Why Ride Indoors in the Summer?

By: Trevor and Heather Wurtele, Professional Triathletes

Riding a trainer, inside, during the race season, on beautiful sunny days!? Why would you do that? Well, that is actually something Heather and I do fairly often. At least one, but often two rides a week will be on the indoor bike trainer. We generally try to keep our long rides out on the open roads as it is important to be out training in the real world, but if the weather is really bad we have been known to get those long rides done indoors as well.



Primarily, we save the in-season trainer riding for two purposes:

1. To get our shorter ride days done quickly.

   The benefit to using a bike trainer is we can get a lot of work (KJs) done in a short amount of time. There are no stops, no downhills, and resistance is constant. For me a 1500 kilojoule ride often takes around 1 hour and 50 minutes outside, but I can finish that off on the trainer in 1.5 hours, and spend all of that time in the aero position.
   
   
   

2. For high quality interval sessions.

   We generally train with a very high intensity through the winter, but we do maintain a fair bit of cycling intensity through the year, even while racing. Putting these shorter, hard workouts, on the indoor trainer keeps them very specific. We can control every aspect of the workout with no risk of interruptions. Plus, using Ergometer mode it's easier to hit target watts. You simply set the power you want to hit and ride away!