Alpe d' Werz on the last stage becomes easier. So it was bad enough on the day, but then at the end you go that's even worse at that stage really ruined it for.

I think she lost a minute 30 on, on that crash. But had she had some teamworks, you know, you're being, you're being generous. It's 15 seconds. It could have been 45 seconds she could have saved.

Exactly.

And, and then she wouldn't have, you know, she wouldn't have had to worry about, about you know, having to time trial up. You know, she still had to work for it. But, but I think it was Weebus who sprinted for seventh.

And yes, that was, that was also the thing that was just one of the most infuriating things to see.

Sure, Vaas, look, she's going to win the stage, that's great. But when you're sprinting in the front of the bunch for seventh place, when the leader has already finished, you know, 100 meters ahead of you, I don't. I didn't understand that that was, that, that was the biggest thing that made me think this team are a bunch of individuals. And that's very harsh. I know, but it could be that they didn't. They didn't understand or get the communication. So we, we don't actually know exactly. But from the outside looking in, I think Vollerin's got every reason to be very, very disappointed with not only her management on the day, but her teammates. And it's cost her a Tour. And, you know, people go, well, you know, that's part of sport. Everybody crashes. Well, no, it could have been avoided had the team done what the team is supposed to be there for, which is to support the person who's winning the race. And if it's another. If it's another person who crashes and they're not in yellow, it's a completely different scenario. We wouldn't be saying this, but, yeah, that, you know, it cost her the Tour in the end to lose by less than four seconds. It's outrageous. And I, I wouldn't be with that team again. I would be moving.

She's leaving anyway. Yeah, it's basically confirmed. I think it was. It's not fully confirmed or 100 confirmed to follow the Tour, but that she was. She was moving teams. And maybe that's part of the. The rift in, in the, in the. In the team and. Well, yeah, there's a lot of backstory, but Weavers was next to following when she crashed. Weavers saw her crash and decided to keep riding. So that's inexcusable to me. And Lantern Rouge actually pointed out that Vollering sacrificed her own race at Liege Bastant Liege to get Weavers to win. And Weavers is the one that celebrated early and got done on the line for celebrating early, which happened again at the Vuelta two stages ago, where I can't remember who it was, thought he had the win and Rogish came underneath him. He started to put his hand up and then Rogers came underneath him and won. How many times are these pro cyclists going to do this anyway?

So, no, I just think people have got to stop celebrating. People talk about what's a victory celebration. We talk. We joke about it in our bunch ourselves. And it's quite hilarious because most of us never win races. So I don't know what. Don't know what. We're talking about our victory celebration. And, you know, look, when wout does. I've Got Wings when he wins.

Yeah, yeah.

When he, he won his stage, which is fantastic, by the way, to win a stage at the Tour after. At the World Tour after. He's had so many setbacks. But, but yeah, they're just getting carried away with celebrations prematurely and it's costing people races, which is, you know, it could change their career if that guy had won that stage. You know, that's something that's worth a new contract or more money in his contract. It is such a basic mistake to make that the race is not over. How many times have we seen that the race is not over till you actually across the line? And.

Yeah, yeah, that was an impressive thing from Vollering, actually, where she, she won the stage on ALP2 wears, which is an incredible. To win the Alpiware stage is just an incredible thing for your career, like you said, even though she has such a decorated career already. But she, the yellow jersey was more important. She. She crossed the line, you know, with trying to get every single tenth of a second. And then she did put her hands up after she crossed the line to say, I run the stage. But that was obviously secondary to the yellow. But she didn't spend one second thinking about celebrating before. Before that line. So. Yeah, pretty interesting.

Yeah. I don't want to go on about it anymore, but, yeah, it was just team sport. You know, if you're on your own and you're, you know, even, even athletes like marathon runners, they've still got a team around them. That's. That's helping them, you know, so even though we are competing as an individual, cycling as a sport at the professional level is a team sport. And, and it's highlighted when you go to Olympic Games, when you don't have the support that, like you do in your, your pro tour team and World championships where you're representing your country, you don't have the depth. So that's how it's. That's how much it's highlighted when you don't have the depth. Most of the better riders are a little bit. They're still, they're still right up there to win for the event. They're still, you know, fighting it out, but they have a harder time because they don't have the guys around them to make their ride easier.

Yeah. Yeah. And I don't want to go on about the, the team aspect so much. But I do want to get your thoughts on the actual Alpez climb because again, to get to the last stage where it all comes down to the final climb of the day. Vollering and actually Roy Yakas had broken away from Yuri Doma. Both Vollereng and Royakers could win the Tour. There's only a couple of seconds splitting them, so there's, there's triple dynamics at play here where they hit the bottom of the climb and Vollering is doing all the work. Royakis is not coming around her. Vollering is getting really pissed off. But she's also going if I don't keep working, I've got no chance of winning the Tour. Rory Akis is playing a big bluffing game because she should be working just as hard. And in hindsight, you know, she probably, I think in an interview she just said she was kind of on a limit anyway. But had she helped a little bit more, not waited till the end to try and start working, they maybe would have, they got to a minute 27, I think was the most lead they had which would have won both of them yellow jersey and then it would have come down to a sprint between those two. Forearch has won the sprint, you know, she wins, wins the whole Tour de France. But Vollering is doing all the work. Meanwhile behind Nuri Doma just has to put her head down and give the time trial of her life to hold onto the yellow jersey. It was just an incredible 45 minutes to watch because the lead went to a minute 10, then a minute, then 50 seconds and a minute, then 45 seconds. New Adamo brought it back to. But then Vollering had a really, really strong last K and watching the clock count down, I literally in the last hundred meters didn't know if Nuadoma was going to make it or not. It was honestly incredible.

