Besting El Nino: Take it indoors


By John Stesney


If the not-quite-a-stand-up-comic who passes himself off as your weatherman is anywhere near correct, by now we're starting to feel the effects of El Nino, raining Spot and Puff.

The more macho guys, particularly the ones with non-ferrous bikes make a point of riding in the rain. You can recognize them by their never-again-clean socks, deeply abraded rims, and pruned-up skin. Other people, like me, count all the scars on their body and realize fully two-thirds are the result of riding in the wet. The rain is almost as hard on my bike. For people like me, there is an alternative to riding in a downpour and pretending you're Eddy Merckx in Belgium. It's called training indoors.

The basics: rollers and stands


There are two kinds of indoor trainers. The first kind is rollers, treadmills for bikes. On rollers you balance and steer, or fall off. Avoiding falling off is good for your skills, but makes long and/or hard rides hairy. Rollers have traditionally been light on resistance, allowing you develop a fast, smooth spin, but not much power. In response to these issues, some roller manufacturers have made front wheel stands to make steering moot, and resistance units to up the oomph. These decked-out rollers provide the most versatility. Adequate rollers start at around $100, but can cost five times that much if you get the Kreitlers (the best and priced accordingly) with stands and resistance units.

The second kind of indoor trainer is the "stationary" stand that doesn't require balancing. These clamp to the rear wheel, leaving the front wheel on the bike, or clamp on both the front and rear. It's hard to fall off of one of these, so they're perfect for mindless riding of either the goof-off or cross-eyed-with-pain variety. They are also gadget-friendly. (More on that later.) A decent stationary without gadgets goes for between $100 and $200.

You can get resistance units for both rollers and stationary trainers. Fans are cheap, simple, provide realistic resistance, and lots of cooling. The downside is that they are heinously loud; your neighbors will hate you. Magnetic and fluid resistance units are more expensive, more complicated, don't mimic wind resistance very realistically, and provide as much cooling as a tenement air conditioner. Still, they're my choice, since they let me actually hear Phil Liggett on my Tour videos.

Bells and whistles


A number of stationary trainers come with electronic gadgetry that let you track your workload. Makers include Cycle-Ops and Cateye. Compu-Trainer is the most well-known, and among the most expensive. For around $300, you can measure power output along with the usual heart-rate monitor and time/distance/speed data. For $1,000 you can do all that, look at your pedal stroke, and "race" on a TV monitor. (Hey, it beats watching Gilligan). Virtual reality riding is available too, with VR goggles and the rest. If you have to ask "how much?" you probably can't afford it.

Protect your bike


Riding your bike in the rain is not good for your bike. Sadly, neither is riding indoors; if you did to your kids what you do to your bike on the trainer, you'd be in jail and they'd be in a foster home. Riding indoors, there's not much of a breeze, even with resistance fans. The result is a Niagara of sweat, with is bad for everything on your bike. Use a towel or a commercial bike protector to keep the sweat off your bike. Surround yourself with fans aimed at your head and torso, (think theater sound system). And when you're done riding, wipe off your bike and your trainer with a towel. Now.

If you have a stationary trainer which clamps on to the rear wheel and the front fork, you can put beaucoup stress on your frame. Between the sweat and the frame stress, using an old bike for your indoor training is a good idea.

Hey, mountain bikers!


Knobbies aren't well-suited for indoor training. A few stationary trainers run off the side of your rear wheel, but it's a lot easier to get a run-of-the-mill model and run slicks until the spring. Don't even think about riding your knobbies on rollers.

Workouts


Your workouts are going to be short. 1) It's winter, the off season. 2) Even with videos or virtual reality, rides over an hour and a half are hard duty. You can still get a lot done. To make the time pass quicker, most indoor workouts feature lots of changes in workload, that is, intervals. (Come to think of it, that's a third reason why your workouts are going to be short.) As for specific workouts, there are books and videos with plenty. If you're too cheap to buy any of them, you can try the MTV workout. Go hard one video, easy one video. Out-of-the-saddle jam for commercials. Other than that, have lots of water handy, and don't run the power cords for the fans/TV/Walkman through where your puddle of sweat is going to be.

Get out of the house!

If you don't want to buy a trainer, stress your bike, or devise workouts, you can let someone else do it for you. Yes, folks, you can head down to a Spinning class (or a clone) and sweat on someone else's equipment. Another advantage is that you can actually interact with other human beings, some of them of the opposite sex. The disadvantages are that the instructors may ask you do stupid stuff like on-the-bike pushups, and there are no fans, so bring a big towel. The towel's a good idea anyway, since you don't know who was sweating on that bike before you. Depending on where you take them, the classes run between $8 and $12. Or you can join an gym that offers them, in which case there is often no extra charge.

So, despite torrential rains, you don't have to choose between becoming fat or water-logged. Working indoors will help keep you in shape for spring.

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