Grit and Get On That Trainer

Ride Inside On My Trainer? Dear God Help Me. Ai yi yi. The snow has dumped on Seattle and that means no outdoor training. ICK. This is my 3rd day going down to the basement and getting on my trusty fluid trainer. The first day was fine, just a 60 minute ride, pop on the headphones and listen to some BIKE TRAINING mix I’d made and before I knew it? Training done.

Day 2? Supposed to be a team ride. That means 2.5 hours minimum. On a trainer? You must be joking. But I’m trying to be consistent this year, so I dug out a Carmichael Trainright DVD on racing and off we go – me and all those indoor Carmichael “we really train with these” team riders in blue.

I decided to warm up before I turned it on, why? Stupid idea, because the “training coach” has you do a brisk warm up right there AND his kind of a warm-up generally wears me out so much that I start worrying about how I will continue to breathe when we get to the “racing” part. When I can get my mind to shut up and just ride the race, I have to admit, it is a great workout. Well, I couldn’t get my mind to shut up on this day, so I made it about 45 minutes into the DVD this time before I gave up chasing down the breakaways on the hills. Then I continued with my own endurance pace. Good idea since this was supposedly a “rest” week.

Day 3. Another team ride day although this is optional. Still snowing, so now what? I dug out a 2000 TDF video with Lance winning. I chose the DVD with stages 14-16. I was hoping and pleasantly surprised to find these were a couple of stages with big hills. Amazingly enough, this was the best workout on a trainer I have had. Just watching Lance pedal in that high cadence made me pedal faster, watching Jan Ulrich try to climb over Lance made me dig deeper. When the breakaway’s stood, I stood, when people chased, I chased. Much more fun than the DVD hosted by that drill sergeant counting me down to the next steady state pace.

Tomorrow will be yet another day indoors, I’ll follow my training regimen and plow on through it. While you can try any of the things I did and then some, you can also send out an email inviting other people to ride with you in your basement. Misery loves company and company helps on that trainer. Spin classes are great too, but there you can’t really run your own drills and program, something I try to do during this time of year.

Whatever you do, I hope you find ways to be creative with your training without getting bored out of your mind. What do you do to keep your training program interesting? Write and let us know, we can all stand a little help while we are stuck inside.

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