I had a date with my trainer this morning. I may have mentioned my love/hate relationship with my trainer (mostly hate). I live in a place where you can bike outside year-round, so why would I want to ride a trainer?! This morning it was purely because it's dark outside at 5am and work calls during daylight hours.Even so, I thought a list of the things I love (followed by hate) might be appropriate today.
The nothing but twu LOVE (to be read in the voice from the Princess Bride) list:
- When the weather outside is frightful, my trainer's so delightful . . . this actually worked when I lived where it snowed.
- Cold rain, monsoons, hurricanes, typhoons (this works about 3x / year).
- Darkness - I can not seem to find anything safe about training outdoors in the dark.
- It's good for the occasional catch-up of everything on the DVR, but only for easy workouts. Anything else and I can't concentrate on the TV because I'm trying so dang hard to get my heart rate up (see #6 on the HATE list . . .)
- The trainer takes me nowhere - bicycles were invented to take you somewhere, "Oh the Place's You'll Go!" to quote my favorite author. No changing scenery on my trainer!
- No fresh air blowing in my face - an electric fan plugged into the wall doesn't cut it.
- There is no screaming downhill at white-knuckle clenching speeds (for the boys I ride with - stop laughing because you think I descend like a girl - this is how it is in my mind!)
- If I'm going to work as hard as I do to get my heart rate as high as coach wants, I at least want to be flying down the road while my legs are screaming "stopit, stopit, stopit!"
- After you "climb" there is no satisfaction of seeing what is on the other side. You're still in exactly the same boring trainer location you started, staring at the same boring wall, TV, couch, whatever.
- My heart rate does not work on the trainer - seriously, it's like pulling teeth to get my HR up at all. Funny, because if you put me in the great outdoors with a few guys in Swami's or CowboySteve.com outfits to chase I seem to have no trouble red-lining the dumb thing!
I think Tiptoe enjoys my trainer workouts though - we get to spend some quality time together.
