The enigma of Turbo Training

I've set myself a goal of doing 150ks a week on the bike. So far so good. I've kept it up for three weeks bringing my total now to 450ks. I'm on track to meet my ultimate goal of 1000ks over the 47 days of fitness.

Problem is, there are days when I swap in a road ride for a turbo set and I really am confused as to how the two equate. Websites give conflicting advice. Some say a turbo set is double a road ride, others are more conservative. If the former is true, I've done the equivalent of 300ks this week on the bike and I certainly don't feel like I've ridden that much. They're working on the logic that on a road ride you freewheel as much as you pedal. That depends on the terrain. Even though you have downhills, 20ks with steep hills is much harder than 20ks flat.

Putting a speedometer on the bike is also going to be misleading on the turbo trainer. Once you get going, your back wheel is going to be spinning at a constant speed whatever gear you're in, yet this is changing all the time on the road.

Perhaps what I'm going wrong is measuring my goals through distance. The reason I do this is because I'm training for events which will be a specific distant. That said, there's no point training for a hilly event on the flat. Even if you put your turbo trainer on the highest resistance, I don't think it's quite the same as actually riding the hill.

One thing I will say about the turbo trainer is that it's helping me with one stumbling block I've had which is really slowing me down on the road: sustained, consistent pedalling. I struggle to keep pedalling over a long period of time.

This week, it's all been on the turbo trainer, largely because the start of the week was recovery, so the turbo helped in ensuring my sets were easy to moderate. When I was ready to hit the road, we had torrential rain. At least you can stay dry on the TT.