# From Turbo to Tarmac: Essential Tips to Transition to Outdoor Riding | Ep 531

An episode of [Oxygenaddict Triathlon Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/951501034), 19 Mar 2025, 29 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/ea99f7d8/podcast/play/99963350/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-2-17%2Fa8e5b6ee-46e9-37a1-100f-f9342d1df505.m4a

This week, Coach Rob provides tips and guidance on transitioning from indoor to outdoor cycling as the weather improves and training starts to become more race specific. Including: Improving bike handling skills... Bike maintenance checks... Adjusting to outdoor riding conditions... Appropriate dress for variable spring weather... How to pace climbs and descents... Nutrition and hydration strategies... Traffic and safety tips... Gradually building outdoor bike endurance... I Insights into the mental shift required for outdoor riding... ...And the importance of continuing to incorporating indoor turbo sessions for controlled intensity training. * * * * * * * * SPONSORS * * * * * * * * Like what you heard in this show? Join hundreds of other age group triathletes making the most of their limited training time, training with Team OxygenAddict! http://team.oxygenaddict.com - The most comprehensive triathlon coaching program for busy age groupers. Book an application call to see if you'd be a good fit for Team Oxygenaddict for the coming season here: https://team.oxygenaddict.com/consultation-call/ * * * * * * * * * * * * precisionfuelandhydration.com Precision Fuel & Hydration help athletes personalise their hydration and fuelling strategies for training and racing. Use the free Fuel & Hydration Planner to get a personalised race nutrition plan for your next event. And then book a free 20-minute video consultation with a member of the PF&H Athlete Support Team to refine your strategy. Listeners get 15% off their first order of fuel and electrolytes with Precision Fuel & Hydration. Simply click this link and the discount will be auto-applied at the checkout. * * * * * * * * * * * * Watch on youtube Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts

## Transcript

[0:04] Hello, and welcome to the Oxygen Addict Triathlon Podcast.
[0:07] We're brought to you every week by our sponsors, Precision Fuel
[0:10] and hydration.com. You can get 15% off your first
[0:13] order with the code Oxygen Fuel 25.
[0:16] Welcome to the show everybody. I'm your host coach Rob Wilby
[0:19] from Team Oxygen Addict, and every week we'll bring you an
[0:21] episode of this podcast to help motivate and inspire you and
[0:25] hopefully to give you some great ideas about how you can improve
[0:28] your Iron Man and 70.3 triathlon performance.
[0:31] On this week's episode, we're going to be talking about making
[0:34] the move to riding outdoors. We've got a load of tips here
[0:37] for you that as you transition from winter training, mostly
[0:40] indoors on the turbo to outdoor riding and sort of gradually
[0:44] building towards your races this season, some things you'll want
[0:47] to take care of, some top tips, some time saving ideas and
[0:52] really a great way to structure it to answer the questions that
[0:55] you might have. Before we get started though,
[0:56] there were two quick things that you can do to help us.
[0:59] If you like this episode, please follow us on Spotify and
[1:02] consider leaving us a nice review over on Apple Podcasts.
[1:05] And if you're looking for coaching for Iron Man or 70.3
[1:08] triathlon this year and you like what you hear in this episode,
[1:11] please get in touch. We've got a fantastic community
[1:14] of athletes. We coach over 150 people all the
[1:17] way across the world, mostly in the UK but also in Europe and
[1:21] Australia and America. We've currently got a special
[1:24] offer on the season long membership.
[1:26] It's a massive saving compared to our usual monthly or even our
[1:30] discounted annual rate. There's a link in the show notes
[1:33] to book a membership call. We can have a chat with you and
[1:35] find out about you, your background, what your aims and
[1:38] goals are for this year and we can just have a chat and see how
[1:41] we can best help you out. So if that sounds great, use a
[1:44] link in the show notes, right, Let's get straight into it.
