Trainers and the Cross Canada ride

I'm having a coffee this morning before getting on the trainer. It's winter, cold and wet outside, and I can't well take the kids with me anyway. The trainer kind of sucks, but at least it keeps the fitness there to some degree.

By 2006, we had committed to riding our bikes across Canada. I mean, I suppose we could have backed out, but we wouldn't. So now we needed to train for it.

That took a fair bit of time. From late spring to mid fall, it was easier. We'd ride most weekends. Until our move to Beaverbrook, we'd both ride our bikes to work most days. But then the winter would settle in and we'd be stuck on the trainer.

At that point I'd had a trainer for a couple of years. I mostly got by with regular short workouts while watching bike races I'd downloaded or recorded over the summer. This routine wasn't going to work during the winter of 2006-2007.

One, short workouts weren't going to cut it. While we didn't need to go on three or four hour trainer 'rides', we did regularly need to do 60-90 minute sessions.

Two, Hillary (and I, if I'm honest) could only handle so much bike racing and we had to start going through movies and TV shows. As mentioned before, this wasn't as easy as it might sound.

We bought a second trainer. I still use hers.

At Clearview, we put the trainers in front of the TV in our living room. We started watching Stargate Atlantis around that time. We'd put on movies that didn't really need much thinking. I know there was at least a movie per week for most of that winter and I recall none of them.

When we moved to Beaverbrook, the bikes were setup in the basement. Brett also had his trainer so the three of us would occasionally do Spinervals workouts. We collected several of these. We moved into watching Stargate SG1 as well.

We whined, groaned and suffered inside with fans blowing on us for decades it seemed, though after that winter Hillary rarely got on a trainer again.

I use the trainer now more than ever due to life being what it is. I'll almost always preferentially take going outside, but it's far better than nothing.