Philoton
Talk about feeling like a foreigner in a foreign land, today I lugged my old backup bike, the Klein, up three flights of stairs to my cycling room where I inflated the flat tires and hooked it up to my old trainer.
That's right. Shocking. Me, old school. WiFi free for me. No need for one of these fancy and expensive Peloton deals...
Forget about Peloton, I have a Philoton...just me and another thing that has been foreign to me for a while, music on the radio.
That's what I used for today's return to the trainer, 2020 edition, as another run of Weigh-In Wednesday's begins on my PhilCast show.
Everything was foreign today, starting with the leg stretches, core work and sit-ups I did as a warmup to mounting the old steed.
Sure, I could have popped a CD in to listen to (I know, that's ancient too) but I did not. Why? Because the music I have in there would be too inspiring. Listening to fast music would have made me want to go faster on the bike, do more than I should when just getting back to this wintertime hell I call trainer workouts.
No, today, and for that matter for the next week or so, it will be simple time spent spinning to acclimate the body.
My life-long profession, radio, has changed so much over the decades that I have been involved with it. Most of it is NOT change for the better.
Example;
Since I didn't want to listen to the music I had loaded up on my own, I thought I would try to find something on the FM band that was playing music and somehow put up with commercials. I don't listen to radio much, especially music on the radio as the Stones once sang.
What I found was something called Jack FM. What city it was out of remains a mystery to me because it's one of those nationally-copied formats that are a personality-less presentation from a computer, run by robots with pre-recorded generic station I-D's without a live human being talking to you in sight.
Oh the music was okay at times, don't get me wrong. I had to hold back on the bike a bit as Back in Black by AC/DC came over the airwaves.
But what irks me about stations like this is the fact that I feel they make a mockery out of what the magic of radio really is, and that's a very personal, one-on-one relationship between that voice on the air and YOU. All of that is pretty much destroyed by all the Jack FM's around the country.
So 30 minutes went by fairly quickly with no harm done, other than a sore butt! Different bike. Different saddle. Different feel on a trainer.
There will be more of these rides to start with. Nothing fancy. A basic :30 that goes like this:
10 minutes in the easiest big chain ring gear
10 minutes up one gear
10 minutes back in the starting gear...all just a steady spin rpm.
That's the Basic 30 workout.
RIDE
Trainer Basic 30
7.1 miles/14.2 average mph
SEASON TOTAL MILES FOR 2020
Indoor: 7.1
Outdoor: 11