Winter training

So as the weather continues to get colder, one has to resort more and more to indoor training.  Unfortunately for cyclists, that means many hours on the bike, either doing spin classes, or watching many many movies while putting in the hours on the bike.  I have been doing the latter, and I'm getting to the point where I'm running out of movies to watch, I guess I'll have to start watching stuff on the computer.  I haven't posted here in a little bit, there's a few things that still have yet to get written.  One of those is the "o" story, that should come sometime....hopefully.  I'll also hopefully be writing about nutrition stuff in the next little bit and then maybe about a certain new gadget that is making it much easier to train during these long hours.

Today's post is about the indoor bike setup. 

Indoor bike setup
So those that want to continue staying fit and keeping the legs fresh about  the biking options, have a couple options.  They can cross-train (x-country skiing, running, etc), they can use rollers, which is essentially a rolling pavement, but in a much more compact form, or you can get a trainer, where you essentially hook your wheel up onto a flywheel and you spin.   Right now, my brother and I use (read: commandeered) the basement as our place to spin.

The basement with the bikes, mine's the one on the left

It's actually kinda deceiving, because this has been many places, my dad used to watch his videos and what not on here.  Then it became the family's gaming area where we had a bunch of games for our play station 1.  Then I got a play station 2, and it kinda become my gaming area.  One thanksgiving we got rockband and then it become the rockband area.  Now fast forward a few years and it has now become the winter training area.  This spot suddenly looks really small once we put two bikes into there...... weird.


So anybody who has spun on a spinner (at the gym) or spun a bike (at home) will realize that in very little time you will get very warm.  Cycleops (the people who make these trainers) came up with a brilliant idea, and it is essentially this towel that covers the top of your bike, and it absorbs anything that happens to make it from your face and fall due to gravity.  But it's also got fantastic thing on the bike which holds two remotes.... it's BRILLIANT.  So not only do you know have access to your remotes while on you're bike, your paint won't corrode on your bike so it's a fantastic thing.

You can put two remotes on the front of your bike.... SCORE

Another thing that usually goes along with a trainer is a block of some sort that holds your wheel so that you can angle your bike and it's a wee bit more stable.  Now the block that I had been using before (a friends) was a pretty basic design, it's essentially a star, and there's three different positions that you can put your wheel at.  So when the new trainer came with these new blocks, they looked BIG.....and MANLY, so one would think they would last... right? Well you would be wrong, and my brother who was using one this morning, managed to crack it while sprinting.  Just for reference, the one that I"m using is the one on the right on the pic above, and the one that is BIG and MANLY is on the left... see I wasn't joking.  So lets look at the after pics:

Yikes

Yikes (Side view)

This just goes to confirm something that I've been realizing over the past few years, stuff made today is for the most part, of a cheaper quality.  Good thing they gave us two of these, but I have the distinct feeling that it's just going to crack again, so for now we will just keep on using the old one.

I'll post some more detailed thoughts on the trainer when I've played around with it for a little bit more, but for now, it shall be a return to the homework that I love so much.


~ps..... yes I know those couches are awesome, you just wish you had ones with such a SWEET pattern too