Yeah. And a lot of things were happening before Alpe d' Huez through the valley, little Trek riders were on the front and they bridged the, they minimised the gap the, that Rojas and Vollering had. So it was Rory and Vollering and I think Rohakas really, she didn't have the legs and I think it looked like she was bluffing Jord, but I think in that situation she's got a chance of winning. I know she wanted to give herself more chance by not doing as much work, but she's not going to sacrifice that much. I just don't think she could. And when you came around to the last K, it was obvious she. She could barely pedal. So. So, yeah, but, yeah, there was so many scenarios happening and other teams helping or not helping. And yeah, it was. It was just a. It was a great spectacle, wasn't it? It was fantastic.

Yeah. Yeah. And. And honestly, as much as Neuroderma got the gap from the crash, she still had to win the Tour. She still had to put it in the performance of her life on Alpawares, and she did that. And even she. She needed those third place bonus seconds, which she was just so out of gas, she couldn't even sprint for third. She ended up getting fourth and losing more seconds, which brought the cap. You know, had she got that, she would have won by, I think it was eight seconds or something. But it was just incredible with all the time bonuses and everything, how it. How it all came down. And so we've actually got Olympic gold medalist Grace Brown on the podcast next week who raced the Tour and raced really well. So we can't wait to actually ask her thoughts on it all and being inside and get her thoughts on the team dynamics, on the morality of it all. And we can't obviously wait to ask her all about the Olympics and everything. And, yeah, I can't wait for that interview, to be honest.

Yeah. You know, someone who's at the top of their level and something. We love talking about time trialing and I just can't wait to hear her version of the conditions in the Olympic time trial with most of the other competitors crashing and she didn't. And what a thought process around that was and what her mindset was about, you know, staying upright and. And, yeah, it's going to be interesting. And then what. Yeah, exactly what you said. What her take is on. On the team tactics at the Tour.

One last thing before we get into the crux of the topic, because we have spoken about this for a while, but I think it's worth it because honestly, it was one of the greatest stages ever. It was just so exciting to see three people in the last 500 meters be able to win. I don't think we've ever seen anything so close. But last thing, before we get into the ins and outs of indoor versus outdoor training, we love speculating a little bit and we love watching these pros and we love interviewing them and finding out what they're doing and then giving our take on kind of the performances. I want to chat about Hayden Wild a little bit because the Olympics have finished and they've started. The super tri league has started, which is the really fun super short course, sprint, tri distance, super fast triathlon league. It's there in teams. It's a really, really great spectrum for triathlon. It's what kind of world triathlon actually needs to do more of. But Hayden Wilde first race back, gets out kicked by Alex Yee again in the exact same format. You know, he's leading the run the whole way and then ye just sits on him and then sprints past him in the last hundred. And Hayden, he looked pretty filthy at the end of the race in an interview. He was very graceful in his interview and he said, I'm sick of Silvers, I've got to change something. There's a fire in my belly. And we can only go by, you know, what we hear in the interviews. We don't know the full story of things, but you and I were both in agreeance that he's doing a classic mistake that we see a lot of people make and it's just repeating the same strategy, hoping for a different result. Alex Yi is always going to out kick him. So from our point of view, we're kind of going, why are you doing the same strategy? Why aren't you changing?

Yeah. And the listeners are going to say, well, at the Olympics he didn't do that. He attacked and tried a different strategy and that didn't work either. So that's a fair enough comment. But we agree with his tactic at the Olympics to a point. The bit we don't agree with was that he went way beyond his level. All he had to do was get a small gap within his limitations and then hold that gap. And if Alex Yee had to come back at him like he probably would have, like he does, then he would had a much more obvious chance to actually sprint against him. And that's the difference, I think. So, yes. Don't keep repeating the same mistake. And I don't think he did that. I think he tried something new but he just went too far with it and it ended up being the same outcome. So, yeah. So I don't think, in my opinion, you know, we can't be too critical. He's actually trying something different. I think the thing he was more annoyed about is that every one of these races no one is doing any work in the bike and he's doing all the work and I think he needs to stop doing that, protect himself a little bit more and see how much he can sprint better when he's not doing so much work on the bike. And you know, if you're worried about other people catching up from behind you, you're one of the two best runners in the field. Don't worry about those guys catching up. You don't have to sit on the front and make sure no one catches up. Let them catch up. You're still going to outrun them anyway and that way you'll save your legs. This is the format we're in and when he goes to 70.3 races, or, you know, races where there's no drafting, he's far superior than everybody else because they're actually having to work like he is in these, these bike racing races. So, you know, he's a super talent and put him on a race where there's no drafting, he's pretty unbeatable and I think he's selecting races, but it's frustrating for him because he's the most powerful bike rider there and second fastest runner yet. He's not winning every race yet. He's probably should be winning more races than he is. But the format that he's in those events is not suiting him. So therefore he needs to change his attitude on the bike. He is a very strong bike rider, but he needs to let other people do the work. And, and especially in the Super League and the Olympics is different, where he was in the second pack and he had to ride hard to get across. But Christian Blumenfeld was in that second pack and of course they got the other New Zealanders drop back to help them. But that, you know, that's a situation where when he gets into the main pack, he doesn't have to then do any more work. But in the Super League stuff where it's, it's, you know, the differences are very small compared to an Olympic distance race. You definitely don't have to work like that because you're not backing yourself in as a runner. Where you know, your mindset is, we've got this break, which is fair enough. As a cyclist, you don't want other riders to bridge across because it gives more people opportunity that you have to beat. So if there's only four people you have to beat compared to 15, your chances are less. But when you're one of the best riders in the field, you shouldn't worry about that. That's the tactic he should change. In this Super League stuff, I think.

