Thoughts on Trainer Rides

I ride the trainer on the week days in lieu of actual rides, but happily take the bike out on the road on the weekends.  Trainer rides are tough.  I was originally going to attach a bike computer to the rear wheel so I can get an estimate of distance traveled while on the trainer, until my triathlon coach told me it would not reflect real-world conditions.  Riding the trainer, it turns out, is like riding uphill all the time.  When working on scheduling training sessions, he estimates 15 mph on the trainer. 

 

After initiall setting up the trainer in the living room, like this, I realized it gets pretty loud when I'm doing a hard set and I get very hot (and sweaty).  I thought that moving everything to the garage, semi-outside, would help - trainer rides are generally done early in the morning and the front of the garage doesn't get direct sunlight until the afternoon.  This set-up has worked out very well for me.  The bicycle sits on the trainer all week, coming off on the weekends to be taken out for rides.

 

60 minutes of riding

But being in the garage doesn't mean it doesn't get hot and I don't get sweaty.  In fact, just as I was in the living room, within ten minutes of riding I start dripping sweat.  A lot of it falls onto the bike frame, but much of it also drips to the ground.  When in the living room,  I actually laid an extra towel on the floor to catch the sweat.  In the garage, I just let it drip on the concrete floor.  The picture you see is my sweat from the main set of a 60 minute ride, less anything caught by the bike frame (you can actually see an outline of the bike frame in between the two larger blotches of sweat), and less all of the sweat I continuously wipe with my sweat towel.

Even then, I'm usually glistening with beads of sweat on my body when I wrap up my training ride, and need to wipe down the bike frame.  Lovely, isn't it?