[1:48] Then let's start talking about how we can make the move over to
[1:51] outdoor riding. So first up, let's talk about
[1:54] adjusting to the outdoor effort versus the indoor trainer power.
[1:59] The first thing in it, it'll sound obvious to say this, but
[2:02] the first thing to get used to is the idea that riding outdoors
[2:06] will have wind resistance, will have terrain changes, will have
[2:10] road conditions. All of these are going to make
[2:13] pacing your ride much trickier. It's really relatively easy to
[2:17] do this indoors on Swift or a similar platform where you can
[2:20] kind of dial up the power. Even if you're not riding in erg
[2:23] mode, it's relatively easy to hold power within a A10 or 20
[2:27] Watt band while you're riding. It's much, much more difficult
[2:30] to do this outdoors. And the key thing is you've got
[2:33] to remember that if you've done this before, it will take time
[2:36] to adjust. If you haven't done it before
[2:38] and it's your first season transitioning to riding
[2:40] outdoors, it will take you time to get used to riding at those
[2:43] outdoor power numbers. Expect the power numbers to
[2:47] fluctuate much more outdoors than they do on a trainer.
[2:51] Expect that variability and it's not unusual for a relatively new
[2:55] athlete to come back to us and say I think there's something
[2:58] wrong with my power metre. The power numbers are jumping
[3:00] about all over the place and it's really hard to make sense
[3:03] of them. So a couple of things you can do
[3:04] there to really help yourself out on your Garmin or head unit
[3:08] rather than just having instant power showing on there.
[3:12] If you have a combination of four numbers to, to learn to
[3:15] look at half the three second average, the 10 second average,
[3:19] the 32nd average and the normalised power lap average,
[3:24] those four numbers can help. You can kind of look at look
[3:27] between the four of them when you're out there and think,
[3:30] right, OK, I've started to go up a hill.
[3:32] My 3 second power number has jumped massively.
[3:35] My 10 second power is, is more like a number that my brain can
[3:38] actually make sense of. It doesn't jump around quite as
[3:41] much. The 32nd power is really great
[3:44] to look at to, to sort of combine with the 10 second
[3:48] power. And if your 10 second power has
[3:50] jumped much above where your 32nd power is, that's a good
[3:54] tell that you've started to push out more power going up the hill
[3:57] and that you need to rein yourself in a little bit.
[4:00] And I like to use the normalised lap power.
[4:02] That's a great one to use, especially if you're riding on
[4:06] terrain that's changes a lot. If you're on a lot of quite long
[4:10] hills, take a lap. Press the lap function on your
[4:14] head unit every time the train changes.
[4:16] So if you start to go up a long hill, press lap.
[4:19] If you start to ride on the flats again, press lap.
[4:22] If you start to ride into a headwind, press lap.
[4:25] And what that'll do is it'll allow you to get a reading for
[4:28] what your power number is doing, what your average power has been
[4:33] since you got that last transition point.
[4:36] So looking at the average power for a ride isn't really any use
[4:39] to you when you're out there on the road.
[4:41] But looking at the lap average power from when the terrain last
[4:45] changed, that can be really useful.
[4:47] So if you've pressed it at the start of a hill, you look down
[4:51] and your, I don't know, your 3 second power might be 200 watts,
[4:55] but the normalised lap power might be 300 watts.
[4:59] That tells you that you've gone really hard at the start of the
[5:01] hill and you need to really back yourself off.
[5:04] So expect those numbers to fluctuate riding outdoors and
[5:09] it's going to take you a good few rides to get used to how the
[5:13] power fluctuates when you're riding outdoors.
[5:15] Second idea for you is the idea of bike handling and confidence
[5:19] on the road versus how it is indoors on the trainer.
[5:23] You're going to need to spend some time reactivating your
[5:26] skills like cornering, breaking, riding in groups.
[5:31] They are skills that come back relatively quickly and that you
[5:34] can learn for the first time relatively quickly.