He'S one of those races that's one of the best and most entertaining to watch because he just goes so hard. And I've been so often surprised about how hard he goes and how much he takes off and runs and usually holds it. Like you said, the Olympics was an example where it was beyond his limit and so we just wasn't able to hold it in that back end. But yeah, that was his main comment in the interview which we both pointed out was he said he was really frustrated with the race and yeah, he said that exact comment. He said, I'm doing all the work, I'm looking around, I'm trying to call guys through and no one's helping and then the guys behind are going to catch up. And yeah, your point straight away was let them, you know, he's a 1330 fresh 5k runner. That is absolutely insane. That's borderline 5,000 meter, you know, Olympic qualifying. Yep. As a fresh runner. So yeah, your point exactly. If he wants to have a better run off the bike, he's just, you cannot underestimate, we talk about this all the time. You cannot underestimate energy conservation and energy expenditure. And although just because he's super fit, he can get away with spending all that energy on the bike and then still run. Unbelievable. And only be out kicked by Alex Y in the last 150. But yeah, we'd love to see him just, just play the same bluff game as all those other guys. Just say, well, I'm not doing any work, I'll just sit in fine and I'll outrun you all.

I think the scene was set, you know, 20 years ago with the Brownlee brothers, Alistair and Johnny. They were incredible on the bike and they blew races apart and got off and won every time. They were the fastest runners and the fastest riders and you know, that's, that's a rarity to have, to have the ability to ride so hard. A lot of the listeners may not have seen a lot of those early day races where they just got on the front of those bike races in those drafting legal events and just rode people off the wheel. They were, they were just hammering it and then got off and run, you know, better than anybody else. And they won pretty much every race that was, that was going around. I'm generalizing a lot here but, but they certainly, they certainly set the standard and no one else has been able to do that. And Hayden's about the next thing similar to the Brownlee brothers except, you know, he's just not quite got the bike power that they had. And so he's not, he's not, you know, really fatiguing the other bike riders as much as, as, you know, the guys who can sit in and up working, they're working 30% less than Hayden is. Whereas when, when the Brownlee brothers were doing it, they were gapping the field and the other guys had to ride. So.

Yeah, and this is where, I mean, this is down a rabbit hole. We don't need to go down much further. But we said to ourselves, how good would it have been if the triathlon course at the Olympics was the same as the road cycling course where they went up that cobbled climb in the middle of it and there was undulations and it would blow the race apart? So that's what we want to see more of. I think.

I think if Hayden had a course like that, I don't think there would have been many people who would have been able to ride with him. And, you know, you know, put it, put make the course harder, not make it ridiculous, but just, you know, it's.

Just making a proper cycling course.

It's a criterium course at the moment. Yeah.

Yep. Totally agree. Let's get into it. Indoor versus outdoor training. You know, the pros and cons and what's better for you. We speak about it a lot, but we really want to just rectify and specify what are the good parts of indoor training that you want to take advantage of and then what are the negatives that you really have to be conscious of, because you can easily fall into the trap of just getting on the trainer and you're actually doing yourself a disservice and you're actually training bad habits that are going to catch up to you and really catch you out on race day on the lead up. And we see this a lot with a lot of people who maybe train indoors too much or train indoors not the way that you should. They go to ride outdoors and they can't ride, they can't race. It's completely different. And they're in big trouble because they can't hold the power that they're used to indoors. They're not used to bike handling skills. There's all these factors. So we want to go through it right now. And I just want to start by saying I think the biggest advantage as an umbrella blanket of indoor training is the element of control. There's so many varying elements in outdoor cycling that are out of your control for training purposes. To be able to control a lot of these variables in terms of weather and road surface and interruptions and course selection. The indoor training just provides you a really, really good environment to just have a really controlled session and get the fitness work. The VO2 work, the work that your body needs to improve its fitness. That's probably the biggest benefit.

Yeah, it's like a science lab. You are just eliminating everything that allows you to recover when you're outside. Outside has lots of recovery because if you stop pedaling outside, the bike still goes, you're still moving. If you stop pedaling indoor, you're not, you're stationary. There's nothing happening. So I think this is the biggest factor that indoor has over outdoor. I think that's the biggest positive that indoor training has. It is constant, relentless pressure on the pedals. And if you stop doing that for any, any second, there's, there's actually no purpose in it because the only reason you're doing is because you're tired and you need a break. Whereas outdoor, you could be going downhill where you can't pedal because the bike speed's doing 80ks an hour, or you could be turning left at a, at a right hand, a left hand turn or doing a U turn at a roundabout. You can't pedal around that. So you're going to get these rolls rest period. So the pressure on the pedals is hard to do. Outdoor, it's still possible, but you can't replicate that like you can indoor. And that is one of the biggest advantages of training indoor. It's like a science lab. And I've told this story before and I'm going to just mention it again for those who probably haven't been back to episode 123 or wherever it was during COVID where we were in Melbourne, we weren't allowed outside for 12 weeks more than 5 kilometer radius. So to do an endurance race ride was near impossible to do laps around a three or four or five kilometer circuit.

