The Pain Cave
Spinning the night away on the bike trainer
Usually in the winter months I put away my bikes. It’s cold up here in New England and there is snow and slush and it is an exercise in gratuitous masochism to continue to ride outside.
Usually I have my running to keep me company on those long, cold, ice-filled mornings. But, alas, this winter I am injured and I need a way to stay in shape. I need a way to train that doesn’t exert undue force on the plantar region.
When forced into this situation in the past I have mounted the ubiquitous gym stationary bicycle. It has a big padded seat and a random, average sizing that makes it an uncomfortable alternative to riding your own bike.
Since I was going to be doing a significant amount of bike training this winter I thought that it would be better if I could use my own bike. This is what led me to buy a “trainer”. What is a trainer? Well it is a simple bike stand contraption that the back wheel of your bike fits into and allows you to pedal away without going anywhere.
There are of course several different types of these trainers. The purists use simple rollers. These have no support at all and force the rider to balance precariously while pedaling. This is all well and good for the serious rider but not for me. I know my limits.
You can go on to YouTube and see riders on their rollers juggling and doing other feats of gravity defying prowess. You can also, I’m sure see videos of hapless riders coming off their rollers and shooting through walls.
Not for me.
I chose a trainer that my bike locks into. Of course there is a wide spectrum of these as well. The high-end ones are powered and measure your power outputs. The low end ones are simply mechanical resistance. The best for me was a low end fluid trainer. This means the resistance unit is filled with fluid.
The way it works is the back wheel in my Fuji sits on a spinning cylinder shaped cam. The weight of my body and the grip of the tire spins the cam. The cam is connected to some hunk of something that spins within a sealed unit filled with fluid. The fluid causes resistance.
The cool thing about using fluid for resistance is, if you remember your fluid dynamics from school, the resistance is proportional to the effort you put in. When you pedal harder it gets harder. It really doesn’t matter what gear you’re in. I use middle-middle to keep from cross chaining. If you want to raise your HR you pedal faster, simple as that.
I have set my trainer up outside on my non-winterized screened in porch. This has some protection from the elements, but it is at the ambient temperature of the outside air.
This is my pain cave.
On most nights in January this is in the 20’s or 30’s Fahrenheit. I have to gear up to keep from freezing. I still work up quite a good sweat. I wonder what effect the temperature has on the fluid in the resistance unit. If I remember my physics correctly it must make it harder to spin.
I use my heart rate monitor and my Garmin 310. You have to be sure to turn off the auto-pause feature on the Garmin because you aren’t moving. I just set the Garmin on the table next to the bike. One of the big positives of the trainer is that you can stack up whatever you want on the table within reach.
The big downside to the trainer is that it is a new form of torture. Whereas a treadmill is not as good as a run outside, a trainer ride is 10…wait, no…50 times worse than an outside ride. Something about the fixed position and constancy of the motion makes it awful. Like a slow form of water torture. It’s hard to change position, you can’t coast, there are no hills and because of this it hurts.
IT is the same thing over and over and over and you never get anywhere. The clock on the wall falls into some alternate dimension where time slows down by 5X when you ride the trainer. It is the pain cave.
When I ride with the group over in Ted’s basement time goes much faster because there is interaction.
Most people will mount their trainer in front of a TV or Laptop so they can watch something and be distracted. We watched the Tour de France over at Ted’s house last weekend and Kona 2011. I tried to read on the trainer but haven’t figured out a good way to hold the book or the Kindle yet. I’m still working on it. I did set up my laptop so I could watch the total immersion video while I rode.
These things help but it takes practice not to lose your cadence and effort while trying to watch a movie or read a book. When I get into HR zone 3 and above it’s really hard to pay attention to anything other than the effort. Mostly I just throw my blackberry on the table and blare Pandora.
Listening to Pandora gives me a game to make the time go faster. I know most songs are 3 minutes long so I will only look at my watch when 3 songs have played. Otherwise I’m watching the seconds tick off as time crawls by.
You have the desire to pedal faster thinking it will be over sooner but then you realize that just doesn’t’ work in this reality. In this reality you are stuck in the pain zone and there is no way to escape it until the time drips by and you are done.
I can so relate to this. Painfully relate to this. Everything you say. I have moved from room to room in my home to try and get the coolest place to pound the turbo trainer. I use it with a powermeter whereby I have absolutely no where to hide. At all. Within two minutes I look like someone has thrown a bucket of water over me. The music…I get…I try not to look at the time on the Garmin until a song is completed.
But……….all that said. It’s great training and I am really pleased I have this option as oppose not training at all.
M
hahaha I could not agree more! I feel trapped on that thing even though I have every luxury within arms reach PLUS Internet and TV! Still love mine though. I have Achilles tendinitis, so I’m banished from running as well. Best of luck healing, I’ve had plantar fasciitis years ago and honestly, spin class is what helped heal it. Best of luck!