[5:37] But the first time you're out there in the season, perhaps the
[5:40] first time you're out there at all, it's going to take time and
[5:43] I advise caution here. So coming up to corners, break a
[5:46] little bit more than you think you need to.
[5:48] Coming up to the corner, just be a little bit more cautious than
[5:51] you think you need to be. The first time that you're
[5:53] outside riding this season, you're going to need to practise
[5:57] smooth gear changes on rolling terrain.
[6:00] And this is one of the ones that especially if you've been on
[6:03] Swift and you've not been riding with the, with the, the sort of
[6:07] the hill option activated on Swift, or perhaps it's been
[6:10] dialled down on Swift. You forget quite how much you
[6:13] need to change gears on rolling terrain in order to try and keep
[6:17] your cadence steady. And that's the key with going up
[6:20] hills. It's as you start to go up the
[6:22] hill, I'd advise you changing up at least 2 sprockets at the back
[6:26] and perhaps 3 sprockets at the back.
[6:28] If it's a relatively steep hill, you're going to need to think
[6:31] about changing from your your big ring at the front to the
[6:33] small ring at the front. All of these things are going to
[6:36] take time to get used to again, so build that into your first
[6:40] few rides outside. And the 3rd and possibly most
[6:43] most important point about this section is getting comfortable
[6:47] with real world obstacles like the potholes and the traffic.
[6:50] So potholes tend to be the thing that catches out, not just in
[6:54] terms of remembering that we really need to pay attention
[6:57] where we're riding, looking up the road, not just at the two or
[7:01] three or 10 metres in front of us, but the 50 metres in front
[7:04] of us. We've got to get an eye for
[7:06] where those potholes are. We've got to get used to being
[7:09] aware of where the traffic is. But a big thing to remember is
[7:12] it's not uncommon for athletes after their first outdoor ride
[7:15] of the year to come back and say, I've forgotten how much my
[7:18] neck, my shoulders got sore while I was out riding.
[7:22] And they feel it the next day in terms of soreness or stiffness.
[7:25] Just because you don't get that on the turbo.
[7:28] So expect that and expect you're going to have to get used to it.
[7:32] Next up Third Point, get used to the idea of dressing for spring
[7:36] weather on the turbo. You're just probably going to be
[7:39] in a pair of shorts and have the fan ONS trying to stay cool.
[7:43] You're going to have to get used to the idea of layering your
[7:45] clothing appropriately to handle the fact you'll have changing
[7:48] temperatures, and especially if it's the springtime as you're
[7:51] transitioning to riding outdoors.
[7:53] Some days it can be really warm, some days it can be really,
[7:56] really cold. I went out a couple of days last
[7:59] week and one of the rides I was in on warmers and a pair of
[8:03] shorts. The next ride I went out, I had
[8:06] put long, long bib longs on and the long sleeve top and I was
[8:11] still absolutely freezing and without having a pair of gloves
[8:14] on, which was the mistake I'd made, but my hands just got
[8:18] bitterly, bitterly cold. So make sure that you start
[8:22] looking at what the temperature is before you go out.
[8:24] Look at what the wind chill is going to do before you go out.
[8:27] And if it's anywhere down near 4° or lower, you need to dress
[8:30] as though it's winter still. So a really warm winter jacket,
[8:34] gloves, some kind of hat with with ear warmers on underneath
[8:38] or skullcap underneath your and helmet and at least toe covers
[8:44] of your shoes and probably full booties on as well.
[8:47] So that's really worth being aware of on the days when it's
[8:50] really chilly, on the days when it looks like it might be a bit
[8:53] warmer, but it's changeable. Arm warmers and leg warmers are
[8:56] really good for flexibility. I've been able to strip them off
[9:00] an hour into the ride as it starts to warm up.
[9:02] And again, just a real top tip here for you, I'd advise riding
[9:06] with gloves the longer than you think you're going to need them.
[9:10] So full finger gloves longer into the spring than you think
[9:13] you're going to need them because nothing ruins a ride
[9:16] like the freezing cold hands not being able to use your fingers
[9:19] properly as you're riding outdoors.