So 12 weeks is generous. I think it was almost nine months.

But yeah, it was restricting. And so we just said, right. You know, it happened to be winter as well here in the southern hemisphere, so. So, you know, a lot of the times it was raining outside, but there were times where it was actually good weather and we all wanted to be out there, but, you know, we couldn't do that on the circuits that everybody lives. Some people lived, you know, in, in the inner city of Melbourne. They can't just do loops around, you know, the inner city. I was lucky. I had, I had some country roads where I live, where I can do it, but it still was a very narrow circuit for trying to do 140k. You know, trying to divide 4k into 140k, it's like felt like 10,000 laps of the circuit you were doing, which is pretty mind blowing. But, but we used, we used the indoor trainer during, and it was really difficult. And early on in our long endurance rides I was getting fatigue and cramp and just exhaustion like I'd never felt before. And I had been doing. I'm not, I'm not exaggerating. I've done 25 years of endurance riding where I've done between 100 and 150k most weekends. And that's a lot of the time it's outside. So, so here I am trying to do 100k ride indoor and at 70k I've got cramp and, and I'm barely going to make it to the finish. And that showed me instantly in the first couple of weeks how much more difficult it is to ride indoor compared to outdoor because there was no freewheeling in that, in that 100K that I, that was an aha moment for me because there was no freewheeling because I was, I was in a Zwift event that was 100k and if I stopped pedaling I got dropped and that was me finished. I couldn't catch up because there was 25 people in the bunch. And one of the things about Zwift is no matter how much power you ride by yourself, if there's 25 other people riding, you know, similar power, you're never going to catch them back again. So you have to ride like twice as much power to get back to a bunch that you're chasing on Zwift, which is not real in the real world. If you do that in the real world, you'll catch back up. But the thing about that is you can't afford to freewheel because if you do that you're going to get dropped. So I can't believe how much more difficult it was. And it took, I reckon, nearly four or six week weekends of doing that. We did the same endurance ride for nearly 12 weeks. And what we did was we did that 100k race and then we added more warm up and more cool down so that overload of duration became 110k, 120k, 130k. And so this controlled environment, my body started to adapt and I didn't get cramped until, you know, at the 110k mark of the second week. And then I didn't get cramped till 130k mark of the fifth week. And so my body was getting better and better at adapting to, to this relentless pressure on the pedals. And by the time I got to ride outdoors, however long it was. Three or four months later we started doing our normal circuits and we were riding literally 5 or 10% faster around all of these circuits than we had ever done before. We set PBS on roads that we've been riding for 20, 25 years just because we had this 12 or 14 week period where we were just controlled indoor training, relentless pressure on the pedals. It wasn't just that endurance ride, it was every single ride we're doing. We had seven sessions a week. Sometimes we're doing double sessions because, you know, it was Covid and you had more time morning and night sessions. And that to me was, it made me understand that training indoors had a really good place in your program.

Huge, huge advantage for everything. Every reason you just explained. But with that sustained pressure on the pedals, which is incredible for your fitness, the flip side of that exact coin is the increased risk of injury. And we would say what we see on cycling is it's very difficult to get injured with overuse. We just don't see it very often with cycling. But we do see it with a dramatic increase in indoor training. Just so often that sustained pressure, it can often be you're almost doubling your load on your knees, on the indoor trainer, like you're saying, than outdoor. And so we do see people start to get really sore knees if they do it too quickly. So that's something very specific to be aware of that while it's great fitness, you can't just jump into a three hour ride indoors because that's what you do outdoors. It's going to be almost too much for you. So something to really, really pay attention to.

Yeah. And as you said in the example I gave, I've been doing these long rides for decades and yet my body couldn't cope with 70k. And so if you expect to go from, if you're just new to the sport or you haven't done a lot of cycling and you, you want to do a three hour ride. Three hours indoor is like four and a half, five hours outdoor. That's the equivalent stress on the, on the, on the body. So you, if you're thinking about doing a three hour ride outdoor, you would. If you're going to go indoor, unless you've done this for years, I'm talking decades indoor training, you would need to subtract an hour to an hour and a quarter. So you'd be doing, you know, one and three quarter hours to two hours indoor for a three hour ride outdoor. And if you don't do that, you're going to actually load yourself so much that the reason it's hard is because A, the pressure's on the pedals and there's no, there's no freewheeling, which we talked about a lot. But also you're not moving around the bike like you are outdoor. You would be surprised how much you move on your bike when you put your hands down the drops. You can do this on the indoor trainer as well, but you don't tend to do that. You tend to sit in a more comfortable position because it's aerodynamics, doesn't matter. And that would be one of the negatives, is you should be sitting in a position indoor that you're going to sit outdoor. And we'll talk about that in the TT position a little bit later. But certainly you're sitting more upright indoor and therefore you're going to be stressing the body in the one position for hour upon hour. Whereas on the bike outdoor, you're moving around the bike, sitting further forward on the seat when you're going uphill, maybe more relaxed when you're going downhill. You're actually, you know, you're not even pedaling. So, you know, these are, these are things that are going to help you to not have the muscles stuck in the same position for two or three hours at a time. And you don't notice it's happening because you move around so much outdoor.

