Spring Fever

This July I'm biking around Lake Superior with a few other teacher friends. Training for such a ride out here is difficult, especially since I have very little road biking experience. As a result, I got this computer trainer called the Computrainer on ebay. It's competitive, motivating and provides meaningful feedback and progress monitoring. There are hundreds of courses to choose from, from different Iron Man races to the Tour de France. I can also rival my previous times on the same course or I can set a pacer so that I can focus on things like heart rate and cadence and speed. It has a million other features I haven't even touched yet.

Anyway, the Computrainer makes it easy to spend several hours biking, which isn't consistent with the usual "gym" mentality. I've had it for a few weeks, and each day I get excited to play again.

I usually will choose a course that I can do several times over to keep things interesting and motivating. Here I was working on a ten mile course that I did three times. This was my second attempt. The racer on the right was my previous trial, so my goal is to beat her while keeping the appropriate cadence. She rides exactly the same way I did on my last attempt.

Racing my old self (right). Those little mountains at the bottom of the screen displays the terrain and shows where you are on the course. It's Nice to know what's ahead and how far you've got left to go.

That's my bike on the stand. Below the tire is the resistance, so when the computer screen shows a hill, the trainer adjusts so you actually feel the hill and have to change gears, riding positions, etc. Great for a beginner like me.