50 Shades of Turbo

In which our heroine lifts the lid on her S+M relationship with the turbo trainer.

The turbo trainer is a brain-numbing, bum-numbing torture contraption of fiendishly criminal genius.  And I love it.  And I hate it.  I love/hate the stupid whirring noise it makes.  I love/hate the mind games I play with the resistance setting (the resistance setting is winning the mind games, hands down.  That bitch is cold as ice).  I love/hate the almost hypnotic trance the bastard thing lulls you in to.  I love/hate the clock watching challenge - can I make it past 18 minutes on the thing before my bum drops off, my legs turn to jelly and I want my mum?  I love/hate the almost instant sensation in my legs that lets me know I am doing exercise.  And I love/hate the fact that I can ride my bike whenever I feel like it, in the comfort of my own front room.

You see, thanks in large to my mind, I am still very bad at riding my bike on the road.  To offer up some kind of mental picture; let's start with Bambi on ice.  Translate that to a thirty-something woman on two wheels, and throw in some additional gibbering.  Add the discomfort of still being more than a little self conscious out in the big wide world in a pair of bike shorts, and I think now we all understand why I prefer the safety of my own front room.

A few days last week saw me watching the Tour of Britain highlights shows from the abject discomfort of the turbo.  I attempted a chunky-monkey intermediate sprint challenge (I won the Yodel sprints jersey in a convincing manner, sorry Pete), and a thunder-thighs King of the Mountains sprint challenge (Kristian need not fear for his jersey however. Not bothered, wasn't my colour anyway).  I found it quite a good fit, watching the cycling while attempting a little of my own.  Them skinny buggers (or professionals, to give them the name they prefer) do make it look deceptively easy though.

I have a turbo-challenge from the cyclist.  The cyclist, who does these things properly. The cyclist, who will cheerfully (well, not cheerfully exactly, but you know what I mean) do over an hour on the turbo without moaning, sighing, whining, swearing, or getting off for a drink, a wee, a 'rest', a 'stretch' or a 'cry'. The cyclist, who requires a tea towel to be draped across the cross tube when he goes on the turbo, for drippy cyclist sweat.  As I am a lay-dee, I of course, glow.  And the challenge the cyclist has set me is to get a drop of 'glow' to drip off the end of my nose when I'm on the turbo.

So why the sudden interest in the turbo trainer, I hear you clamour.  Simple.  We are off to Majorca next week.  Now, I know what you're thinking, and you can stop it right now.  There are no bikes accompanying us (and none will be hired on the island either).  Instead I am going for the sophisticated pursuits of heavy drinking (pink wine and rainbow-drinks made from paint thinner, with sparklers and plastic monkeys in 'em), and lounging around in the sunshine, with possibly a side order of dancing to incredibly rubbish Euro-pop until the kids pretend they were adopted and the cyclist has to give me a fireman's carry back to the apartment.  The biggest issue about this eagerly anticipated week in the sunshine is that it is creating a head-on collision between two of my most irritating character flaws (no, not alcoholism and predilection for bad music); vanity, and lack of self-control in the snacks department.  I want to look acceptable on the beach and I want to eat fifteen packets of Quavers and a Mars Bar.  Enter the turbo.

And I love it.  And I hate it.

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Those that hate the turbo might remember that a few months back a brilliant eBay listing for one was doing the rounds, link is here if you want to refresh your memory.

Riding dirty...

...And wet.  And cold.  

Summer has left the building.  It didn't even bother to cancel the milk; instead it threw one last raucous party and skipped out the next morning, leaving the place looking a bit like one of those hoarders flats on Grimebusters.

So we are faced with the prospect of autumn rides, and all that entails.  And all that entails is weather, and lots of it.  The cyclist and I reside in the north of England, the wrong side of the Pennines.  Therefore, as it is September, there is now greater than an 85% chance of getting piss wet through on any ride undertaken.  There is also a 56% chance of hail, 48% chance of sleet and 15% chance of a plague of frogs.  There are approximately 3 'good ride' days left this year - you know the ones, gorgeous crisp and clear autumn days - on two of them the cyclist will be stuck in the office.  He will get out on his bike on the last one, and it will remind him why he does this. The lungs full of clean clean air, cold and still; the clear sky that allows the thin sunshine to bathe everything in the particular yellow glow you only get as winter draws close, will keep him hooked for another year.

But from here on in that's not going to be the norm.  The norm will be rain.  And as every cyclist at this time of year knows, rain is not just rain, oh no, there are types of rain.  There is blobby rain, extra large drops that go right down the back of your neck and make you squeal.  The horizontal driving rain that accompanies a fierce headwind and makes you wish you had never been born.  Freezing rain that slowly creeps into the bones until you're sure you will never regain sensation in your hands and feet.  That fine rain which is basically sopping wet air which manages to get in everywhere, no matter how waterproof you think you are.  Sheet rain - how can there be that much water in the sky?  The targeted microclimate black cloud rain that follows you about.  And the surprise rain, which should in fact never be a surprise and yet always is.  You will experience more than one type of rain in a ride.

You will put on your glasses to protect your face a bit, your glasses will steam up.  You take them off, your face steams up.  You layer up to try and keep warm, all that results in is you lugging extra kilos of cold wet and above all heavy kit around with you.  The best weapons in your armoury will be anything that keeps your hands and feet dry, the holy grail of winter riding.  And even when your ride is done, the misery continues, as there are few things less pleasant than the removal of cold and sodden lycra.  The one I can think of is standing, dripping sadly, in cold and sodden lycra waiting for the feeling to come back into your fingers so you can remove said cold and sodden lycra. The cyclist has a mild circulation disorder, meaning that quite often following a winter training ride when he is finally able to take off his shoes and gloves he will reveal the purple and yellow extremities of a 3-day-old corpse.