So the purpose of outlining all these pros and cons of both indoor and outdoor is to help you make smarter decisions about how much training you should do indoor versus outdoor. Because of course, if you go full one way or the other, it's not ideal. And so we just mentioned that one of the biggest benefits of indoor training is the control. So with all the major benefits that come under the banner of control, which means no interruptions to the training, no traffic lights, no stopping for pedestrian signs, for roundabouts, for corners, the convenience of training at any time because it's indoor, not affected by wind, not affected by temperature, the ability to just train when you want under the same conditions. Uh, they're all as, as much as they're positives for indoor training, they're also very much negatives because you need to be training all those things, you need to be training all those factors. And so if you just train indoors all the time, you're not going to learn how to ride corners properly, you're not going to learn how to ride difference in undulations and changes in terrain and, and practice your gear changes frequently and, and practicing Riding different cadence because often you'll just ride the exact same cadence on the trainer because you don't need to change. Um, whereas on the outdoor, we know that you're. We've spoken about this a lot. You're constantly changing gears every five or ten seconds, potentially depending on the terrain. So it's really funny to me that all the big benefits of the indoor training are equally the big negatives.

It's a bit of a conundrum, isn't it? I totally agree. And I think sometimes, depending on where you are in your program in the year, I think you manipulate it to suit where you are. And if it doesn't matter that your A race is eight months away and it's got lots of descending with tight corners and, you know, lots of temperature changes and wind, you know, that doesn't matter when you're early in the program. But it does matter, though, when you get close to your actual A race that you need to be training in the conditions, the wind, the temperature, the changes in gradient, learning how to descend better than you have before. We should be practicing that all the time. But, you know, but there are times where that is really important and you need to be not indoor. And obviously from our experience with all of the data we collect, we find that the power number indoor is lower than the power number outdoor. And so, you know, if you're training indoor all the time, you're actually, when you go to train outdoor, you're going to train to different numbers for a start. So there's that problem straight away with now I have to retest outdoor because it could be 6 or 7 watts difference between what I capable of doing indoor compared to outdoor. And then there's the problem you and I see all the time where people are using a different power meter than the one that they ride outdoor. So you've got all these technological things as well as physical things that prevent you from being a better bike rider. And that's in fact what we're trying to do in our training in our practice, is to continue to evolve it to be a better bike rider. So we're trying to eliminate as much of those things that are preventing us from doing that and adding those things into our program that are going to let us be a more competent rider.

So I wanted to dive into the tech side of things in a second because there's so many technicalities with indoor settings that we see so many mistakes, and it actually ruins people's training sessions. And you're not getting the most steady training session. But before that, I want to kind of talk about this idea of indoor versus outdoor numbers and position. And you mentioned it before, that you're not riding the same position indoors, you are outdoor. And for a lot of athletes, just the basic mistake of they're on their TT bike, on the trainer, but they're actually sitting up because you can push more power. And it's just a natural instinct to want to push more power in training. But you need to be in the TT position all the time. When you're doing your main sets of work, you need to be in the TT position. That doesn't mean you do the full hour and a half of your session. The TT position, I'll often warm up sitting up because it's tough to sit in that TT position. In any recovery sets, I'll sit up and take a break. But in any of the hard sets and for those extended periods, you want to be in that TT position. But even then, being in the TT position on the trainer is very different to being the TT position outdoors. You're always adjusting. Outdoors, you're slightly forward, slightly back, and that adds up to a lot. And so your point is that for a lot of our more experienced athletes, once they learn how to ride outdoors and ride to power both indoor and outdoor, yes, we do find that they can push less power indoor than outdoor. But it's almost the opposite for the more beginner athlete. They can get away with holding better power indoor because the train is helping them, because it's that constant resistance. And then when they first go outdoors and try and replicate that, they're so not used to pressure on the pedals, they're so not used to the right gear changes that they're actually not able to push as much power. We see this in FTP tests a lot. Their FTP number is lower outdoor than indoor. And it's not a fitness thing, it's a execution thing. They actually can't. They're not practiced enough or well versed enough at holding and sustaining the pressure outdoors because all the factors we spoke about, wind, air resistance, aerodynamics, changes in position, changes in terrain, gear changes, varying cadences where they're not used to. If they're used to just holding 88 RPM on the indoor trainer, but suddenly uphill they're riding 75 and then downhill they're riding 95, it's totally different to what they're used to. So that's a really big point I want to point out and maybe get your thoughts on in terms of. Yeah, we often see the more beginner athlete can't push the power outdoors. Again, not because of ability, but because of experience.

