Getting Back on the Horse

While some racers are just hanging up their bikes after an extended American cyclocross season others, like me, are just starting to spool up their spring training campaigns.

Indoor riding is a necessary evil, and no matter what kind of tools, tricks or games I try to incorporate into my workouts there’s an inexorable drudgery that goes along with stripping a bicycle of its awesomeness and reducing it to a pedal-powered treadmill.  My current setup shown above is my ’08 Moots Compact Custom, a set of rollers with resistance and a TV/DVD player with wireless headphones.  Mindless but entertaining action movies like The A-Team and 300 make frequent appearances.  I tried watching some horror films last winter and found the low production values and thin stories lines to be too tough to sit through.  It turns out you can be a snob about anything if you try hard enough.

The weather the last few weeks has been very unpredictable with scarce snow and wildly fluctuating temperatures.  Some local guys have been riding outside while others have been more ski-focused.  I’ve never really been good at focusing on more than one thing so I feel like I’ve neither hit my ski groove nor gotten over the gag reflex of grinding out hour after hour riding inside.

Really none of this is new news- it’s the same old cycle every winter, and right around now I’m seriously jonesing to hit the trails.  I know it’s still a few weeks away and every workout now will make riding outside more enjoyable.  Theoretically I’m working towards the Wildcat 100 on May 11, but the more tangible goal is fitting back into the pants that fit over the summer.

And before you ask- no, I don’t move that stack of wood out of the way before I start riding because if I bump into it and fall off it gives me an excuse to stop.