are bike workouts meant to be on road?

Mostly the latter, though I think either approach is okay depending on whether/when you have a safe situation for outdoor riding.

For most shorter, harder interval workouts, if it's under about two hours, I will always do them on the trainer using power. That's true in Saigon, where I'm really limited in places to ride outdoors. Basically, there's only one place I can safely do hard efforts on a tri bike, it's only reliably traffic free on Sunday mornings, and it takes me fifteen minutes on a busy parkway to ride to/from it. So it just doesn't make sense to do weekday workouts or shorter rides outside. Even in Oregon, for shorter, harder rides, I'll do them on the trainer. There aren't really safe places within quick riding distance of home to do "max effort" kind of rides, especially in aero.

Where I sometimes hit the road is for longer rides (beyond about two hours) without a lot of super-intense efforts. Those workouts tend to have longer efforts at or just above race intensity, with longer warmups and cooldowns, making them a bit safer and more practical to do outside. Yes, there is some "approximation" going on in that case--I may have to adjust the exact timing of the intervals, for example, to avoid street crossings, other cyclists or walkers, or stretches of rough pavement. Power/speed varies a bit more due to winds, pavement, slowing down for traffic, etc. In Saigon, I'd mainly be doing such rides in an industrial park closed to outside traffic. Here in Oregon, on a rural multi-use trail about 20 miles drive from our house. For really long rides in Saigon (over three hours), I sometimes start them outdoors in early AM and then finish up on the trainer to break up the monotony a bit, split the difference between precision/quality vs. getting some handling practice, and avoid the worst of the heat and traffic. I also do some of my long rides here with a bike club--in that case, I have to be pretty flexible about speed/intensity--I'll try to match the time/distance in my plan but intensity sometimes depends on who shows up.

I do try to get in a few outdoor rides before I race, if only to work a bit on bike handling skills, but this is really limited when I'm working in Vietnam. I didn't ride my tri bike outside at all between my last race in 2016 (in September) and my first tri this year (in April) except for one spin the week before to practice drinking from the aerobottle and a short ride to view the course the day before the race. That was a pretty technical sprint course ( three 6 km loops with several tight turns) and I don't recall having any issues with bike handling--it was probably the strongest bike leg I've ever had at that distance and the only time I've ever led my AG on the bike. So probably no need to do a lot of outdoor rides, just enough to get comfortable, at least for a flat course. I also did maybe only two or three outdoor rides, before qualifying for Worlds last year at the Vietnam 70.3 (on a flat course).

Where I do think it would be helpful to ride outside if you can is when preparing for a hilly race. I found out the hard way this year that busting my butt on the trainer doesn't really translate to an impressive performance on actual hills. I had an awful bike leg at my last race (Couer d'Alene70.3) and, since the swim and run went okay, I'm guessing I just hadn't developed the fitness specific to that kind of course--probably needed to do some training on actual hills! If you are planning to do a hilly race, I would recommend finding a safe place to do some hill work, not just relying on the trainer. There are skills like choosing proper gearing, comfort with descending, adapting to a climbing position, etc. that are hard to simulate on a trainer.

forgive my duplicate post, I thought I could delete the first one.

Thank you for detailed answer. Very interesting.

Edited by MuscleMomma 2017-07-09 11:01 PM