Yeah, it's a game changer. It's absolutely. Only today I was talking to one of our athletes who just done a 20 minute FTP test on the velodrome and I called his session bipolar and he thought that was pretty hilarious because, you know, everybody who understands bipolar, it's someone, it's not a funny thing to talk about, but it's someone who is too high in their, in their enjoyment and excitement and then all of a sudden they're too low. So they're not being that medium steady state person that we're trying to strive for all the time, which is, you know, not being extremely training hard and not being too lazy. You know, we don't want these extremes all the time. We want to be as even as we can. And talking about pedaling, that's the same. You don't want to, you know, not be able to react to a headwind and not react to a hill and not react to a downhill. You've got to be trying to keep yourself in those steady ranges. And when I looked at his graph, like he's going around the velodrome and there was quite a wind and when he came around the top bend, you know, his power went up. He averaged 280 and his power went up to 340 around that section and then the wind changed. So all of a sudden he's doing 220 on the next section with the tailwind and he's saying it was super frustrating. I just, I just couldn't get the evenness of my, my speed and my power because the conditions were changing all the time. And, and so I'm saying to him that's, that's why training outdoors is something that you have to really concentrate on practicing that pressure on the pedals and using your gear changes to make sure that your cadence is still sitting at between. At one point he had a cadence of 106 and he's normally, you know, somewhere between 90 and 95. But because he wasn't changing gears quick enough, you know, in a velodrome you're literally doing a lap in every 30 seconds. So a lot of gear changes happening. Headwind, tailwind, crosswind, headwind, tailwind, crosswind. That just happens every 30 seconds. So you're forever changing gears. And, and so when you change gears to an easier gear, the power drops and when you change gear to a harder gear, the power rises. So you've got this conundrum of the power dropping. And when you're indoors, none of this happens because there's no changes in terrain, there's no changes in wind. The velodrome doesn't have changes in terrain. Just as the wind, the wind was blowing him all over the place and that was enough. Imagine if you do that on a stretch of road with a crosswind or a side wind, sorry, headwind or a tailwind, and changes in gradient, then your, your power is dropping and rising too much. It's, it's that bipolar thing we want to avoid. And, and so that's my message to him, is just going to get better at that. You've got to get better at holding the, the power more even. And I, I highlighted 30 seconds and he did 3:40 watts for 30 seconds and his next 30 seconds was 2:50. That, that's like 90 watt difference across one minute. That's crazy riding. No wonder he was fading. It wasn't a fitness thing, it was an execution because of the conditions, which is why this topic is so important. You have to get used to this and train in conditions that are uncomfortable, whether it's temperature, whether it's wind or whether it's terrain. They're the three things that are going to make you a better bike rider. If you just ignore the fact that your power is going up and down and don't change anything, you're not going to be that good rider who can control the power in any condition. And that's where a lot of our time trialers, as cyclists and as triathletes, are incredibly good, because they can control their cadence and power no matter what the conditions are. And in fact, the big thing we say is make it as windy and as hilly as possible, because we'll perform better, because we know how to change gears, we know how to ride in the ranges, and people who haven't practiced that, and it sounds easy, I just go and practice that. We've had athletes who've been trying to do it for two or three seasons, two or three years, who are just getting it properly now. And guys have just started in the last 16 or 20 weeks. I don't expect them to get it straight away. I expect them to make lots of mistakes and still be having to think about that. And it's just not going to come like that, because unless you're outdoors training all the time, you're not getting to practice that indoors. And that is one of the key things about becoming a better rider is, and being able to control your power, whether you're a time trial or road rider or a criterion rider. You still have to be able to control that. I can ride at 200 watts now. I can ride at 250 without it going from 220 to 280 to 220 to 280 all the time. And don't underestimate that this is key to being the best bike rider you can possibly be. You've got the same level of fitness, Jord, that you have not knowing this. And then, Jord, I teach you this. You're the same level of fitness, yet you're riding so much faster. It's just as obvious as that.

Yeah. Had a great chat with one of our athletes this week about it, who also competed at the World Champs last weekend. And to his credit, he was looking for areas of improvement and looking at our gold standard athlete, which was Stevie Mack, who, you know, age group, world duathlon champion. And I said, well, let's, let's compare the data. And not to, you don't want to compare to other athletes, to compare yourself to in terms of time and result, but you do want to compare in terms of execution. And this athlete was exactly what you said there. They've been in the program 16, 20 weeks, very short amount of time with us. And you compare that to Stevie, they wrote incredibly well for how fresh they are to riding like this and executing like this well, well above average. Exactly what you've just said, that having not had this knowledge and then now riding with this knowledge, rode the course fantastic. But then you compare it to Stevie Mac, who's four or five years ahead, he's just another level up, you know, in terms of the evenness of riding, in terms of time spent inside the right zone versus outside. This athlete who's been in the program 16 to 20 weeks actually had double the amount of time spent outside the zones than Stevie Mac did. And I would say that if I didn't look at Stevie Mac's results, I would say that athlete A rode really well. And they spent way more time in the zones than they did in week one of our program, you know, in the right zones. So that just shows you exactly what you're saying. It can take seasons to get this right, which is why a mix of indoor and outdoor is so important.

Yeah, and I think you hit the nail on the head there, showing him his first two or three weeks of training under, under our program and under our instruction, like, his power zones were even from zone 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And now we've got very little in 1 and 5 and the majority of the time spent in so he's improved incredibly. But then when you look at the A standard, you know he's got a lot more to go. But where he's come from is brilliant. But it just shows you it's just not going to happen overnight.

