Tour de Trainer: Discovering new levels of suckiness
Posted on Wednesday, July 8th, 2009
Yeah, so 177 riders – national, world and Olympic champions; Lance Armstrong — started the Tour de France a few days ago. They’ll be riding over 3,000 kilometers and some of the world’s most challenging climbs in the next three weeks. But I challenge any of them to do what I did last week: the Tour de Trainer.
Four stages. Three days. One Kinetic Rock-n-Roll Road indoor trainer.
Yes, as its name implies, the “stage race” I did last week was totally and completely done indoors. Take that Tour de France riders. Who among you has the mental toughness to ride indoors? In perfectly beautiful weather? For over thirteen hours? Thirteen. Hours.
Give me Mont Ventoux any day. Please.
Now, I’ve proved — numerous times — my capacity for repetition and boredom exceeds that of a normal person (I submit my training sessions for the 24 Hours of Sunlight randonee race this past winter and the race itself as examples). Still, the Tour de Trainer took me to places I had never before gone. And hope to never again go. The 25-minute “time trial” and the 45-minute “crit” weren’t horrible, but the 75-mile road race (3:30 hours) the first day and the 105-mile road race (5:30) the last day rank amongst the longest hours of my life.
I didn’t devise the Tour de Trainer to see if I was capable of swallowing my own bile for hours on end, but because a broken collarbone has had me riding indoors since the middle of June. The first week-and-a-half weren’t horrible because 1.) Since I couldn’t weight the arm attached to the broken collarbone, the “workouts” were generally short and 2.) I discovered the first (and second) season(s) of The Wire at the Teton County Library.
Going into the second full week post-surgery though, I could weight the handlebars equally with both hands. Which, of course, to me, meant I was ready to ride outside. My doctor felt differently though. Trying – for once – to be a mostly compliant patient, I promised I’d keep my training indoors. He asked for a month. I told him I could give him another week.
The gears in my head immediately went into overdrive. What – besides watch episode after episode of The Wire — could I do to get myself through another week of indoor riding? Was there any way I could make it interesting? Is there anything I could do to make it a week that counted?
It may have taken others longer than the walk through the waiting room at Teton Orthopaedics to come up with the idea – if they ever would — of taking their favorite stage race and bringing it inside, but, as I’ve already explained, when it comes to boredom and repetition in athletics, I’m a superstar. Idiotic ideas come to me naturally. Easily.
Tour de Trainer – based on The Elkhorn Classic — started the next day. The day after that, I had to hide all the knives and razor blades in the house. Still, I pushed on. Half-way through the final day (“half-way” being about 2 hours, 45 minutes), my eyes had rolled to the back of my head and I wanted it to be over more than I’ve ever wanted anything to be over before. (And that includes an Elk Mountain Grand Traverse in which, thanks to the first asthma attack of my life, the last eight miles took my teammate and myself as long to do as did the first 37 miles.)
But, because I am a—perhaps even the – Stubbornness Superstar, I didn’t end it, even though all I had to do was unclip and step down onto the floor of my office. I could have called it, stripped out of my bike shorts, and been lounging on my couch eating Reese’s Peanut Butter cups and Ben & Jerry’s in two minutes.
Now that it’s over and my eyes are back in their proper place, I realize that this particular silly idea did help me. The next time I’m doing something that seems to suck – say, skinning uphill for 24 hours, biking 115 miles and 15,000 vertical feet in one day, or riding up Mont Ventoux — I’ll think back on Tour de Trainer and realize it doesn’t suck. At all.
PS – Since I haven’t actually yet ridden up Mont Ventoux, I am only guessing that it can’t suck as badly as the Tour de Trainer. If anyone wants to further my quest to write on the finest investagatory journalism and fund my testing of this, give me a call.
In short:
Pros of Tour de Trainer
I didn’t get fat.
I won every stage. Off the front.
Feeds could include toasted Thomas’ English muffins with Nutella and peanut butter.
Renewed appreciation for riding outdoors, even in Biblical rain, hail and/or snow.
Cons of Tour de Trainer
You can feel the insanity as it sets in.
Talking to yourself.
Talking to the cats.
Hearing the cats talk back to you.
Having to hide all the sharp objects in the house.
Nice job…
Last month one of my friends participated in “The Race Across the Window” at a shop in NYC. Oh the fun to be had on a trainer.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/05/race-across-the-window.php
Oh My God. So I’m not the most insane person out there. I hope that event raised some serious money.