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@bothwell
No, I don't mind at all - the virtual power numbers are probably fairly off compared to real life, but consistent with each other, so if I know I can usually hit "156 watts" in TR at a particular HR, then only being able to hit "70 watts" for the same effort is quite a dive downwards, regardless of the actual wattage in meatspace.
When it comes to RPE the interesting thing is that I was able to compare that Dans result you were looking at against a previous session last year that was similarly low-intensity and it had pretty much exactly the same virtual power to HR result - I was a lot more ill day-to-day back then following a virus and the RPE was about 6-ish, as was this one. Both sessions had the old shaking-with-effort sit-down after climbing off - I was holding back a bit on Dans to try to find a sustainable rhythm, but not taking it easy exactly.
I haven't done any mph on a road outside recently enough to compare, but I do recall a particularly unpleasant cycle commute around the time of the previous session where riding along Kennington Road at 15mph took everything I had, and I've got a lot of Strava logs from that time telling similarly scary stories. Pancake-flat commutes that were harder than riding in the Dolomites a few months earlier, that kind of thing. Something is definitely off, but while I'm under no illusions that Trainerroad is giving me a complete and accurate picture from my input, the main thing that's wrong does seem to be me.
The last normal session I did was an 8 minute test last October, and I remember feeling very puzzled and pleased that it was sustainable - for the previous six months I'd become used to crashing out 10 minutes in and having to abandon the session. No changes in setup or profile in between to explain that, so I'm left with biology. Maybe every six months I can look forward to a lazarus-like comeback!