I bought a trainer a few years ago, and not surprisingly, it primarily functions as a bike stand. The weather lately has just been all over the place, so I haven’t been getting a whole lot of riding in. When I do ride, the fact that I don’t ride often becomes painfully evident. So I decided I should start using the trainer some. I have some interest in trying to follow some sort of training plan, and for the second year in a row, my neighbor has offered me copies of the program from his winter spinning class. Plus I have a Chris Carmichael DVD that came with the trainer. The problem is, all that stuff requires you to work at certain heart rates, so after marinating on it for a year, I finally caved and bought a new bike computer with a heart rate monitor.
It showed up today, and I got it installed and gave it a test run, following some instructions I found online for determining my Max Heart Rate. Holy crap did I forget how much riding the trainer blows. I don’t know what it is about them, but it feels like so much more work than a real ride. Is it just the mental challenge of pedaling hard and going nowhere? I don’t know. I watch a DVD so I don’t get bored, but the trainer still makes time just c r a w l. Maybe it’s because there’s no descents.
Anyway, after warming up for a while and then busting ass for a few minutes, I determined my MHR is exactly what the rough estimate calculation (220 – age in years) produced: 186.