[9:22] I advise if you're riding in the UK, having those toe covers on
[9:26] over your shoes all year round because they're really, really
[9:30] useful on triathlon race day to keep the chill off your feet if
[9:34] you end up riding without socks on.
[9:35] So the toe covers year round and the full booties if you think
[9:39] there's going to be a wind chill and you're riding early in the
[9:41] morning. Tip #4 checking and prepping
[9:45] your bike for the outdoor rides. So for a lot of you, you might
[9:48] not have done many, if any outdoor rides at all, and you
[9:51] might be taking your main bike off the turbo to go and ride
[9:54] outdoor for the first thing. So inspect the tyres, make sure
[9:58] they're in decent shape still, check that the brakes are
[10:01] working, check the drivetrain is OK.
[10:03] If you're using a bike that's been stored in the winter.
[10:06] My partner's bike came out of storage and the chain had all
[10:09] rusted up, so it needed a new chain after being not used very
[10:12] much of at all over the winter. So make sure you check all those
[10:15] things. For those of you who are riding
[10:18] tubeless, remember that you're going to have to probably at
[10:22] least add to the sealant that's in your tyres, probably change
[10:26] it completely at the start of the season.
[10:29] It's it's advisable to do this twice a year.
[10:31] So definitely as you're you're heading into the spring riding
[10:34] after a period of having been indoors, it's a great time to
[10:37] get some extra sealant into your tyres.
[10:39] Use a local bike shop here if you don't know what you're
[10:41] doing. Next point about prepping your
[10:44] bike is expect your bike to feel different riding outdoors than
[10:48] it does indoors. It's not unusual for the same
[10:51] bike that you've been on turbo on to feel completely different
[10:54] when you go to ride outdoors. The saddle can feel strange, the
[10:58] saddle height can feel strange even.
[11:00] Doesn't necessarily mean that things need changing, but it's a
[11:03] good idea to make that first ride of the year relatively
[11:05] short so you can get used to how it feels riding outdoors again.
[11:09] The last thing about prepping your bike for outdoor rides is
[11:13] obviously making sure that the tyres are pumped to the right
[11:15] pressure before you go out, but make sure you carry in the
[11:18] essential spares. Even if you're riding tubeless,
[11:20] make sure you've got either or the tubeless repair kit and some
[11:24] spare tubes with you. Make sure you've got a little
[11:27] puncture repair kit. Make sure you've got the tyre
[11:30] leavers in your little baggie under the saddle still, because
[11:33] often these things can get taken off the bike over the winter and
[11:36] you find that it, you know, you get a puncture and you haven't
[11:38] actually got the tyre leaves with you.
[11:40] So check those things. Next up then pacing on climbs
[11:45] and on descents. So the thing to remember here is
[11:47] that pacing on real world climbs is going to require you to have
[11:51] steady pacing. And often you're going to have
[11:54] to slow down much more than you expect.
[11:56] You're going to have to going up a hill relative to how you think
[12:00] you're going to need to go than you actually do.
[12:02] So my tip here is try and maintain the cadence that you've
[12:05] been riding at on the hill rather than trying to maintain
[12:09] the cadence in the same gear. So you're going to have to
[12:12] change up at least three sprockets at the back.
[12:15] If it's a relatively steep hill, you're going to have to change
[12:17] from the big ring to the small ring at the front.
[12:19] Doing those things as you get onto the hill you a long way
[12:24] into getting the the pacing ready and required.
[12:27] And if you're using a power metre, once you've changed down
[12:30] the gears, once you've matched the cadence, then try and match
[12:33] the power on your 10 second power to how it was before.
[12:37] The power will jump on the climb.
[12:39] There's no question that for most people, their experiences
[12:42] that the power is much higher going up a hill than they feel
[12:46] it should be for the speed they're riding.
[12:48] That's just one of the disconnects between how fast
[12:51] we're travelling and how hard we think we're riding.
