Getting into structured training: your first workouts, outdoors

What a structured workout is

A structured workout is a list of blocks. Each block has a duration and a target: a power, a heart rate, or a level of perceived effort. Most have the same shape: a warm-up, the main efforts with easier riding between them, and a cool-down.

You’ll see them written in a short form. “3 × 12 min @ 90% FTP” means three efforts of 12 minutes at 90% of your FTP, with recoveries between them. “45 min easy” is a single block at a low target. Once you can read that notation, most training plans make sense.

FTP: the number targets are based on

Functional threshold power (FTP) is the highest power you can hold steadily for a long effort. Most riders can hold it for somewhere between 40 minutes and an hour. Power targets are written as a percentage of it, so the same workout fits a beginner and a racer.

There are three ways to get it:

• Test it. Warm up well, ride 20 minutes as hard as you can hold evenly, and take 95% of the average power. A steady climb or a quiet flat road works better than a busy loop.
• Let your device estimate it. Some Garmin devices detect FTP from rides with a power meter and a heart-rate strap, and Wahoo and Intervals.icu also keep an FTP value.
• Start from an estimate. Without a power meter, a rough FTP from your usual average speed is enough to get started, and you can refine it later.

Retest every six to eight weeks, or when the workouts start to feel too easy.

The training zones in plain words

Workouts are grouped by intensity. The names vary between apps, but they usually mean this:

• Recovery: very easy spinning that adds almost no fatigue.
• Endurance (Zone 2): steady, conversational riding. Most of your time goes here.
• Tempo: firm and sustained. You can talk, but only in short sentences.
• Sweet spot: just below threshold, about 88 to 93% of FTP.
• Threshold: around FTP. Hard, usually ridden in blocks of 10 to 30 minutes.
• VO2 max: short, hard efforts of a few minutes.
• Anaerobic: very hard efforts of about 30 seconds to 3 minutes.

Which workout to pick first

Start with the sessions that are hardest to get wrong. A single sustained block, like one 20-minute tempo effort between a warm-up and a cool-down, teaches pacing without much risk of blowing up. Next, split the same load into repeats, like three 12-minute sweet-spot efforts with short recoveries. Leave threshold, VO2 max and anaerobic work until steady efforts feel controlled.

If you’re unsure, pick by how you feel and how long you have. An easy day is an easy Zone 2 ride. A day with energy can be a tempo session.

Your first weeks

A common pattern for riders new to structure is mostly easy riding with one or two harder sessions a week, never on back-to-back days. Between them go endurance rides and the occasional recovery spin. Add one thing at a time, a longer block or an extra repeat, rather than everything at once. If a session leaves you wrecked for days, it was too hard. Training intensities are suggestions, not medical advice: if you have a health condition, talk to a doctor first.

Doing it outside instead of on a trainer

You don’t need a trainer for any of this. The difference outdoors is that the road decides how long you can hold an effort. Sustained efforts fit best on climbs or long, quiet flat roads, and recoveries on descents and near junctions. A power meter helps but isn’t required: heart-rate and perceived-effort targets work, as long as you allow for heart rate rising slowly at the start of each effort.

A library to start from

Gritmaps has a built-in library of 16 workouts across these categories, from a 45-minute Recovery Spin and a 90-minute Aerobic Endurance ride to Tempo 1×20, Sweet Spot 3×12, Threshold 2×20, VO2 Max 5×4 and 30/15 micro-intervals. Each one says what it’s good for. You can change the duration in 15-minute steps, and in interval sessions only the warm-up and rest change while the main efforts stay fixed. If you’d rather not choose, the Instant workout gives you Gentle, Medium or Hard.

Enter your FTP or let a connected account fill it in, pick a workout, and Gritmaps finds a real route where the terrain fits it, for road, gravel or mountain bike. Generating routes is free. Create your free account and pick your first session.