Yep, absolutely. So I want to finish off with the tech side of things because once you do start to train indoors, especially if you have a smart trainer, if you actually don't have a smart train trainer, this doesn't impact as much, but you still have to be aware of your indoor kind of settings. But if you are using a smart trainer, there's only all these extra settings that you have to make sure you're not using or you're using properly to get the most out of the session. And so to start off with, when you use a smart trainer, you have to understand the concept of doing a free ride on the smart trainer or doing a controlled non free ride. And so when you do a free ride, it means you just either go into Zwift and select a course and you ride with the gradient just like you would outdoors. It's kind of replicating that. The negative of that is that it's the same thing as outdoor. If you're trying to do a session, if you're trying to do a three minute effort, but then you hit it downhill, you can't do the effort properly, just like outdoors. Why it's a negative. So majority of people when they're doing a controlled session will do the non free ride. But the negatives that can be associated with this are one Erg mode, which is a big no no for us. The reason it's a no no is it holds you at a set power and then you have no ability to go up or down, which is just not the way we want to train ourselves to ride. The other big factor is in these controlled rides, making sure that your settings are correct. You could select the session, but if you don't look at your FTP settings either on Zwift or any program you use, or in trainingpeaks or however you've downloaded the file. So often we see athletes just start a session not looking at that number and it's just telling them to ride three minutes at X power, which is either way too hard or way too easy because their settings aren't right. And so suddenly there's this whole other element of things where you just have to make sure that you're going into your settings, checking these little things. Erg mode off yes. Good. Am I setting is correct before I start the session, what's it asking me to hold for? 3 minute efforts or 30 second efforts or 1 minute efforts? Can I actually do that? Is that what the sessions prescribed? Or are these settings different to what's on my Training Peaks or my Garmin? And you just have to do these little checkbox of things before you start a session to make sure you're getting it right. And so often an athlete has finished a session going, I don't know what happened there. And we're going, your settings was wrong. It was completely telling you to train to different numbers than you can do.

Yeah, it's, it sounds simple. And there are so many apps that, that are, you know, Strava, Full Gas, Zwift, Garmin Wahoo Trainer, Road Training Peaks. I can just keep going. And every one of them has their own setting for your FTP. And as you said, if they're not all reading the same, if you're, if your FTP on training peaks is 250 and in your bike computer it says 240 and on Zwift it says 265, there's mass confusion about to happen. And unless you're in tune with that, you're going to be training on too hard or too easy, as you said. So one of the things that happens on Zwift or on your Garmin is it automatically changes according to what your previous best FTP was unless you go in manually and change it. And so that's the problem with Zwift and all these other apps is if you've done a PB eight weeks ago, it's still, even though you haven't trained for eight weeks, it's still going to have you at that PB number and you're going to be training way above what you, what you are capable of doing because you haven't trained but you know, because you've set it in Training Peaks. Correct. It's going to read differently to what's saying in the Zwift app. And I've said this so many times and I don't think anybody's listening and I keep repeating the same thing. And one way around it is do the preparation before your training session. What are my main set numbers for tomorrow? If I'm doing 30 15s or if I'm doing 8 minutes or if I'm doing 5 minute efforts or 10 minute efforts? Get a bit of paper. What's my 10 minute effort or what are my 5 minute efforts? Okay, the range is 250 to 270. Put it next year. You open up the training peak session, you load the session onto the app that you're going to use, whatever it is, we'll just use Zwift as an example. And then it says to you in the right hand corner, 2:30 to 2:40 for your five minute efforts. Well, straight away you'll look at your bit of paper and go, well, that's not right. So you need to investigate why it's not right before you start your training session. That's as simple as the solution is. So you have to do the preparation so you know what you're meant to be doing on any given ride, on any given day. And that's just lack of attention to detail. If you go halfway through a training session and you're riding way too low, but you don't know that, I think that's, that's poor on your behalf. And it's easy to do, but it's also easy to rectify and to stop yourself from doing it. And as long as you're aware of this and we make it, we've said this so many times on the podcast and even to our athletes, sometimes they're not really understanding what we're saying because it sabotages your own session. And most of the time people use that as an excuse. Forget this indoor stuff. I just ride outdoor. There's no tech stuff that I have to worry about. But there is still tech stuff you have to worry about. You make sure that all the metrics on your bike computer are right. So it is a key component of why it's important to get everything right indoors so that you're not wasting sessions. Because I've said many times, every session counts. And the minute you just muck up a session, because it's not because of your fitness ability or fatigue, because it's a technical thing, that's a problem.

Yeah. And on that note, you're allowed to stop a session midway through. If in the first set you realize that the numbers are wrong, stop the session, figure it out and reset. Or just go check what was in the program and say this feels too hard or too easy. What does the program actually say? Say I'm supposed to be doing and then just ignore whatever Zwift or whatever's telling you right to your actual numbers. You really shouldn't just finish the session and then find out afterwards what was happening. As soon as you can detect a problem, stop and restart the session. That's totally fine. And I think the last tech point, we really want to Hammer Home is essentially you want to be practicing using your head unit, whether it's a Garmin or whatever you use, or wahoo. A wahoo or an element or something like that. You should be using that in all your training sessions anyway because that's what you're going to be using in the race. You're going to have a computer screen in front of you. So you and I both just completely ignore the power on the screen. And we're using our head unit and we're using the lap function, our head unit, which is really important. We're using instant power, sure. To see what we're currently doing. But we're always keeping an eye on the average power for that lap so that we know that our average in that effort is within the range that we're hoping to hold. So that's just a really key final point that we've said that to death. But it's just a really, really important reminder. Keep using your head unit. Practice using that in your sessions. You're not going to have a computer screen in front of you in the race, so you need to learn to use your head unit so that you can replicate that.

