Indoor vs Outdoor

[WeightySteve]

I know my FTP and Critical power for a few time periods (20mins, 5mins, 1 min). This week I started on the Turbo (injury recovery period before I'm back on the roads) and for the first time with power cranks on the Turbo.

My heartrate is way up on what it should be for the power out. I realise this is due to heat, lack of ventialtion and my elevated heartrate is in response to having to sweat buckets and cool my body down, but does this mean its impossible to train at the same power levels indoors and outdoors? I doubt I can hold my 20 min Critical power if my heartrate is 175+ within 5minutes (i could maintain about 85%, but anything higher I could feel was not sustainable), and I hit 190bpm when attempting a 5mins cricital power session. Thats heartrate out doors is getting close to my max/sprint levels.

In the end my a 2 hour session resulted in quite a hard workout, but the IF/TSB/NP/Avg Power etc are all very low.

I'm pretty new to power training (had the cranks since summer), so just wondering what others do?

Do you have different FTPs and power "zones" (ie Active Recovery, Tempo, VO2 max etc) for indoor and outdoor training? Or do I just forget about heartrate, stick to established power values for training and find i have an indoor max of something like 215 for my 3 mins Critical power interval ?

[Ghost234]

power values can vary from indoors to outdoors, depending on a number of factors - heat/ventilation being one of them. Typically your power numbers will be pushed downwards when riding inside. As far as how much, it depends on the individual.


For me (n=1), I use 90% of Cp5 for 5 minute efforts, 95% of Cp20 for 20 minute efforts. I also find that whatever max wattage I can hold on the trainer for 10 minutes I can hold on the road for 20 minutes.