Average power indoors & out

[TTer]

One of the metrics I'm tracking per ride is average overall power. Obviously this varies if a few high-power intervals are thrown-in or the ride is for recovery, but the largest component of most rides is endurance.

So.... earlier this year I was training almost exclusively indoors on the turbo. In 3 months I raised my average power from about 195W to 235W. These rides were mostly endurance around 150bpm HR. I was happy to see the improvement. Unfortunately the indoor training didn't seem to translate too well to outdoors/the road. I struggled for a few weeks with the sudden variations (gusts of wind, slight incline variations etc..) necessary when riding outdoors.

However, since I'm now riding outdoors almost all the time (since the indoor training didn't translate to road too well), I'm still looking for the average power to improve. Unfortunately I haven't really noticed any improvements compared to when I started riding a couple of years ago. My average power per ride is around 170-180W per session (most rides are 2hrs up to 4hrs max).

Are these power levels low? The terrain around here is quite lumpy without too much flat terrain so it's hard to maintain power unless you hammer downhill to keep the power applied. Maybe I should do that?

Any thoughts? I've seen PowerTap files from some riders (from the US) where they have averaged 230W outdoors on an endurance ride. I guess it's just not possible on rolling/lump terrain with all the downhill and a flat road/indoor session is necessary to get a high average like that? Is a 50W difference between indoors and out to be expected for similar HR considering the variation in terrain?

Comments?

 

[zakeen]

Dont ask where I go this form cause I cant remember, training on a mag will have about 5-8 heart beat increase then training outside!

You also are saying avg, well I always thought that when you ride outside and you stop pedalling you are still moving so the brain thinks that you are still prgressing and doing something, while on the mag wne you stop pedalling you know your not working.

I am getting at that you tend to ride 100% of the mag training! where out side you tend to ride about 92% and 8% rolling.

I dont know how you work out your avg, while not pedalling is that equal to 0 or is it equal to NULL?? Thats what yo have to work out, if it is equal to 0 then that is bringing your avg down!

Bear in mind that you have stop signs traffic lights, etc.. these things you might not stop but you slow down which is a power decrease which will lower you avg.

I am no expert coach! But I ride a bike!