[12:54] So you're going to have to back off when you're descending down
[12:57] the hill. Remember that you're going to
[13:00] need to look well ahead down the road and keep looking ahead for
[13:04] the potholes that might be in the road, for the traffic that
[13:06] might be coming out. And a good tip for going down
[13:08] the hills to remember is rather than sitting on the saddle as
[13:11] you would do in the turbo all the time, it's to lift your
[13:14] weight slightly off the saddle. Have both feet weighted on the
[13:16] pedals. Lift your bum slightly off the
[13:19] saddle so that any small potholes or or bad Rd surfaces
[13:23] get absorbed by your legs rather than your backside.
[13:26] It'll come back really quickly if you've ridden outdoors
[13:28] before, but it's something that you won't have done on the turbo
[13:30] over the winter. Next number 6, it's the idea of
[13:35] reintroducing nutrition and hydration to your outdoor rides.
[13:40] So with hydration, remember to drink regularly.
[13:43] It's much less automatic than when you're riding indoors.
[13:46] You won't get as hot transitioning to riding in the
[13:49] spring, and you're often going to have to force yourself to
[13:51] have even a little something to drink because you just won't
[13:54] feel that you need it. Even if you don't need to take a
[13:58] whole bottle while you're out there, remember to have some
[14:01] little sips just because it gets you into that habit of staying
[14:03] hydrated. You're going to need to practise
[14:07] taking the gels, eating the gels, eating the bars while
[14:10] riding outdoors. The skill of that's going to
[14:12] need to come back. So make sure you're on a quiet
[14:14] Rd the first time you practise these.
[14:17] And as these rides start to warm up, remember that avoiding the
[14:21] dehydration, especially on the long rides, as it warms up, it's
[14:25] going to be something that's much harder to do outdoors than
[14:28] indoors where you can just hop off the turbo, refill a bottle.
[14:31] So remember to plan in those stops to refill your bottles at
[14:34] the points where you need them. And that is a really good point
[14:37] for us to have a shout out for our sponsors, Precision Fuel and
[14:40] Hydration. You can use their free fuel and
[14:43] hydration planning tool on their website.
[14:45] It'll give you a personalised strategy for your training and
[14:48] for your racing in terms of how much you need to drink per hour,
[14:52] how many milligrammes of sodium you need per hour, and how many
[14:55] grammes of carbohydrate you need per hour.
[14:57] If you practise this in training, it's going to be
[14:59] second nature when you come to race day.
[15:01] You can even book a free 1 to one video consultation with PF
[15:05] and HS Athletes support team. They'll go through all of this
[15:08] with you and at the end of it, you'll have a really clear idea
[15:10] of a starting point of how much of each of those three key
[15:14] levers you need to be using on each of your rides.
[15:18] So point #7 dealing with traffic and road safety when you're
[15:22] riding outdoors. So the first thing I'd advise
[15:26] here is let's choose quieter routes while you're either
[15:29] getting back into outdoor riding or when you're getting into your
[15:32] first outdoor rides. Plan the route beforehand using
[15:35] maps, try and use the back lanes.
[15:37] That way you can be sure that you're going to be minimising
[15:40] the amount of traffic you're going to come across relative to
[15:42] going out riding on a roads. If you can ride at a quieter
[15:46] time of day, if you can make it a Sunday morning or a Saturday
[15:49] morning and you can stay off the main roads, you can often have
[15:52] rides where you don't see very much traffic.
[15:55] Now that being said, my my big tip for the coaches that I
[16:00] trained to tell their athletes and the athletes that I work
[16:03] with is whenever you're riding outdoors, you've got to expect
[16:06] the traffic not to see you and react sort of ride defensively
[16:11] if you like, expect that traffic at a junction is possibly not
[16:15] going to see you and they might pull out.