Of course, rain is not limited to the colder months (in fact the cold is not just limited to the colder months).  When the weather is grim and the race schedule is heavy in the 'summer' it can be hard to get kit washed and dried properly in time for the next race.  With my 'glass half full' outlook on life, I like to think of this as your kit 'pre-moistened for your convenience'; the cyclist has a slightly different take on the issue, quote from evening crit at Preston, Thursday 7/6/12:

"Damp socks. Brilliant.  Oh, and damp tights too.  Well done.  It's a good job I had a dump, I'm carrying an extra kilo in waterlogged kit."

More fun even than rain, is hail.  Hail hurts.  Hail comes at you hard and fast, and tries to sandblast your ears and nose off.  Hail lurks, waiting until you are on the most exposed and remote part of your ride, and then strikes, knowing full well you have nowhere to hide and were close to tears anyway.

Finally, let's talk about wind.  Wind, mortal enemy of the cyclist.  Cycling has dedicated years of research, millions of the currency denomination of your choice, endless experiments and modifications, all to the pursuit of better slicing through the air.  The least the bloody stuff could do is stay still and stop moving about.  From Autumn to Spring there is one undeniable fact about cycling and the wind - there is no such thing as a tailwind in this period.  The winter cyclist knows well the phenomenon of the circular headwind.  Or the sweeping sidewind, that mocks your aero frame and tries to topple you into a field.

There is only one known cure for a cold wet and windy ride; a hot bath, a large mug of tea and some toast.  Chin chin!

Inertia

There's an elephant in the room.  A white one, with pretty gold accents.  And she keeps giving me dirty looks...

Forgive me, for I have sinned.  It has been 3 weeks since I last rode my (new, expensive) bike.  And I can't really put my finger on why.  Oh, don't get me wrong, I've got plenty of excuses.  In no particular order, some of them have been: Kids, Work, Tired, Weather, Ironing, Vuelta, Tomorrow, and Wine.  But none of these explain why I'm finding it so damned hard to get motivated.  Especially now the weather's perked up a bit.

So what have I been doing while I've not been riding my bike?  Ridiculously, I have mainly been sat on my ever expanding arse, moaning about how wobbly various areas of me are getting.  To add insult to injury, I'm off on holiday in a couple of weeks, about to subject myself to a week of trial by bikini.  I attempted a dry-run with the sodding thing yesterday.  The results were not what I would hope - please feel free to insert your own ocean-based mammal joke here, with extra points if you can work a reference to Greenpeace in.  Like rubbing your tummy while patting your head, trying to walk in a two-piece while holding everything in and attempting to hide your bum from the majority of terrified onlookers is a skill requiring serious mental agility and plenty of practice.  But I digress.  The daft thing is, I know I'll be ok if I just get over it, get on the bike and get a ride done (you might note I didn't use the word enjoy in that last sentence.  That was deliberate - I'm not there yet).  There's really only one answer.  I've got to escape the gravity of my own inertia.  This blog post is my solemn pledge that I am going to lycra-up this week and get out on my bike - no excuses.

Must try harder.

N + 1

Here we go again...

The formula above, N+1, of course indicates the correct number of bikes one should own.  A more complex equation makes the addition (N+1) = (D-1), where the correct number of bikes one should own is N+1 but crucially 1 less than the total number triggering automatic divorce.  You will know them already, but you can find The Rules here; Rule 12 being pertinent to this post.

I mention this because a chain reaction has been set in motion.  I have caught a glimpse of the future.  A series of events is about to transpire, the upshot of which will be:
Me, stumbling downstairs at 3 am for a glass of water.  Much like a big-haired, bleary-eyed Indiana Jones, I will dodge the small cat on the stairs ferociously trying to remove my foot at the ankle.  I will not do a little yelp at the sight of the enormous spider that lives in the hall and comes out when we've all gone to bed.  I will skip nimbly across the lego booby-trap, scattered liberally across the living room floor.  As I near my thirst-quenching destination, smugly congratulating myself for so smartly running the assault course of my house - I will stub my motherfucking toe on a Yeti Mountain Bike propped up against the sofa.  Clutching the damaged toe and swearing like a navvy, there is a grim inevitability about what will happen next.  I hop backwards straight into the lego.  With both feet now completely ruined, I stumble blindly right into the path of the monster spider.  Screaming like a girl, waking cyclist, kids and several neighbours, the small murderous cat chooses this moment to leap out from his stair (where he has been waiting, biding his vicious fluffy time) like a genetic splicing of Cato Fong from the Pink Panther movies and the Facehugger from Alien.  I never get my drink of water.

How can I have seen the future like this?  A Yeti?  What's going on?  Let me explain - the cyclist bought a Mountain Bike Magazine this morning.  And we all know what that means.

And so we enter the research phase of the next two-wheeled acquisition.  He has spent quite a lot of this afternoon on my laptop (his is at the office).  The internet browsing tabs he has left open are 1) Google search Where to buy Yeti SB66 - Aluminium Pro XTR 2) Megavalanche Week - Everything You Need To Know To Do The Megavalanche 3) Wheelbase Cycles 4) Google search Does Blake Lively dig Mountain Bikers?

Stubbing my toe on a Yeti in the front room is only a matter of time.