Yeah, the indoor screens and technology is brilliant. We're not being critical of that. But there are certain things that aren't so good and I'll pick on Zwift because I want them to change this. They don't give us lap function. It's just instant power the whole time. And how can you work out what your average power is over five minutes when you're looking at a number that's fluctuating probably by 10 or 15 watts every pedal stroke? So that is a real drawback that you don't have average lap power to look at on the screen. And until I fix that, it's kind of, it's almost a useless bit of information to look at. You can't mathematically work it out over a 10 minute effort, what you've averaged. You know, no one can convince me that they can. It's not possible.

Yeah, exactly right. So any main conclusions from indoor versus outdoor training? We've, we've pointed out some really key mistakes with indoor as well as some really big benefits. But funnily enough, the negatives of indoor are what the positives of outdoor are and then the negatives outdoor what the positives indoor are. And so I think I want to grab your conclusion on if someone's asked the question what's better? How do you answer that?

Every well balanced program has to have indoor and it has to have outdoor as part of their program. And whether it's because of weather or specifically getting the best out of the session, you need to have that option available to you. And we wouldn't require that to be part of our program if we didn't think it was worth it. We don't want people to spend money just for the sake of spending money getting the latest whiz bang equipment. It's so useful for you to become a better bike rider and you don't want a, to have an excuse that I can't do my session today because the weather is so bad. That is the probably the biggest reason why you, number one reason why you would have an indoor option. And look at the people who live in the northern hemisphere compared to the southern hemisphere where a lot of the winters there is so much snow happening and we just don't have that here. We have, we have mild winters and it's sure it gets cold but nothing like you know, the Scandinavian countries or in Canada where it's, you know, months of snow where you actually can't ride outside. We don't have that problem here. But so the indoor trainer is the only option for them for two or three months at a time depending on where you live. So without that your, you can't train well, so you can't train at all. So it is really important that you have both options just purely for weather conditions. But the other things are that it is such an advantage to be able to train without having interruptions that you have outdoor. And as you said, that's when we want to control our sessions. But outdoor we need to practice the things that we want to get better at. So using some sessions for particular values that we're trying to do such as the skill of reading, of writing to wind and, and terrain changes in temperature. Whereas indoor we, we want to actually just concentrate on things that are going to help us be a better physiological rider rather than the technical side of, of of skills that, that are required for the event. So they both have a place. And for you to say I, I don't ever ride outdoor or I don't ever ride indoors, that's very narrow minded. That's not going to give you the option.

So I want to finish by asking you when the weather allows if you could ride indoor or outdoor, what's your decision making? How are you deciding whether to ride a session indoor or outdoor throughout the week?

Is the course that's available to me convenient and nearby and it's not going to take me an Hour or two to drive to, that would be my main decision. What is today's session and is the course I've got outdoor appropriate? And if it's not and I don't have the time, I'll ride indoor.

And so for you, There's a velodrome 40 minutes away, 45 minutes away. You've got the hills around you Perfect for Zone 2 riding, endurance riding, but you are often changing. Some weeks you're at the velodrome and doing your VO2 work, and some weeks you're indoors. And sometimes you're doing your Zone two indoors and you're doing a hill climb. Alp dwellers or just zone two. And some days you decide to go outside. So again, let's say that weather's fine. Why are you choosing indoor versus outdoor?

Most of the time it would be time that I've got available. So if I'm short on time, I will have to choose the indoor option. But if I had all the time in the world, I would be riding outdoor the whole time. If the weather was fine and I had all the time in the world, I would be doing all of my training outdoor and I would making sure that I've got the course that is appropriate for the session. So all those things have to line up. But there are times where I the weather's bad, I don't have the time, the course is inappropriate, and it's just so much more convenient. I can actually do the session properly indoor. So they're the things I'm weighing up every single time I'm deciding where I'm going to ride.

That's so funny, because we are huge proponents of the indoor trainer and I love it as an option. But yeah, I'm exactly the same that if I can ride outdoors, I'm riding outdoors. The indoor is a last resort, even though it's so valuable. And that's funny that we both have that conclusion. And I think that's because we know that there are more than enough times where riding outdoors isn't the option that we'll get the indoor training. And so we're willing to make that decision that anytime we can ride outdoors, we ride outdoors.

I just want to finish off by saying the fun component has to be taken into consideration. I'm all about improving. I want to be a better athlete every day of my life. And I still have that mindset. I still want to improve, and I know that training indoor is really going to contribute to that. But I still want to enjoy myself and I love riding outdoors. Just that freedom of riding wherever you want, and if the sun's on your back and, you know, you just get to see the. The scenery and it's fun. It's just a fun thing to do. I love riding my bike outside. I know riding my bike inside gives me the things that I need, but it's not as much fun.

That's a great way to finish. That's a great conclusion. We hope you've enjoyed this one. It's been a long one. We had a lot to discuss with the Tour de France women's and this actual topic, but we hope you've enjoyed it. And we've got some really good case studies and interviews coming up in the next couple of weeks, which we're really excited for. So thanks, as always, for listening. I'll see you in the next episode.