[16:17] So slow down ahead of that. If you think that there's a
[16:21] chance that the car hasn't seen you, expect the traffic coming
[16:24] up behind you isn't going to give you as much room as you'd
[16:27] ideally like and prepare yourself that they're going to
[16:30] pass you possibly closer than you would be comfortable with.
[16:34] My tip here for people, although we're not, we're not sponsored
[16:37] or affiliated in any way with Garmin, their Garmin Varia Light
[16:42] and Radar is, I think one of the best tools for athletes riding
[16:45] outdoors. If you've not seen these, it's a
[16:47] combined light unit and radar unit that connects to your head
[16:51] unit. If the light unit will help you
[16:54] be seen, there's a setting on there that will flash at the
[16:58] cars more frequently and brighter as a car comes up
[17:02] behind you. So it kind of warns the driver
[17:05] that there's something there to draw their attention to you.
[17:07] But there's radar built into this unit, so it detects the
[17:11] cars coming and it will give you a warning on your Garmin head
[17:14] screen. So in the form of a little dot
[17:17] that moves up the screen towards you.
[17:19] If the car's coming at A at a decent pace, it will be green on
[17:23] the screen. If it's coming a bit faster,
[17:24] it'll be orange. If it's going too fast, it'll be
[17:27] red on the screen and it will sense the traffic probably 5
[17:31] seconds before you can hear the traffic coming, which is an
[17:35] amazing thing. It'll beep at you.
[17:37] It gives you a warning. The traffic's coming.
[17:39] And especially in the situation where that traffic is moving
[17:42] faster than you're comfortable with, you can kind of get ready
[17:46] for that. You can look over your shoulder
[17:48] and I found this to be a very effective way to kind of, if you
[17:52] can make eye contact with the driver behind you, I think it
[17:55] somehow humanises you in their eyes and they become more aware
[17:59] and sometimes I feel like they move out more and either give me
[18:01] more space or slow down or both. So it's about £150 for one of
[18:07] these units. It's, it's expensive, but I
[18:11] think for the value it brings, it's well, well worth it if
[18:14] you've got the money spare. The other thing dealing with
[18:17] traffic and road safety is if you're riding with other riders,
[18:21] talk to each other. If you've got a pothole coming
[18:23] up, tell each other there's a pothole.
[18:25] If you see cars coming, tell each other there's cars.
[18:27] If you're riding in bigger groups, learn the hand signals
[18:30] of group communication in Group rides.
[18:32] And if you're not clear, ask your group rider.
[18:34] And then that way you can help the riders behind you know that
[18:39] there might be cars coming forward or behind or there might
[18:41] be potholes in the road. Next up .8 it's on building
[18:46] endurance with your longer outdoor rides.
[18:49] So I've already mentioned here my my top tip would be for the
[18:52] first ride you go out on of the year, make it relatively short.
[18:55] Make it 45 minutes to an hour, almost like an equipment and
[18:59] body check, just getting used to riding outdoors.
[19:02] And then as you're starting to build your endurance with the
[19:06] longer rides, the way to go here is to plan to increase the
[19:11] duration of those rides in a controlled way.
[19:14] So with athletes I work with, what I'll say is you ideally
[19:18] don't want your longest ride to be more than 30 minutes longer
[19:21] than the longest ride you've done in the last couple of
[19:24] weeks. In some in some examples of
[19:28] athletes who've got multi year histories of training, it seems
[19:32] that our bodies make this memory of remembering riding for long.
[19:35] So I'm in the position where I can head outdoors and I can ride
[19:39] 2 1/2 three hours for my first long outdoor ride, even if I've
[19:42] only ridden indoors for an hour during the winter.
[19:46] For newer athletes that's not going to be the case.
[19:48] But regardless of that, I'd give you this guidance that a 30
[19:52] minute jump between long ride durations is about a safe limit.
[19:57] Again, with athletes with a longer history, it might be that
[19:59] we sometimes go with a jump of an hour.
[20:01] But in newer athletes, you need to build the sort of build the
[20:06] duration gradually if you like to avoid excessive fatigue and
[20:10] avoid the situation where you do much more than you intended to.
