An Imaginary Ride on a CompuTrainer

Ride Day
Simulated Distance- 30mi
Time- 1:45

Today was a trip over to Sean's house where I got to play with his expensive toy, a CompuTrainer ThingerMaBobberWhatchacallit 2000 ™. What it does is simulate any course you can upload into the software, putting the correct amount of pressure against the rear tire at the correct time to recreate any climb or descent you might encounter over that route. For example, Sean is preparing for his second outing at Ironman New Zealand and he has been able to download the course he'll be riding onto his computer, which hooks up to the CompuTrainer ThingerMaBobberWhatchacallit 2000 ™, which then shows him an elevation profile of the course and a computer animated version of what it might look like, complete with a phantom pace bike if he wants. It is a very nifty device. What he's done is buy second-hand software from Neato Cycling Videos INC, and what they do is video tape courses, record the grade, then sell all that data so as you're riding you are looking at exactly what you would be seeing out on the road. And the video, through the magic of technology moves at whatever speed the computer reads you are moving at. It also records wattage, mph, and will show cadence if you have a sensor (which I don't, but it was in my list to Santa Tebow). Very neat stuff. So what Sean let me do is ride the front half of the Honu loop today, from the first turn-around up to the top of Hawi. This was a great chance to see exactly what will be in store for me come June 2 and I'm looking forward to coming back over to Sean's to play with the CompuTrainer ThingerMaBobberWhatchacallit 2000 ™ a few more times before race day.

Basically to the tip of the big spike in the middle

I must also plug Brother Fit Life's latest blog. I must do this for two reasons: 1) Dude motivates and is fun to read and B) He totally interviewed me for it, making me even more famous in my own head than I already am.  It's good stuff, head over and check him out. And once he lets me know he's done using all the questions and responses I may include over here a Very Dirtbag Special Features Out-Takes edition. If you're lucky. Which you probably will be. Because I love to hear myself talk, even in written form.
Special Nerd Bonus- Sean owns the TARDIS Cookie Jar, in which he keeps dog treats. This means that Sean's dog, Kai, is trained to respond to the sound of a TARDIS, making the dog the most awesome K9 ever (get it?).

Trainers- All the Pain, No Fun

Ride Day
time- 60min
distance- 0 ft

Sean lent me his trainer in a transparent attempt to get me to buy it, but also, as I stated yesterday, because he is a stone cold badass tri Jedi willing to help a brother out. And he likes the thought of my bored and sweating in my living room. Or maybe just sweating in my living room...
Anyway, he also let me borrow a trainer workout dvd he never used but, seeing as it was my first time, I went with some Dream Theater instead, using their Scenes From New York live DVD. Not as brutal as Slayer or Black Flag, but more conducive to a stretch of time on the bike. Speed metal works better for sprints. Or Yanni, because then you run/bike as quickly as possible because, "God I hate this and if I finish faster I can turn it off and not be listening to Yanni anymore."
So the plan for today was there was no plan. Get on, see how I liked it, go until I felt like not going any more. That turned out to be an hour. And I did some small interval work, cruising then cranking and spiking my heart rate (I used the Garmin to track HR but having uploaded the data yet. Poor little thing looked so confused. I could almost hear it, "Why aren't you going anywhere? I'm a GPS, damnit! Let me position something!"). At 30 minutes I decided to climb a hill so I popped the chain on to the big ring/lightest gear and every two minutes shifted up, trying to keep my cadence consistent and my HR above 160. The former was tough, the latter not so much. Once that set was over I spun light for ten minutes, maintaining a HR of 140-ish and rocking out to virtuoso prog metal.
I'll probably mess with the video and some other fancy trainer things later. And I would run tomorrow but my pinkie toe is still sore so I'm resting that. Which is a bummer because I was feeling very run-positive after the trail run and was ready to get back out there and now I can't.

I would make a joke about knowing how to spread towels on the floor for proper coverage...

...but that would be dirty and my parents read this sometimes.