Tag Archives: trainers

Bleh

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Snow finally arrived and gave my grand winter-riding plans a dose of reality.  The reality is I need more gear if I’m going to ride across ice-covered pavement in minus 15C temperature for an hour each day.  Are my MEC Roubaix stretchypants warm?  Yes…for a while, but they’re not made for out and out winter and -10 seems to be the limit on their own.  Do I like my smooth street slicks?  Yes, but the traction they provide on the frozen puddles on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being sticky, 1 not) is like Robert Downey Jr. – less than 0.  I need snowmobiling quality mitts to keep the brake lever fingers functional but bicycle controls are not designed for mitts.  And what about my water?  And that guy with his blinding, flashing helmet light?

So all the bravado and bluster came to naught at the first sign of ice-slicked roads.  Studded tires are widely available but highly-rated ones are $130 each.  While I have no doubt they’re worth every penny, I don’t have those pennies in my pocket, especially as we approach Christmas.  Same for the $200 aluminium-fiber Pearl iZumi tights

Pearl's Aluminium-containing winter tights modeled by someone who unexpectedly slipped off of both pedals.

Assos bib shorts make my arms spring out like I'm smuggling grapefruit in my armpits.

It goes without saying I can’t afford to stray over to the Assos line either.  Besides, I haven’t perfected my what you looking at Assos stance.

I believe this is my excuse to buy an indoor trainer.  Just need a few more pennies.

In the meantime, I’m going a bit nuts.  I’m bored out of my ever lovin’ mind.  None of my normal pursuits capture my attention.  Standing in a library surrounded by books – which are my 2nd most expensive habit – I’m bored.  Pick up my favourite technical manual – bored.  A programming book?  Meh.  A hardware guide…nope.  I look out at my car and a long list of suitable to-do tasks reels off in my mind.  I resolve to do none of them.  I head out to the garage anyway and stare at the disarray of completed-but-not-cleaned-up projects that took over during the summer and quickly leave lest I trip, fall, hit my head and die alone, hidden in the mess that was once my mechanical sanctuary.

Food has lost its flavour and it’s fun, I’m craving everything yet nothing scratches the itch.  Television?  Whatever.  A movie?  Bored.  I’m bored of the internet.  Of Facebook.  My email.  Work.  Play.  Sleep.  If it is true that only a boring person can be bored, I’ve become a very boring man indeed.

Undone by a Turkey

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Well I beat Doughnut Day and escaped without falling prey to their tasty plot.  I even went home with Adam’s Cycleops fluid trainer and rode for an hour and half.  However I drove to work Friday and as it was our office Thanksgiving celebration, I promptly gorged myself on deep-fried turkey, stuffing, a bun and a baked potato with bacon bits.  And some yams.  And dessert.  Pretty sure I had enough caloric intake to ride my 80 kilometre loop to Chestermere but I didn’t.  Ride that is.  Nooo…Instead I packed up the family and headed off to gorge myself further  on more turkey dinner  visit my parents.

Friday night came and went without too much untoward culinary scarfing.  My dad had BBQ’d up some fantastic chicken breasts some chicken breasts in the fridge so Trace cooked them up and we had some super-tasty chicken-breast sandwiches for supper.  Saturday was spent grazing primarily on my staple toast-with-peanut-butter and anything else that couldn’t escape my grasp in time like the box of Junior Mints, the Three Muskateers bar, ice cream, frozen yogurt and yet another birthday cupcake.  I now had enough food packed away to ride the 120 kilometre trip home.

Sunday was of course Thanksgiving, held at my aunt’s place for the first time in a few years.  She is a notoriously, unbelievably excellent cook.  The dishes are prepared perfectly and are all, without exception, mouth-watering.  The usuals  – turkey cooked to perfection, fluffy mashed potatoes, melt-in-your-mouth buns, perfect stuffing and gravy from heaven – and the family staples – a strawberry-and-goat-cheese salad, turnips prepared with butter and brown sugar, yam prepared with goat cheese and I-don’t-know-what-else-but-wow-it’s-good, beets, artichoke hearts, pineapple salad, homemade cranberry sauce and…more.  There was so much fantastic food I can’t even remember it all.  I ate some of everything and went back for seconds.  I suffered a massive bout of self-induced turkelepsy.

After all the leftovers were packed away and the dishes done – which is no small feat for 13 people, though I had no part in the clean-up shamefully – we had dessert.  Two kinds of pie – pumpkin and peach, topped with real whipped cream.  As one who is lactose-intolerant and generally avoids cow-based dairy of all types, I slid the whipped cream off and spread it on the kid’s pie.  No.  No I didn’t.  I took that quarter-pie piece of peach pie topped with homemade whipped cream and what did I do?  I put it in my piehole.  All of it.  However when I was offered an equally over-sized piece of pumpkin pie piled high with more homemade whipped cream, I turned it down.  No…that’s a lie.  It chased the peach pie down the piehole and tried calling for reinforcements.  I do believe of the 5 definitions St. Thomas Aquinas used defining gluttony, I hit 4 right out of the park, the lone hold-out being the inappropriate time (when is it an inappropriate time to eat food one might ask).