[20:13] You put yourself into a fatigue hole and it takes two or three
[20:16] or four days to climb out of that and it impacts your
[20:19] training for the rest of the week.
[20:21] I'd advise you here to plan routes.
[20:24] That are going to suit your training rather than just going
[20:27] out for a ride. And it's one of the things we
[20:30] talk about with our athletes, like planning where you're going
[20:32] to go and do those outdoor rides.
[20:34] If your rides in your goal race this year is going to be an
[20:39] extremely hilly race, you need to be planning to go and do your
[20:42] outdoor rides on that kind of terrain.
[20:45] If it's going to be a flat fast course, plan your rides to be on
[20:49] that kind of terrain because it's tempting to think, well,
[20:51] you know, hills will help me build strength.
[20:54] There is nothing as specific as doing the rides in training that
[20:58] you're going to face on race day.
[21:00] So similarly with bikes and bike position, if you're going to be
[21:04] riding your TT bike on race day, ride your TT bike and training
[21:08] as much as you can. There's going to be a road bike
[21:10] for racing. Ride your road bike and
[21:12] training. Get used to the conditions in
[21:14] the bike that you're going to be focusing on on race day.
[21:19] Now next point to talk through here is, is the mental shift
[21:25] that'll change things that'll change from going from indoor
[21:28] riding into outdoor riding. So first, I think often athletes
[21:34] have expressed to us a difficulty at this time of year
[21:37] when they they may have done the majority of their rides indoors.
[21:40] They're trying to start to do longer long rides and they get
[21:44] to the weekend. They know they're ideally going
[21:47] to be doing a three hour plus ride, but the weather is
[21:50] horrendous at the weekend and they decide they're going to do
[21:53] the ride on the turbo. But after an hour and a half
[21:56] they find it's just, it's just incapable of doing any more on
[21:59] the turbo through either the uncomfortableness or the boredom
[22:02] of the ride. So my advice to you here would
[22:04] be we need to start making that transition and that commitment
[22:08] to the transition to the outdoor ride, regardless of what the
[22:12] weather conditions do. Unless we're in an absolute
[22:16] extreme where the weather is so terrible that you're at, you
[22:19] know, risk riding in the wind and the rain and the storms,
[22:22] obviously then it's safer to be indoors.
[22:24] But in the vast majority of cases, if it's just either cold
[22:28] and or rainy, we need to get prepared for the fact that we're
[22:32] going to have to do that. Because especially if you're
[22:34] racing in Europe, the chances are you are going to face those
[22:36] conditions on race day in at least one of the races you do
[22:40] this season. So start to get used to the idea
[22:43] of training in those conditions so you can race in them, but
[22:46] also start to get used to the kind of clothing that you're
[22:48] going to need so you can go outdoors and the clothing
[22:52] doesn't become the issue that stops you getting out there when
[22:56] it's colder than you'd ideally like or colder with predicted
[22:59] rain. If you need to go away and do
[23:02] some research, get yourself a really good lightweight cycling
[23:07] rain jacket. And then that way you can stick
[23:09] it in your back pocket. But actually the, the kind of
[23:12] the thrill of having new clothing to put on when it rains
[23:16] means you're quite fancy the idea of actually being outside
[23:19] if there's a chance for shower, because the chances are you get
[23:22] to use this new jacket that you've bought.
[23:24] So embrace that unpredictability.
[23:27] Know that you've got the the the clothing correct for it.
[23:31] Get used to the idea that you're going to get it wrong sometimes,
[23:35] but more often than not, you're going to learn from that.
[23:38] And you're going to learn which pair of gloves or which pair of
[23:41] booties are appropriate for this temperature and this prediction
[23:45] of rain. So that's the first thing to
[23:47] think about. The next thing to think about is
[23:49] developing resilience to deal with headwinds and hills as well
[23:55] as weather changes. These are things you'll have
[23:57] forgotten. Well, you weren't forgotten
[24:00] them, but they just don't happen inside on the turbo.
