Back when I had a manual trainer, I had to do every workout in level mode. I did this one on monday on level mode, as well. It’s definitely doable. You just have to adjust your gears properly, but it’s definitely doable. Maybe more doable than on erg mode, I think. You aren’t really supposed to worry about your power at all. So, you can pick a gear that’s as low as you need to spin as high of an rpm as you can. I was always in my 2nd or 3rd lowest gear with the smallest ring at the front. It was much easier to it those high cadences than when erg mode is trying to adjust my power up to ftp.
I have no doubt it is doable, but for me at least, I do not se any purpose in doing it in level mode. Bringing gear changes into the equation would only complicate things in my mind, thus I only have to focus on the cadence.
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It doesn’t take many gear changes. Usually was just 1 gear difference between the builds and the recovery intervals. But, erg mode definitely removes that from the equation.
Yeah I mentioned way ^ that for me any ‘drill’ type sessions would still be done in ERG. It’s not that they can’t be done in level mode, I just want to remain purely focused on technique during these sessions.
This had level mode written all over it from the beginning!
Interestingly though, in a kind of double madness March way I actually tried out erg mode in a few of the 15sec sprints.
In level mode I was ramping up to maybe 130 rpm and during the acceleration my power was above/around target but once at 130rpm power dropped off as I wasn’t accelerating anymore.
Consequently I think I was often over tgt for first 5 seconds and then under by the end.
Changing gears during the ramp sort of worked but I sort of slowed a bit as the change happened. Plus bike not exactly happy shifting at max wattage! The few 15sec sprints I tried in erg sort of solved this gear change lag as the resistance progressively ramped up once I was at top leg speed. I guess outdoor bikes don’t actually have this feature though!
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18/31: Who Dares, in which I decided to try to ride intervals and get some $WORK done in parallel – level mode was too distracting for that to work so I switched to ERG.
19/31: The Chores – level mode felt great for this, making me really focus on the 40/20s. Also gave me the freedom to let it rip on the final sustained effort, slowly ramping from 95% of threshold to ~125% of threshold.
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So, I went beyond level mode and rode entirely by RPE today. It was totally immersive, almost felt… real! Even had to take a photo.
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I suspect this will be in the ToS2022.
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I hope so. Gonna tackle this combo sometime soon, maybe as soon as foul weather makes me resist doing a longer outdoor ride.
This weekend was still cold but at least dry, so everything was ‘outdoor mode’ .
Day 20: I was feeling great but my running had fallen behind, so I decided to swap out the 2.5 hour “Sub-Threshold with Starting Surge” for a 1.5 hour run. Since my watch was hidden under more than one layer, I couldn’t really watch my heartrate, so I ran entirely by feel – apparently that meant running just above (what I thought was) LTHR for an hour and smashing PRs on basically every portion of the route. Interesting this worked out to pretty much the exact same TSS as the outdoor ride would have been.
Day 21: My quads were… sore the following morning, but a 2.5 hour Z2 ride was prescribed, so I did exactly that, at least for the first 2 hours. After that I couldn’t resist putting in a few hard efforts: a ~4m MAP effort, a ~60s AC effort, then 2 ~15s NM efforts, with about 2m recoveries in between each. Then it was back to Z2 for the rest of the way back into town.
Day 22: The most horrible suffering of all: rest and recovery
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I just finished Cash Register on level mode on your post and I agree it was a good one for level mode. Figuring out how to increase cadence and shifting to the correct gear made it very interesting and applicable to out door riding. And the ride worked me!
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Today’s level mode workout was the 40:20s of the MAP Micro Intervals NoVid. It’s another good one for level mode, as I was able to ramp up the power a little bit above target for the last few intervals.
I like how level mode gives you the freedom to go above or below target based on how you’re feeling.
One time I do wish for ERG mode is when there is lots of standing during the workout. I can’t keep cadence high when I stand, so will always slow down to <80 rpm. ERG mode is perfect then to keep the power on target without the need to shift gears.
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I tried doing The Shovel in level mode last night, and did not really like it. A lot of workouts have been a revelation in level mode, The Shovel was not one of those.
Constantly changing gears due to rather short effortsas well as lag in flywheel momentum, high power efforts, and so on just amounted to too many variables when I was also going to control breathing, do positive self talk, keep a smooth pedal stroke.
System overload!
Switched to ERG for the last few intervals of the first set and stayed in ERG. By the way, I haven’t really figured out the shortkey for ERG on my MAC. Any tips?
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I know, and have tride all the keys looking like that, yet, ERG has yet to be turned on by any of them. If that is allowed to say 
Weird. It worked for me in the past. I will try again later and report back.
Just tried it again. @Tmi is right.
ERG mode is enabled by pressing the key to the left of “1”. For my german keyboard it would be “^°”. It doesn’t match the SUF description but the key works.
Sorry, apparently I never payed too much attention on how the key looks. 
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Hmm… Strange. Did not work for me. I tried both fn, apple-key, ctrl, and most other extra-keys in combination, but it did not work. Also tried the same for the key next to backspace, which is the combined `´ key on my keyboard.
Find it strange, better contact the minions I guess…
Today I did Cadence Builds/Holds/Single Leg Drills and the a recovery spin. I did the first 15 minutes or so on erg mode and then did the rest on level mode. That’s way too much No-Vid for me, so I ended up running in parallel with Z^^^^t. Let’s just say that may not have been the best idea for getting the workout done properly. However, I did hit a few Z^^^^ PR’s. 