I capped this weekend orgy of food off this morning with not one but two of my aunt’s absolutely stellar cinnamon buns.  No other cinnamon bun comes even remotely close to delivering the sheer pleasure that these carry.  They’re so good I’m not sure I feel guilty.  However…  I hopped back on the trainer after arriving home this afternoon and couldn’t avoid noticing the extra padding I’d developed.  While trying to recover from the interval sprints I’d been riding, I was laid out across the bike, my forearms resting across the bars, head hanging gasping for air while I pedaled feebly and tried not to puke continued a more relaxed pace and speed.  This position nicely amplified the smack smack smack smack of my sweaty thighs meeting my sweaty belly with each pedal stroke.  Or maybe that was my heart trying to pump the weekend’s adventure through my system.  Either way, I’m pretty sure I have enough energy stores to do the Chestermere loop and the Red Deer loop now.  In succession.

Ah well.  It looks like a week of cold but otherwise excellent commuting weather ahead of me so perhaps the trainer and I will spend some evenings together to address some of this excess.  Or not.

My Winter Conundrum

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With fall in full swing and winter seemingly around the corner, I’ve been pondering my cycling options.  While it’s true I’ve said I intend to ride all winter long, it should not be construed as “I’m going to ride my daily commute irrespective of the weather”.  Based on 20ish years in Calgary, I expect I’ll be able to get some path/road rides at least every month, if not every week.  I don’t expect to ride outdoors every day by any stretch – I’m not that damaged.

I’ve participated in outdoor activities in the dead of winter.  I’ve put on the long underwear, fleece pants, snow pants, t-shirt, long-sleeve, sweater and finally winter jacket, followed by regular socks, then wool socks and winter boots, a scarf, a balaclava and finally a helmet to go and ride my snowmobile when it’s -30˚C.  You sweat and almost overheat while getting dressed and out to the snowmobile, then the wind sucks away all but the minimum of heat and you’re sledding feeling reasonably comfortable, except that you’re wearing an extra forty pounds of clothing.  This doesn’t sound conducive to cycling.

I’m also not keen on the idea of spending more time pushing than riding.  If I leave early enough to avoid the traffic that will certainly be looking to run me into the snowdrifts, I will get to the paths without trouble.  The path network however is not like our sidewalks – they are not all slated to be cleared.  I can only imagine how much fun it’s going to be to start doing the hike-a-bike in winter gear after a big dump of snow.  So when it’s too bleeding cold or there’s too much snow to ride outside what shall I do?

Ride inside is the obvious answer.  I could ride in the basement once the kids have gone to bed, or before they got up.  Well…not before they got up – that’s not possible – my middle monster doesn’t actually sleep, she only lies in her bed until she’s bored of lying there and then she’s up again.  Looking for company.  I could set up and ride in the garage – private, no little fingers poking into things, no concerns about break downs or flat tires leaving me sweaty and stranded in the middle of nowhere, still winter-cold but no wind so I can dress warm enough to keep from freezing without ending up like A Christmas Story.

So we have the where, now I need the what.  What kind of contraption do I use to ride?  Oh and there are all kinds of options here.  Fluid trainers, mag trainers, wind trainers, inertial trainers, rollers, rollers with resistance, free-motion rollers, trainers that are internet-enabled, trainers that let you rock – or in my case, wobble – back and forth.  The list is almost endless with prices running from under a hundred for the no-name mag trainers to a couple of grand for the internet-enabled, remote controlled, alien-inspired, laser-guided version.  Okay, that last bit isn’t entirely true – you have to use your own laser. Tangent: I don’t have a maintenance stand for the bike so I hang it from the garage roof with a couple of straps.  Once, on a whim and understanding the foolishness of it, I suspended my bike from the garage ceiling such that I could climb aboard and pedal it.  You have not lived until you’ve ridden a suspended bicycle as fast as you can (I was only willing to do it once however as the foolishness exceeded my repeat threshold). /tangent

I’m not in a position to buy the alien technology though I’m sure hooking it into the internet so a virtual Lance Armstrong can lap me before I’ve shifted out of the small ring would do wonders for my ego.  I’m faced with two categories – rollers or trainers?  Rollers will, through negative reinforcement encourage me to use a more disciplined riding style and to pay attention to “my line”.  I like the free-standing aspect – nothing but balance and gyro holding up the bike, lots of focus on cadence and riding smooth. Unless I buy (or build) the free-motion rollers though, I can’t stand and sprint on them.  On the other hand, a fluid or mag trainer can be set up to provide a load for aerobic training or strength training depending on what you’re after, but there’s not the discipline on form enforced as the bike is pinned to the trainer and – at least theoretically – it can’t fall over.

I can throw the bike on the rollers and ride – theoretically – without having to do any more than I would if I was going for a ride on the paths.  The trainers all lock on to the rear axle, an act that would take at least 15, perhaps 30 seconds of my precious ride time.  A trainer is rumoured to be harder on the rear wheel than rollers, but rollers require two smooth (IE not winter knobbies) tires or you’ll be spinning and buzzing the entire time.  In a perfect world I’d have both – the galacticaly-connected super trainer with ego-crushing option and the full-motion rollers with resistance and throw-you-down-and-humiliate options with dedicated bikes for each, in a specially air-conditioned room with large-screen televisions and an endless supply of mental distractions to keep me riding.  This is not a perfect world however.

What say you?  Do you have rollers?  A trainer?  Should I buy the Amazon $60 trainer or will that just be $60 I didn’t put toward the Cycleops trainer or a set of rollers? Have you tried the opposite?  Would you have both if you could?  Have you lost focus at high speed and ridden off the side of your rollers only to have your wheel’s spinning inertia blast you forward into your precariously balanced distraction device, therein wreaking havoc upon your domain?  ’Cause that would be a good story.