[24:03] And if you ride a lot outdoors, you very quickly get used to the
[24:06] idea that if you're whizzing along for the first hour feeling
[24:09] great and you're going to turn around and you're going to be
[24:12] riding much slower than you expect to into a headwind on the
[24:15] way back. More than likely, if you head
[24:18] out over the hills, the chances are the second-half of the ride
[24:22] is going to feel much Hillier than the first half because
[24:26] you're going to be more fatigued at that halfway point.
[24:28] So you've got to mentally prepare for the fact and save
[24:32] some energy for the fact that those hills are going to be,
[24:35] they're going to feel harder. I've done this myself.
[24:37] I've been out on a ride or I've done an out and back route
[24:40] through the hills. The hills definitely feel harder
[24:43] on that second part of the ride. So develop the resilience to
[24:47] deal with it. And I think the most important
[24:50] point that we're going to talk about today is just enjoy that
[24:52] freedom of being able to go outside using a bicycle to
[24:56] travel long distances. I'm a really big fan of
[24:59] especially if you're preparing for an Iron Man and you've got
[25:03] to do multiple rides in the 100 mile range.
[25:06] You can cover 100 miles on a bike.
[25:08] You can ride. I mean, from where we live here,
[25:10] we can ride into a different country and 100 miles and back.
[25:13] We can ride into Wales, across the borders and back again,
[25:16] which is brilliant. And you can, you can cover the
[25:19] kind of distance on your bike that you would go in the car for
[25:23] a day out walking with the family.
[25:25] So planning those routes and planning to get to a new area
[25:28] and having it loaded into your garden and going to see new
[25:31] places can be a real bonus that you can do this time of year.
[25:36] OK. And then the last point I'm
[25:37] going to talk you through .10 is even though we're now
[25:40] transitioning to doing most of our rides outdoors, let's still
[25:45] have the flexibility to use the indoor turbo trainer as the tool
[25:49] it's meant to be when we need it.
[25:51] So we transitioned to do most of our rights outdoors, but
[25:55] remember that the turbo is fantastic for doing controlled
[25:58] intensity and harder interval sessions when they're
[26:02] appropriate. I think it's great to get in the
[26:04] idea of going out to do those harder intervals outdoors.
[26:08] But if it turns out that you can't hit the numbers that
[26:11] you're looking for, or even in some cases what we'll find is
[26:14] athletes. They go out to try and do sweet
[26:16] spot intervals on the TT bike and they're simply travelling so
[26:20] fast that they feel they can't put the power out that they'll
[26:24] be able to on the turbo. But that's what the turbo's
[26:26] there for. Do those controlled interval
[26:29] training at at sweet Spot or FTP, do them indoors on the
[26:32] turbo still and do the rest of your ride outdoors.
[26:35] Prioritise your outdoor long rides for building endurance and
[26:39] for your bike handling skills. And the key thing to remember is
[26:43] that as you get closer to race day, more and more of your rides
[26:47] need to be outdoors. More and more of them need to be
[26:50] on the bike you're going to race on in the position that you're
[26:53] going to race in. The more time you can spend,
[26:57] especially if you're racing on ATT bike in the arrow position,
[26:59] and especially if you do an Iron Man, you are going to have to
[27:03] get used to spending 567 hours in that position in order to be
[27:08] able to do that on race day, OK? Because if you can't hold that
[27:11] position, you're likely going to be better off riding a road bike
[27:14] because you'd be much more comfortable on a road bike than
[27:16] trying to sit up on ATT bike. OK, well, that just about brings
[27:22] us to the end of this week's episode.
[27:24] I hope you've enjoyed it. To wrap things up, here are some
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[28:50] And until next week, have a great safe training and racing
[28:53] week. I'm coach Rob Wilby and you've
[28:55] been listening to the Oxygen Addict Triathlon Podcast.

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