Trainers are sometimes a necessary evil/savoir

So I got on the trainer last night and made myself stay there for 1.5 hours. For me these days, that's some sort of accomplishment. Since it was absolutely pouring rain outside and pretty chilly to boot, I thought I'd spend some time with my old friend the trainer. Now, let me explain that in the old days I'd get on the trainer and throw in a Spinervals DVD or some other training DVD, but that started getting old after a while. Once I discovered cyclocross, I'd get on the trainer and spin to some sick cyclocross DVD, as that inspired me to push it pretty hard. For at least the last year or so, when I do get on the trainer I typically haven't had a plan, or at least the plan I've had hasn't worked out because I have nothing in my legs, so that hour of tempo that I wanted to ride just isn't going to happen and I end up with 30 minutes of nothing but easy spinning.

Last night was different. I had been thinking for some reason about Col. Bruce Hampton and the Aquarium Rescue Unit. As lazy as I am, I hadn't even burned any of their CDs to iTunes. So before getting on the trainer I burned their live, self titled CD and Mirrors of Embarrassment. Once on the trainer, I started with Live. This disc is so full of fast-tempoed, foot stompin, ass shakin' tunes, I couldn't help but get a fair amount of high cadence spinning. When the slower tunes came on, I'd crank up the tension and shift into a 53x13 or so for ten minutes of muscle tension. Once into Mirrors of Embarrassment, I started to remember what drew me to the Col. back in my college days. Sure as a psuedo-hippy back in the day you couldn't beat this music for some seriously high energy ass shakin' on a Friday or Saturday night at Mainstreet in Murfreesboro. But beyond that, as a musician, I fully appreciate the complexity, difficulty, originality, and uniqueness of what the Col. and the ARU put together. You just don't find music like this many places, and you certainly can't pass it by when you do. So in my 1.5 hours on the trainer I made it through both CDs, got in two 10-minute muscle tension intervals, one 15-second all out sprint, lots of high cadence spinning, lots of zone 2, and a bit of zone 3. Not exactly a super hard workout, but I'm in pretty bad shape right now due to my severe lack of consistency on the bike, so I was pretty happy with the effort. Most importantly, in enjoying the music, I never really realized I was sitting on the trainer for 1.5 hours. And I got to reconnect to some incredible music that I haven't listened to in far too many years.

After mentioning this on facebook, I was turned onto the Prophet Omega and the Hampton Grease Band by a guy on my team, whom I forgot is also a musician. Hopefully more to come on those two discoveries in the future.