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Saturday, February 14, 2009

Everybody's Working on the Weekend

Living in Colorado has its advantages.  If you're an athlete, the training at altitude allows you to excel at sea level.  If you're an outdoorsy type person, guaranteed there's something here for you.

However, if you're a cyclist or triathlete (or duathlete) when it snows and you have a ride to do it usually means you're relegated to the trainer.  Just like when training outside, training inside can be great or can really suck.

I've found that as long as I have a goodmovie on TV, then the workout is great.  If there's nothing on, and you can't find a movie to watch, then time can pass excruciatingly slow.  Thankfully, today was not one of those days.  My 2:30 on the trainer went relatively quickly and I even had a break 2 hours in to help clean up the pee our new puppy decided to leave on our new carpet.  (how nice)

The one drawback to the trainer, at least mine anyway, is that I can never make it simulate the resistance of the road, or even the CompuTrainer I use in the lab.  Thus, it's either too lose and my wheel skips, or it's snug and I can't get too far out of my granny gear or it's like climbing up Magnolia.  If there's a happy medium, I haven't found it yet.  And why someone hasn't designed a trainer that doesn't result in you actually destroying your rear tire over time is beyond me.  It doesn't seem like it'd be hard.  Have some type of drum on which you can mount a rear cassette and have that drum connected (either via a chain or a belt) to a resistance unit.  This way, the resistance is constant and one can shift normally.  The rear stay on the bike would simply mount to the drum like it would to a normal rear tire: rear derailleur around the cassette and the dropouts on to some small studs.  A normal quick release skewer could be used to keep the bike from disengaging.

If anyone out there hasn't patented this yet, do it and build it.  I'll gladly be a guinea pig.

*here, the definition of good will certainly vary greatly amongst everyone I know.

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